“I delayed,” she said from behind me. “I dissembled. I pretended illness. But now my mummery’s come to an end. I am to be sent to a convent, where my faults will be . . . corrected,” she said from behind me, and I resisted the friar’s grip and turned to look straight at her. She was straight and tall now, hands clasped low, and the candlelight caressed the curve of her face like a lover’s hand. “Next week. The friar has promised me that he will send me tonight to a friendlier order, where I may at least be granted leave to read and study. My brother’s wish is that my spirit be broken, but I will thwart him in this. If I must be God’s, I will be God’s on my own terms, and not Tybalt’s.”

“Tonight,” I said. It felt like a blow, though there was no reason for that. “You go tonight.”

“Aye, boy, she’s risked much to steal away for this chance, and you’ll not ruin it from familial spite!” Friar Lawrence pushed me into one side of the confessional and tried to slam the door, but I caught it on both palms and shoved back. Rosaline had not moved.

“He’s not forgiven you, has he?” I asked. “For letting me go?”

She did not answer, but then, she did not have to; I knew the truth well enough. I was the reason her brother threatened her with the loss of the one thing she feared—her study. He’d see her sent to an order that held to the belief that women should be dumb beasts, content to parrot the responses given them and mortify their sinful flesh . . . and it would kill her; I could see it in her eyes. All that was precious in her would die.

My fault again.

“There are rumors about that you betrayed Mercutio and his lover,” I said, and saw her flinch. “I know you did not. It was said to put him against your family, not out of any truth.”

She let out a slow breath and nodded. “I heard of the boy’s murder,” she said. “I would never have betrayed them, even had I known. I believe God loves all, sinners and saints, and judgment is His business, not mine. But I’m grieved to be another excuse for hatred between our houses.”

I did not know what else to say to her. I’ve thought of you was true, but ridiculously wrong. . . . I was a Montague, and unlike Romeo, I knew my path. I finally said, “I am glad you’re well, lady.”

Her sharp gaze took in the blood on my dark clothing, and the bite beneath the ripped fabric. “I am glad the dog was slow,” she said, and smiled a little. “Though that limp will betray you tomorrow.”

“I know.”