Or a curse.
My breath comes faster. What if Nurse made this happen? What if this is the Ambassadors’ punishment for not joining them in their realm? Or what if Romeo was right and the universe has chosen this cruel method of elimination rather than the mist? Or what if we’ve all been wrong and there is such a thing as hell, and it is the place that terrified me above all others? What if I’ve been sent here to die, once and for all? Or worse, to be trapped here for all eternity?
“Help! Help me!” I scream, voice echoing in the tight stone.
“Hello?” The answer is faint, distant, but the voice is most certainly male. There is someone outside, someone who’s heard my cry.
I bite my lip, regretting my decision to call out. What if it’s the friar? What if I have traveled back in time, or perhaps to some alternate reality, and am now about to be pulled from the tomb a second time? What if Romeo is out there, playing dead on the floor? What will I do?
I won’t fall on that knife. That’s for certain. But what should I do instead? Should I run? Try to find someone to help me? To keep me safe from the boy I willingly married and from a seemingly kind and gentle man of the cloth? If this truly is the past, my parents will kill me for marrying without their consent. Or force me to live with the man I chose to avoid shame and ruin. At this point I don’t know which would be worse.
Ben. Ben. Ben. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to his name, to his face, to the smell of his skin and the feel of his arms warm and safe around me. I will never forget him, never forsake him. If I am married to someone else, I will …
I will run away. I will find a way to survive on my own. I’m not the same frightened girl I once was. I am strong enough to find my way, strong enough to escape whatever evil waits for me on the outside.
“Hello? Who’s there?” The voice comes again, closer. This time I find the strength to answer.
“I’m in here! It’s Juliet Capulet! I’m alive!”
“Jesus … dear god.” His words are muffled by stone, but so close now I know his voice is familiar. Very familiar. But not Romeo’s voice, not the friar’s. “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”
I brace myself as the stone above my head scrapes and shifts, slowly, slowly, inch by inch, shove by shove, until there is a space wide enough for a person to slip through. I blink against the sudden invasion of the light, so blinded by my time in the darkness that I can’t make out the face attached to the hands that reach down and lift me out.
But I know those hands. I know the smell that swirls around me as he pulls me close, helping me stand with the strength of his body. I know that gentle voice telling me, “It’s okay. You don’t have to be scared.”
My heart lunges into my throat. I know where I’ve heard those words before. In the car. That first night, when Ben and I met. Ben. It has to be! Still, a part of me is terrified to believe until I’ve seen him, until I’ve looked into his eyes.
“Ben?” I ask, hands smoothing up his chest, finding his face with my fingers. I feel him flinch in surprise but relax quickly beneath my touch. Full lips, smooth cheeks with just the hint of stubble, and that perfectly crooked nose. It’s Ben! I know it, even before my eyes sting into focus, homing in on his face. I smile and a sound half laugh, half sob leaps from my throat. “You’re alive!”
His brow furrows, and his nod is the barest tilt of his chin. “More importantly, you are. When I found the note, I was sure he’d gone mad. I couldn’t fathom such a thing but … here you are.”
“And here you are.” He is. He really is. His hair is longer, covered by the hood of the green wool coat he wears, but it’s Ben. Sweet, perfect, impossible, undeniable Ben. I drink in the beauty of him, knowing I will never take the light in his eyes for granted, never let the heart inside him doubt how treasured he is.
“Ben.” I sigh his name, a promise, a prayer, an offer of thanksgiving to whatever force has brought us back to each other. God, magic, love, hope—it can use any name it wants. All I know is that I am grateful. So very grateful for “Ben.”
“My mother calls me Ben,” he says, voice soft, confused. As confused as the eyes staring into mine, as confused as the shake of his head a moment ago. “Did Romeo tell you?”
My heart skips a beat. “Romeo?” How does Ben know Romeo’s name? Why doesn’t he seem to know me? And why … why is he speaking in Medieval Italian? The language is so familiar that I didn’t notice at first, didn’t realize—
“I can’t imagine Romeo discussing anyone but himself in such depth, but I …” He swallows and relaxes his arms as if he will push me away. I cling to him, forcing him to stay. I can’t be away from him. I just can’t. “I’m sorry. I know he … and you …”
“He means nothing to me.”
Ben’s eyebrows arch. “Truly?”
“Truly, truly, truly.”
“Then I suppose this will be easier for you to hear than I’d thought,” he says, making me brace myself for the worst. “He’s left Verona. He’s run away with Rosaline.”
I blink. “Rosaline?”
“Yes, she … Apparently she’s not so resolutely chaste as we all assumed. She’s with child. Romeo’s child. They were married at her home this morning.” His words seem to remind him how close we are. Propriety demands he step away. This time, I let him. It’s obvious he has no memory of our past … our future … our life in another future’s reality. Whatever it was. He doesn’t know me; he doesn’t love me. In fact, he seems to think I’m out of my mind.
“Do you understand me?” he asks, speaking slowly. “He and Rosaline are married. They’ve gone to Mantua to live with her aunt and uncle. They have a sizeable estate there, and after his exile, Romeo thought—”
“Good,” I say. “I’m happy for them.”
Now it’s his turn to blink. “You are?”
“Yes. I am.” Romeo left me for another woman. It’s far preferable to what happened the first time I lived this moment, and spares me the trial of finding some way out of our marriage. Hopefully, this is really the end of it. Hopefully, I’ll never have to see his face again, so long as the prince rules Verona and Romeo remains a criminal of the state.
“But in his letter …” Ben seems uncomfortable. I smile, hoping to make whatever he has to say easier for him. I only succeed in driving him another cautious step away. “Romeo said that you’d been married in secret. Friar Lawrence’s chambers burned last night—and the poor friar along with them—so there is no record of the union, but Romeo seemed to think you would insist it had taken place. He said you’d taken poison to fake your death and allowed yourself to be buried in—”
“How do you know Romeo?”
“He’s my first cousin,” he says, allowing the change of subject the way Ben always does. Underneath those new clothes and eloquent words, he’s still Ben, the same boy I fell in love with hundreds of years in some other future. “I’m Benvolio Montague.”
Benvolio. I’ve heard his name before, when Romeo and I first …
Romeo. Did he realize that Ben looked exactly like his cousin? That they were the same person, somehow occupying two different places in time? If he did, I never saw any sign of it, not a single flash of recognition. But then, maybe this is a different past, a separate time, one of those places Nurse talked about where new beginnings and endings are possible. And somehow I’ve come here on my own, with the specter’s help.
Suddenly her urging to love, her assurance that things would be better, make a miraculous kind of sense.
Ben is definitely miraculous. And he’s here. And that’s all that really matters.
“I was at your parents’ party.” He blushes, looking more and more like his old self as embarrassment colors his cheeks. “Without an invitation, of course, but …”
“I don’t remember seeing you there.” I take a step closer. He allows it.
“I was in costume.”
“I was a fool.” I take another step, until I stand so close we will touch again if I lean f
orward.
He smiles down at me. “What do you mean?”
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
His smile fades, but when I lay my hands on his chest he doesn’t pull away. “No. I don’t.”
“Me either,” I say. “I think we’ll need at least three days.”
“Three days?”
“To fall in love.”
His smile—his real smile, the crooked one that lights him up from the inside out—breaks across his face. He throws back his head and laughs. When he finishes, his arms are around me again and a familiar gleam is in his eyes. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“No, I’m sure of you.” I curl my hands into his coat. “Of us.”
“I warn you,” he says, his head tipping down, down, until our breaths mingle in the space between us. “I’m nothing like my cousin.”
“Thank all that is good.”
Soft laughter puffs against my lips, making it nearly impossible not to press my mouth to his. But I can’t. Not yet. But soon. He is Ben, he is my love, and it won’t take long for him to remember what we are. I know that deep in my clean, uncluttered heart, where there is no room for doubt.
“But I am a Montague.” He brushes my hair from my face, letting reddish-brown strands curl around his finger before dropping them back into place.
“You are.”
“Our families would never approve.” I loop my arms around his neck. “It would make courtship difficult to say the least.” I press up onto my toes. “We would face opposition from every—” I find his lips with mine, deciding that three more days—even three more minutes—is too long to wait.
He hesitates only a moment before pulling me close, arms tightening around me, mouth meeting mine the same way it did before. Purely, sweetly, wickedly, perfectly. He sighs against my lips, a sound of such relief it echoes through my skin, making me smile and our teeth bump together. I know exactly how he feels. How it feels to come home, to find sanctuary, to be handed that missing piece that makes life not something to be endured, but something to be celebrated.
“I was wrong,” I whisper, my eyes still closed, relishing the memory of his lips. “I don’t think it will take three days.”
“No. Not nearly.”
I open my eyes to find him smiling down at me—wonder and confusion mixing in his features. I smile back at him, helping wonder win the battle.
“Perhaps your parents will be so glad to see you alive that they’ll forget this ridiculous feud once and for all,” he says. “Perhaps they’ll be so grateful for my hand in saving you they’ll invite me to stay for dinner.”
“Perhaps. I’ll talk to my mother, see if I can bring her around to looking at things our way,” I say. “But if not, we shall simply have to run away together.”
“I’ve heard it’s the fashionable thing to do if you’re a Montague,” he says, his grin fading. “Did you really … marry him?”
I meet his eyes, unflinching. “Does it matter?”
The question makes him pause for a long, thoughtful moment before slowly shaking his head. “No. It doesn’t. I don’t mind not being the first, as long as—”
“You’re the last,” I finish.
“Exactly.” His cocks his head, surveying me fondly down the bridge of that same crooked nose. “You … are very strong. And a very unusual girl.”
“You have no idea.” I smile. “I’ve got quite a story to tell you, someday soon.”
“But not today?”
“No. Not today. Today, we have better things to do than tell stories.” I take his hand and pull him back to me, stealing another kiss, smiling against his lips as he kisses me back.
And kisses me again.
And then some more.
And I know he is mine. For now, for the rest of our lives, no matter what comes next.
CODA
Romeo
I crouch in the shadows in the corner of the abandoned train station, watching the morning light creep into the birds’ nests near the ceiling, clutching the blanket I’ve stolen from one of the crackheads who called the condemned building home. There were five of them, one a Mercenary of some sort, judging from the blackness hovering in his aura. They ran screaming when I crawled through the door, my skeletal hands scratching against the bird-shit-covered boards, rotted flesh dripping a trail of horror behind me.
Even the Mercenary ran. He knew what I was, saw what I’ve become, and feared that the curse I’ve acquired might be catching.
Cursed, damned, cast out to suffer for eternity.
It’s all true, and I’ve suffered greatly in the weeks since Juliet passed. My senses have been returned to me so that I might know I smell like a plague pit and look like a monster. So that I might feel the pain of the entire world slam into my chest, echo in my brain with every step I take. I am truly a thing of darkness now, a being so wretched I can do nothing but hide in humanity’s corners, fighting to stay warm as the wind whistles through my bones.
The only thing that keeps me from taking what is left of my sorry life, from laying my head on the train tracks outside and letting the steel beast sever me in two, are the dark lord’s words.
How pleasantly do you think a few million years such as that will pass? When you are an invisible nothing and no one can hear you scream?
The greatest liars always tell the truth when they can. Everything else he said was true. I have been cast out of the Mercenaries and returned to my old body, a body ravaged by the atrocities I’ve committed.
What if the rest is true as well? What if my soul will remain even after this body is gone? Even this has to be preferable to that. Something preferable to nothing, to the torture of a voice without an ear, to existence without confirmation.
Even a scream as people run away is something. Something …
Hoarse sobs break the silence, a wounded animal keening at the sun streaming across the wall. I have cried more in the past weeks than in my entire life and afterlife combined. It’s the worst part of this body—the way the emotional pain leaks from my face, shakes my heart like a wolf with teeth sunk deep. My soul is a raw thing newly reborn in a rush of blood. The ghosts that haunted me when I was a Mercenary rub against my insides, crowding me with pain. Remorse. Regret. Hate. Fear. Love …
I loved her all along. I didn’t realize how much until she was gone, until I was returned to my body and crept back to the place where she died and touched her lifeless hand, cried over her wide, sightless eyes. Juliet. My Juliet. Her soul is gone forever. I can feel the difference in the universe, the absence that is a world with one less spot of light. I tried to save her. I hope, in some fashion, I did. I hope she’s at peace in the mist … or wherever it is good people go.
I hope that boy she loved is there with her. I didn’t weep for him, but I felt sadness for what he lost. For the first time in hundreds of years I wished I’d had some other choice, that I could have spared them both.
But there was nothing else I could have done. I couldn’t overpower the dark lord, and their love wouldn’t have survived his torture. The best I could do was put them beyond his reach, offer myself in their place.
Maybe someday I’ll regret my decision, when these weeks of agony stretch into years and decades and centuries and finally I am nothing but dust and even the luxury of tears is denied me.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …
Best to cry while I still have eyes.
My sobs bruise the silence, stirring the birds from their nests. They leap into the air, wings snapping like sheets hung to dry in the wind, so loud I hunch lower in my blanket, letting it cover my ears. There are hundreds of them, so many the floor is mounded with waste, humming with flies.
This hole isn’t fit for anything human to live in.… It is perfect for me.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” The voice comes from the door, a melody of chipper notes that sting at what is left of my skin. It’s a woman, a beautiful redhead with flesh so pale th
e blue of her veins show through at her temples and beneath her dark brown eyes.
“That’s quite a trail you left.” She smiles at me, the bow of her lips curling with hard determination.
So she’s come to gloat. I’d thought the Ambassadors above such petty pleasures, but she’s definitely one of them. One of the golden ones, maybe even Juliet’s Nurse. Her aura is certainly bright enough, so bright it outshines the morning sun cutting through the broken windows, makes me squint and turn away as she crosses the room and squats down by my side.
“Now then, Romeo. How are you finding your retirement?”
I turn to her, slitting my eyes, letting a hiss escape my mouth.
Instead of running for her life, she laughs, a soft chuckle that assures me I am a very small, very foolish monster indeed. “As good as all that?” She nods. “I thought that might be the case. That’s why I’ve come. To offer you a way out.”
A way out. I freeze, my raw soul shivering inside me. I haven’t allowed the possibility to enter what’s left of my mind. There is no way out. This is the way I will end. This is the inescapable pit at the end of the last road. This is all there is.
But what if … what if …
“The Mercenaries have been stealing our converts for centuries,” the woman says, reaching out, tugging down the edge of my blanket until my head pops free. “Some of my friends disagree, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t do the same. Such a complete reversal of allegiance generates a great deal of power. We need that now, when so many of our high ones have been lost.”
Not lost, murdered. Slaughtered by the Mercenaries who fight dirty, who kill for what they want, who will not stop until their fires are the only light burning at the end of the world.
“Is that something you would consider?” she asks. “Becoming one of us?”
I know relatively little about the inner workings of the Ambassadors, but I know the Mercenaries. And I know they will win. The Ambassadors are weak, their hands tied by the goodness required of their magic. Becoming an Ambassador would be suicide.