by Stacey Jay
I’ll have to tell her about Ariel. No … Rosaline. Damn. Juliet knows I was courting Rosaline before we met. She won’t understand. She’ll feel betrayed, heartsick. There’s no way she’ll believe the outrageous truth, but I have to tell it. I’ll confess everything and hope she believes enough of it to be glad to be rid of me. No one but the friar and her nurse knew of our marriage. Her nurse won’t betray her, and the friar is dead. So long as I keep my mouth shut, she won’t be ruined.
And I will keep it shut. I mean her no harm. I want only good things for her.
I … love her, though not the way I once did.
Still, it’s love. Warm and real. Joy that she’s been spared the misery I brought upon her in another life makes my feet light. I run faster, reach out to her, wanting to help her to safety, to find her water, to send someone to fetch her father while I get Ariel out of—
“Stop!” Juliet holds up a trembling hand. In the writhing light of the fire, her eyes look positively mad. Of course, she has been buried alive for at least twenty-four hours, maybe more, depending on what day it is.
Shame burns inside me, evaporating the joy I felt at seeing her whole. Maybe she isn’t whole. Maybe her mind is damaged beyond repair and I am to blame for her ruin a second time.
“Juliet.” I stop a yard from where she sways on her feet. She looks as if she’s about to topple over. My mind screams for me to get close enough to catch her, but her expression keeps me where I am. She looks terrified, almost as if she doesn’t remember … “It’s me,” I whisper. “Romeo.”
“I know. I haven’t forgotten your real face.” Her voice is hoarse, ravaged from her time in the tomb. “You have a living body once more. I couldn’t believe it when she told me, but … here you are.”
My head shakes numbly. No. It can’t be. She can’t …
Yet here I am, with all my memories of the past and the future still intact. But I was sent here by Ambassador magic. Could she—
“Did your nurse send you here?” I ask, fresh hatred for the Ambassador rising inside of me for making me believe Juliet was lost. “Did she know you were alive?”
“I don’t know who or what sent me here. After you shot me, I was dying. I reached out to my specter, ready for peace. Instead I woke up in the tomb.” She startles, clutching her dress as more men on horseback clatter up to the church to join the fight. Her eyes flick back and forth—from the men, to the church, and back again—finally seeming to realize there’s a fire, and we are in the way.
“Come,” I say, holding out a hand. I glance at the bell tower once more, hope sparking inside me when I see a flash of white hair by the window. Ariel! But she’s hiding for some reason.… Why?
The urge to run across the yard, to scream for Ariel to climb down the rope to safety, is almost overwhelming. But Juliet is still swaying on her feet, making no move to get out of the way as more men and horses pour into the yard, many of them not watching the ground the way they should, in their haste to get to the fire.
“Come,” I say more firmly. “We should move.” I back away from the flames. After a moment, she begins to follow, but stumbles on her filthy skirts. I reach out to catch her, but her slick, sticky hands slap mine away, making it clear she prefers to collapse in the dirt rather than accept my help.
“What happened?” I ask. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she murmurs.
“But your hands. They’re—”
“I’m fine!” She lies at my feet, looking so small huddled on the ground that something inside of me breaks.
“Juliet.” I go to my knees in front of her, rest my fingers ever-so-gently on her shoulder. “Please forgive me. If I could take all the suffering into myself and spare you, I would.”
“Nurse is dead. She was in another woman’s body, a woman with red hair and … But I knew it was her.” Juliet’s breath hitches and her shoulders shake, but she doesn’t shrug off my hand. “The friar slit her throat, but somehow she made it to the tomb and pushed away the stone. She said … She … She died. In my arms.” Head still bowed, she lifts her hands. They look black in the firelight, but I know they’re not. They’re red. Wet with the blood of the woman who saved her, damned her. “She begged for my forgiveness too.”
“As she should have.”
“And then she begged me to kill you, and Ariel. She said you both have to die or the world is lost.” She lifts her face, and for a moment I am taken aback by her beauty.
Even covered in dirt and grime, Juliet is extraordinary—with her full lips and soft brown eyes and skin so clear and lovely. Objectively she is three times the beauty Ariel could ever be. But in my heart, Ariel is the loveliest thing on earth. Hers is the face that takes my breath away.
And now Juliet has been ordered to kill her.
“She’s innocent,” I whisper. “Kill me if you must, but please—”
“You love her.”
“I do,” I say, hoping she can read the truth on my face.
“Nurse said you would find love and happiness. She said I would have as well, but …” She blinks, as if trying to focus her thoughts through a haze. “She changed things with what she did,” she whispers. “Giving you a chance to become an Ambassador.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She stares into the fire, the sadness on her face so profound, it takes my breath away. “He’s gone.”
“I—” I bite my lip. I can’t say I’m sorry again. It isn’t nearly enough. “I thought I was doing the right thing, I truly did, but I—”
“Promise me something.” Juliet turns back to me, her eyes calm and focused for the first time.
“Anything.”
“Promise me you will live an honorable life,” she says. “Be good, Romeo. Truly good. Prove her wrong.”
“I am not truly good,” I say, unable to lie to her. “I doubt I will ever be. But I will be kind. And I will do what I can to bring light to the world. I swear it.”
After a moment, she nods, seemingly satisfied with my answer. “Then go. Find Ariel and get out of here before someone remembers they’re supposed to take you to the dungeon.”
I rise to leave, but stop when Juliet calls out again. “And, Romeo?”
“Yes?” My chest aches as I watch her push weakly to her feet, wishing there was something I could do to give her back what I’ve stolen.
“I forgive you.”
My breath rushes out, her kindness hitting me like a fist in the gut.
“But don’t come back. Even if the prince grants you a pardon,” she continues. “I don’t ever, ever want to see your vile face again.”
I smile. Because I am vile, at times. But she forgives me. And Ariel is waiting in the tower and she loves me and—
“Romeo! Are you mad? What have you done?” A familiar voice from the road makes me turn to see my cousin Benvolio’s horse riding toward me.
With Benjamin Luna on top, dressed in my cousin’s clothes, speaking our native language.
I am simultaneously shocked to the core and not at all surprised. Because where else would Ben Luna be? If the girl he loves is here? I’m beginning to think there is only one truth that matters, and time and space and alternate realities are as insignificant as the metaphorical spiderwebs I pushed aside when Ariel and I traveled together to this place.
Ben shakes his head as his horse trots closer. “Why are you—”
“Ben?” Juliet murmurs, fear and hope and every deep thing she feels for him mixing in his name. “Ben!”
But Ben doesn’t slide from his horse. He knits his brow, clearly confused by the intimacy in Juliet’s voice. Like Ariel when we first arrived here, and the Benvolio I met in the future, he doesn’t seem to know the things Juliet and I know. He has no idea that he loved her so many hundreds of years in the future.
“Juliet?” Even her name is unfamiliar in his mouth. “But I thought … they … Your parents buried you. Two days ago.”
“Ben? Don�
�t you … It’s me.” Juliet sways. I reach out to catch her as she falls, half expecting her to shove my hands away again, but she doesn’t. She lets me guide her to the ground, too weak to repel my touch.
Ben—Benvolio—is off his horse and kneeling beside us a moment later. “Is she all right?”
“Of course not,” I snap, finding I don’t care for him any more in this time than I did in the twenty-first century. Thank god I’ve been banished and won’t have to call him “cousin” on a daily basis. “She’s been buried alive.”
“Good lord.” He brushes Juliet’s hair from her forehead with such tenderness that I know. I know he will love her, even before he mutters “You poor girl” with such feeling, it brings a smile to Juliet’s tired face.
“Ben.” She reaches for his hand and holds tight, though it’s obvious she’s getting weaker by the moment.
“Mother calls me that,” Benvolio says, wonder in his voice. “Did you tell her?” he asks me.
“I didn’t tell her a thing.” I shift Juliet into Ben’s arms, knowing it won’t be long before he remembers she belongs there. “She needs water. And rest. And a protector. Take her to your parents’ estate. Don’t let the Capulets get their hands on her until she’s well, especially her mother. Don’t let anyone hurt her.”
“I won’t,” he promises, eyes still fixed on Juliet’s face even when he says, “You should go, Cousin. Take my horse. There’s already talk of a hanging. I heard the soldiers on the road.”
“I will, but first I—”
“No! I won’t go! Let me die!” The scream comes from the tower, high and desperate above the roar of the flames.
I spin around in time to see Ariel—
Ariel
—lean out the window and shove the ladder away, shaking even though it’s sweltering in the tower.
That was Juliet Romeo was talking to before the other boy rode up on his horse. It has to be. There was something between them, an energy—love and hate and regret all mixed together. They really know each other, even if they hate the knowing.
At least Juliet does. Romeo looked like he was smiling there for a minute.…
I guess I should be jealous, but I’m not. I’m sure of Romeo’s love in a way I’ve never been sure of anything else, and I’m just too plain scared to be jealous.
I heard the men shouting when they first rode up to the church. They want to take Romeo to the dungeon. I don’t know much about medieval Italy—only a few daily rituals left over from Rosaline’s memories—but I can imagine what a fourteenth-century dungeon will be like. Rats and torture and disease and death. Romeo will never make it out alive.
I have to save him, or the future we’ve dreamed about will never happen.
“Rosaline!” Romeo is at the base of the tower now, helping the men pick the ladder up off the ground. “Please! Let us put up the ladder. I’ll climb up and help you down.”
I lean out the window and shout in Rosaline’s language, so grateful the ability stayed with me when her personality was absorbed into mine, “I can’t!” I meet Romeo’s eyes, willing him to see that I’m up to something, silently begging him to play along. “I’m too ashamed.”
“Don’t be ashamed,” he says, the confusion in his eyes tinged with curiosity. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I sob. “I always will.”
“Then come down. Please!”
The men watching our exchange turn to look at him, then up at me, and that’s when I lift my leg over the edge of the window and start down the rope, hoping the distracting view I teased Romeo about will buy me a few minutes to plan. As I lurch downward, I gather all the strength Romeo has helped me find, and I focus it. I love him, and I won’t let anyone take him. I think I know what to say, the one lie that might save Romeo from the dungeon.
I’m Rosaline DeSare, a girl known for her sweetness and piety, but even sweet girls can fall for the local bad boy. And sometimes, when they fall, they fall hard and fast and far, and there’s only one way for them to be redeemed—at least in this time.
As the rope runs out and I begin the stomach-turning drop to the ground, I let myself believe my own story. Tears burn my eyes and clutch at my throat, and my breath comes fast enough to make me dizzy.
My first words as I’m caught by several pairs of strong hands—including Romeo’s, which I find and hang on to like they’re my last hope in the world—are “Please don’t take him away. He’s the father of my child.”
EPILOGUE
TWELVE YEARS LATER …
Romeo
“But you were lying, Mommy. Weren’t you? I wasn’t in your tummy yet.” Gemma leans forward in her little chair, her chubby cheeks red, eyes glittering with anticipation as Ariel reaches the end of the familiar story.
Our girl has my eyes—dark and filled with trouble—but her mother’s nearly white blond hair and pale skin. She is strikingly beautiful. I could stare at her all day and never get tired of it. When she was first born, I’d stand over her cradle for hours, dumbstruck by her very existence, by the miracle of this tiny person who was mine to protect. She’s perfect, unforgettable, the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen.
Except for her mother.
I catch Ariel’s eye. She smiles, as if she knows what I’m thinking. Which she probably does.
“Yes, I was lying,” she says. “But I had to, or Daddy would never have made it out of Verona alive.”
Gemma lets out a shaky breath and turns to look at me, giving a serious nod that I know is her forgiving me again for not always being the good father she knows. We haven’t told her the entire truth, only that Daddy did something foolish and wrong when he was young and that’s the reason we can never go back to Verona. We had to tell her something. She’d started to ask why Grandpa and Grandma DeSare always come to us in Mantua, and why we couldn’t go to their estate, where there are horses and ducks and the portrait of Mommy when she was little.
Gemma’s only seven, but so curious, with an imagination that devours all the stories her mother tells. The ones about fairies and dragons and the troll that lives under the bridge down the lane, and the more extraordinary ones about her mother and me and the future and our journey through time and space. Ariel leaves out the scariest parts, but keeps enough excitement to make our story our daughter’s favorite. She knows every word by heart, but asks to hear it again and again. Especially the next part.
“And then what, Mommy? What happened next?”
“I hugged Daddy tight and wouldn’t let him go. I told the men that Friar Lawrence had promised to marry us, but when we arrived at the church, he went mad and tried to kill your father,” Ariel says, sharing the version of events we’ve agreed to stick to until Gemma is old enough to be told about the Ambassadors and the Mercenaries. “I kept telling them what happened again and again, and finally the men started to believe me. And so the captain of the guard sent for Grandpa, who came to get us right away.”
“Two hours later, your mother and I were married by the pastor from the next village.” I gather Gemma into my lap and hug her tight. “Before the sun had even come up.”
“We loaded one of Grandpa’s carts with the furniture he’d given me for my dowry, and set out for Mantua after breakfast,” Ariel says. “We planned to stay with my aunt and uncle until we could find a home of our own.”
“Even though your great-aunt Mary was less than thrilled by the circumstances surrounding our marriage,” I add.
Gemma scrunches her nose and squints her eyes, making a prune face so completely her aunt Mary’s that I have to fight the urge to laugh. I try not to encourage her.
Mostly.
“Right.” The grin on Ariel’s face leaves no doubt she’s seen Gemma’s impression as well. “So, we were worried about the reception we’d receive, but still very happy to be together. We thought the worst of everything was behind us.” Ariel comes to sit beside Gemma and me on the couch, the soft one stuffed with wool that we made in the studio
behind the cottage, having not outgrown our taste for certain modern comforts. “But then, not three miles outside of town, a man on horseback came riding up hard behind us.”
“And you thought he was a highwayman!” Gemma shouts, pulling her knees in and balancing her chin on top.
“We did,” Ariel says, “but as he came closer, we could see that he wore the Capulet family crest. And in his hand he carried a land deed for a small farm outside of Mantua, signing the property from Juliet’s father, Lord Capulet, over to Romeo. There was also a note from Juliet Capulet to me. It said, ‘Thank you for the past you gave me in the future. Please take—’ ”
“ ‘—this as a token of my undying gratitude,’ ” Gemma finishes with a giggle. “Because she was already in love with Daddy’s cousin, and they got married two years later and had hundreds of babies!”
“Not hundreds of babies.” I tickle her ribs, turning her giggle to a squealing laugh. “Five is nowhere close to a hundred.”
“No, it’s ninety-five less than a hundred!” Gemma says.
“Smart girl,” Ariel says.
“I am,” Gemma agrees with a sigh. “I am so wonderful at math.” She oozes onto the carpet at our feet.
I take the opportunity to scoot closer to my wife, tuck her under my arm, and smell that irresistible place where her hair covers her neck. Flowers and paint, just like always. The flowers we mix in our soap, and the paint that’s become such a part of our life together. Despite the challenges facing women artists in this time, Ariel has found work painting portraits for a few of the city’s wealthiest families. So long as she refrains from competing with the male guild artists—who won’t allow a female, no matter how skilled, to join their ranks—for the more lucrative commissions in the cathedrals and palaces, she is left alone.
My father died four years ago, and I inherited his fortune, but in our early days, her portraits of wealthy children put food on our table, allowing me to spend my days tending our garden and animals, and, later, teaching Gemma all the things a girl isn’t supposed to learn in the fourteenth century.