by Stacey Jay
Mom. I’ll never see her again. My gut tells me there’s no way back from where Romeo and I have traveled. Even if we survive the fire and I gain control of this body, I will never feel my mom’s arms around me, never squeeze through one of our awkward hugs. I’ll never be able to tell her that I’m okay, or how much I love her.
Pain and loss twist my heart, and my hold on Rosaline slips. Before I can recover, her fear pushes me away.
She forces me back to the farthest reaches of her mind, until I can’t feel our shared body anymore. I can only watch through her eyes as we start to run again. We climb the stairs, circling around and around until we reach the top and a room barely big enough to stand upright in. Ancient, rusted bells hang in the center. There are three of them, all tied with a thick rope covered in a sticky yellow coating.
Romeo leaves me … Rosaline … by the wall and hurries to the closest bell. He begins to saw at the rope with the knife in his hand, back and forth, back and forth, as fast as he can. He must be planning to use it to climb down the side of the tower. But where did he get that knife? It looks familiar, something I’ve seen in a dream. The blade flashes like lightning, but the handle is a black so deep, it sucks the light out of the already dim room.
The moonlight shining through the three narrow windows isn’t enough for me to see Romeo’s face anymore, but I can see his silhouette shake with effort and can hear him curse and pull in a desperate breath. The rope cutting isn’t going well. And now it’s too late. His plan is going to fail.
Because the man in the robe from my nightmares is real.
And he’s just stepped into the room.
Romeo
“I see she’s still alive.”
The friar. He’s already here. I feel like I’m choking on my heart. I’ve failed. It took too long to get up the stairs, and the damn rope is covered in resin or pitch or something—
“Don’t worry, my son,” he says in that soothing voice that talks my heart down into my chest without my consent. “It still cuts through skin and bone quite easily.”
“Damn you to hell!” I hurl the knife down the center of the bell tower, into the flames beginning to creep up the steps. The friar must have made it seconds before the wood began to burn. Now the bottom third of the tower is impassable. There’s no way he’ll be able to get his hands on the knife.
It’s over. I won’t kill for him—or anyone else—ever again. I’ll die first. I’ll let Rosaline die as well, if I have to. It’s better for her to die by a stranger’s hand than bleed out knowing someone she trusted was a fiend. The less familiar the evil, the easier it is to bear.
Liar. Torture is torture, and he will torture you both. She’ll be better off if you toss her out the window.
I run a shaking hand through my hair. I can see it, the way her eyes would widen with betrayal and her arms and legs would churn as her body hurtles toward the ground. I can’t do it, I can’t. I can’t kill anymore, not even in the name of mercy. I’ve had enough death to last ten men a dozen lifetimes. I’m so full, it rises in my throat like sickness.
“Come to me, Rosaline,” the friar says, his mockery of kindness making me even sicker. “Come away from Romeo.”
“Friar Lawrence?” Rosaline whispers. “What’s happening? Why—”
“Come to me. I will keep you safe.”
“No, Rosaline!” I step away from the bells, placing myself between them. “Don’t trust him. He’s a liar.”
“Don’t listen to him, child. The poor boy has run mad. I fear some evil spirit has taken possession of his soul.”
“Friar! I’m so afraid!” Rosaline sobs.
“Come, sweet girl. I will give you peace.”
“Peace,” she repeats, her voice breaking in the middle of the word, as if there is nothing in the world she’s ever wanted more. He’s already gotten to her. With a word. One wretched word!
“Yes, child,” he says. “You shall have peace.”
She steps forward, but my arm whips out, pushing her back into the wall with all the force of my terror. I hear her head hit the stones and her whimper of pain and fear, and I know I’ve made a mistake. She’ll never trust me now. Rosaline is as devout as anyone else I’ve ever known. It would have taken a miracle to make her choose me over a man of the cloth, and now that I’ve hurt her …
“Be careful,” the friar says, his concern palpable. It would be so easy to believe him, even knowing without a doubt that every word is false. “Romeo is not himself. He’s been speaking in tongues and—”
“Leave her alone!” I scream, drowning out the soothing lies. “Please!” I fist my hands together in front of me, begging him. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you my soul for the rest of eternity. You can lock me away and torture me and bring your young Mercenaries to watch. Anything. I’ll do any—”
“Come, Rosaline.” The friar holds out his arms. “Hurry now!”
I turn a moment too late. Rosaline has already circled around to the other side of the tower. Now she’s only a few feet away from the friar, rushing to him as if he holds her life in his hands.
Which he does. And soon he will do with it as he wishes.
Time slows and my thoughts race.
Maybe he’ll kill her quickly—the better to move on to lapping up my grief. Or maybe he’ll do it slowly, bind me with his magic, and force me to watch her suffer until she begs to die and I beg to kill her simply to end her suffering. And then I’ll be committing the same, unforgivable sin all over again. And it will be as it’s always been, and I will walk in darkness for the rest of my days, until I can’t remember the feel of the sun on my face or the safety and bliss of holding my love in my arms.
My love. Ariel. She’s gone and I’m alone, and Rosaline will die in this tower and Juliet will die in her tomb, and this story will have an even more tragic end than it did the first time and— I. Have. Failed.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Romeo
Failed, failed, failed, and she’s nearly there, and his arms are open and a demented smile is on his horrible face.
The realization beats me down until the weight of my failure feels like it will force me through the boards beneath me and I’ll fall and break and burn in the fire roaring below and finally—
Finally.
Break. Burn.
She’s in his arms now, his fingers curling around her neck, but it’s not too late.
I don’t think anything else, for fear he’ll read my intentions on my face. I move. Quickly. I close the distance in the time it takes Rosaline’s lashes to sweep down. By the time they sweep back up, I’m so close I can smell the smoke on the friar’s cassock, I can count the wrinkles on his brow, I can see the light in Rosaline’s eyes.
Ariel. I see her rise in Rosaline, but I don’t hesitate or wonder or fear. I smile.
Because I know my sweet, savage girl. And she knows me.
I move and she moves, and our bodies work in perfect synchronicity, as if we’re parts of the same creature. Our fingers claw into his robes, our knees bend, and we drop to the ground seconds before the friar’s hands sweep over our heads. And then we’re tipping him over our shoulders, shoving him out into the empty space at the center of the tower, and he’s falling, falling, screaming, falling …
I turn to watch, but I still can’t believe it. Even when I see the shock in his eyes, even when his robe kisses the rising flames and goes up like dry grass, even when the black bulk of his body hits the ground and the outline of a man blurs and begins to melt away, I’m still squeezing my fists together, waiting for him to rise and come for me again.
“Mercenaries can’t survive fire. It’s one of the few things that can destroy them,” I say, as much for my own comfort as Ariel’s.
Ariel. I turn to her, terrified that she’ll be gone again. Before I can say her name, her arms are around me, her lips on mine. We clutch each other tight, every movement sealing us so close that no one will ever tear us apart.
The thou
ght brings old words rising inside me. “Set me as a seal on your heart,” I whisper against her lips. “For love is as strong as death.”
She pulls away with tears in her eyes. “Shakespeare?”
“No. A psalm.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“And true. I don’t know how else to explain …” I cup her face in my hands. “I thought I’d lost you. You thought you were another person, the girl I told you about when I—”
“Rosaline. I know.” She lets out a shaky breath. “She wasn’t another person. She was me. Just a … different me. At first I thought I’d be trapped inside her version, but then I heard the friar saying the same things he said in my dreams, and I pushed hard enough and she …” She pauses, searching for the right words. “She faded. Into me. She didn’t love anything the way I love you. She couldn’t. She was still afraid.”
“And you aren’t. Not anymore.”
“Because of you,” she whispers, eyes filling again. “And I mean it this time. I trust you, no matter what. No more lies. Ever.”
“Never.” I kiss her, and hope rises inside me in a dizzying wave. The friar is dead. We’ve won, and now we’re going to put all the wrongs right. Me. Her. Juliet, too. For the first time in my life, I have faith. I have faith in love and the magic it can work.
I end the kiss and grab her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
“How?” She casts a nervous glance toward the center of the tower. “The stairs are on fire, and we don’t have a knife to cut the bell rope.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” she says with a humbling intensity. “Always.”
“Take off your dress,” I say, pulling off my own cloak and shirt.
I take the hem of the cloak in my hands and pull—hard, harder, hardest—until finally it gives with a great rrrrip. I tie the ends of the cloak together and see Ariel’s face light up with understanding. She stands beside me in the loose chemise women of this time wear under their clothes, her dress already off.
Because she trusts me. As much as I trust her. The madness of the Mercenaries and the Ambassadors is behind us. When I look into her face—her big blue eyes, her sharp nose, those too-thin lips that feel so perfect against mine—I see everything I was too stupid to want for so long, every simple, miraculous secret in the universe revealed in the magic of her smile. She is mine; I am hers, and this life I’ve been given to share with her will be filled with more enchantment than the past seven hundred years combined.
“I love you,” I say again, knowing I can’t say it too many times, and that even those three words will never be enough to convey how much she means to me.
She puts her hand on my cheek, a fleeting touch that leaves me warm to my feet. “Me too. Now tell me how I need to tear this. I want to live to hear you say that a few thousand more times.”
I turn back to my shirt, tying the sleeve to one end of the cloak. “If we can get twenty or twenty-five feet of rope, we’ll be able to fall the rest of the way,” I say. “I’ll go down first so I can catch you when you drop.”
“So you can look up my shift, is more like it.”
“That too.” I wink and she rolls her eyes, and I wonder how it’s possible to feel so brim full of life with death roaring below us, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the room.
“Rosaline’s father is going to be very upset to have his daughter brought home to him in nothing but her slip.” She starts where my knife accidentally tore her skirt and rips the dress in a circular pattern, longer and longer until I feel the last of the worry bunching my neck fade away. It’s going to be enough. We’re going to make it. “I’ve never had a father before, but I’m guessing someone’s head will roll.”
I take the end of her skirt and knot it tight to the other end of my cloak. “All part of the plan, my sweet.”
“You already have a plan?” She watches me tie the sleeves of her dress around the top of the nearest bell and toss our rope of torn clothes out the window.
“Would you expect anything less?” I put my arm around her waist, and she loops hers around my neck.
“No. I wouldn’t.” She peers up at me with those old eyes of hers. “But from now on I want you to tell me about your plans. And I’ll tell you about mine.”
“The second we’re on the ground.” I pull away and move to the window. “Wrap your leg in the rope,” I say, showing her how. “That way, if you lose your grip, you’ll still be tangled in it and won’t fall as quickly.”
She nods. “We used to have to climb a rope in gym class. I’m not afraid.”
She really isn’t. I wish I wasn’t afraid for her.
“See you on the ground,” I say with a smile. I don’t want to leave her, but this is for the best. She’ll still make it to the ground long before the fire reaches the top of the tower. And this way I’ll be there to catch her. Just in case.
I shinny down, hand over hand, with only one heart-stopping moment as my shirt rips a bit before catching on a seam. Soon I reach the end of our makeshift rope and risk my first glance down. The fire in the nave of the church illuminates the hard earth below, helping me judge the distance left to fall. Only ten feet. Twelve, at most. It won’t be a soft landing, but as long as I keep my knees bent …
I let go, and the ground rises up to meet me with a punch that takes my breath away. Even with bent knees, the impact is enough to send me sprawling. I roll through the dirt, coughing, curling my knees, checking in with my throbbing spine to make sure nothing is broken. But I swear it feels like my bones are still rattling, rumbling, bud-a-bump, bud-a-bump, bud-a-bump.…
The sound gets louder, expanding outside my body, overpowering the roar of the fire in the church. I’ve only just recognized it for what it is—horses, more than two or three—when a man’s voice booms through the crackling night.
“Romeo Montague! You are under arrest, by order of the prince!”
Suddenly the ground is alive with pawing hooves. I look up, catching flashes of gray and purple in the firelight. The prince’s livery, his castle guard. I know they’ve been ordered to escort me to the dungeon if I’m caught violating the terms of my banishment. I killed Juliet’s cousin Tybalt. I am an enemy of the prince and his friends, the Capulets, and now his men will take me and hold me until they decide on the particulars of my execution. If I’m lucky, it might be a private affair with only the prince’s inner circle in attendance. If I’m unlucky, they’ll drag me to the square and hang me until death while the entire city watches.
While Ariel watches, unable to do anything to save me from the sins of my former life. “Please! I was on the road to Mantua!” I shout. “But I saw the fire, and went in to help. Rosaline DeSare is—”
“You more than likely started the fire!” one man shouts, while another voice orders him to—
“Ride! Get every able-bodied man to help. Tell them we might keep the fire from spreading to the trees in the churchyard if we work quickly!”
The man who accused me of arson turns his mount back toward town and takes off, stirring up a cloud of dust. When it dissipates, I get my first clear look at the man in charge. It’s Adolfo, an elder guard whose family sat only a pew away from mine in this very church.
“Adolfo! Please! Rosaline DeSare is trapped in the bell tower,” I shout. “And Juliet Capulet is alive in her tomb. They need help!”
But he isn’t looking at me. He hasn’t heard me, or maybe he simply doesn’t care to listen to the ravings of a murderer. I look to the tower, hoping to see Ariel climbing out the window, but the clothes rope is empty. My blood rushes faster. Where is she? What happened? Has she been overcome by the smoke?
“Please!” I raise my voice, shouting so loudly that Adolfo is forced to turn my way. I jump on the moment, knowing it might be my only chance. “Rosaline is in the bell tower! She’s trapped! And Juliet Capulet has been buried alive in the Capulet tomb. There’s been a horrible mistake.” I’m on my knees. Begging. Please, please l
et him see that I’m telling the truth. “Tie me up and leave me, but you have to send men to—”
A cry cuts through the night. And then another, and another, a chorus of shocked voices echoing from the front of the church, where a few of the men have fetched shovels from the caretaker’s shed to fling dirt on the fire that is spreading onto the grass. But by the time I look their way, they’re dropping the shovels and backing away from the figure staggering toward them from the graveyard.
“A ghost!” one shouts. But he’s wrong.
It’s Juliet. In her true body. Out of her tomb. Alive! The blue dress she’s wearing is rumpled and filthy, her long brown hair falls in wild tangled curls around her shoulders, and she’s so weak she can barely walk, but she’s alive! I jump to my feet to go to her, and find Adolfo’s boot in my chest.
“Please,” I grunt. “She needs help. And so does Rosaline.” I turn, stomach pitching as I see the window of the tower still empty. “She’s in the bell tower. The stairs are impassable. She’ll burn to death if we don’t—”
“Bonfilio, Marzio,” Adolfo shouts. Two of the nearest men turn, the voice of their leader more compelling than even a girl risen from the grave. Adolfo points to the tower. “There’s a girl alive in the bell tower. Ride to the barracks and fetch the ladders. Quickly now! The rest of you, back to the fire!” He begins shouting more names, giving each man a specific task in an attempt to organize the confusion.
I take advantage of his distraction and bolt, racing across the yard toward Juliet, heart doing strange things in my chest at the sight of her. I’m so happy to see her alive, so full of guilt and remorse, so frightened that I’ll have to break her spirit all over again.
We’re married. She loves me. I’m her soul mate. Or at least I was … before I fell in love with someone else.
