I knew she meant he would never regain it again, and nodded to tell her. Mercutio’s eyes had closed, and the lids looked translucently pale, all his healthy color fled. His lips were the color of cold seas.

I did not think he would ever open those eyes again, but he did, and lunged up to grab my arm with unnatural strength. “A plague on both your houses,” he blurted. “I never meant it so, Benvolio; I am sorry—break it . . . break it before it consumes . . . promise . . .”

And then his eyes rolled back into his head, and his mouth lolled open, and he fell back into the hands of the young witch who’d given her bed to soothe him.

“He is not yet dead,” she whispered, and eased him down again. She had packed the wound in his back, and now she smeared the cloth with thick white unguent. She motioned for me to do the same, and I fumbled my own handful of cloth in place, and anointed it. Then I held him up as she wrapped the bandage tight around his chest, from armpit to waist, covering the wound and the eldritch writing I’d seen upon him. Before she was through, though, a flower of red had bloomed on his chest, spreading its sinister petals in a slow, inevitable growth.

But still he breathed a little. It seemed a miracle, and one I was willing to embrace. “I thank you,” I said. “You did not have to help, after my rough treatment of you.”

She shook her head. “I could not do otherwise,” she said. “I grieve, but Mercutio knew the price he would pay for his revenge. I warned him.”

“You spoke of a curse—” I would have questioned her, but Mercutio opened his eyes just then, and the vague fear in them chilled me. “Hush, friend, I am here.” I gripped his bloody hand in mine and sank down next to him on the narrow space. He coughed, and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. His face was ashy gray, the pallor of death already on him.

“Did I do wrong?” he asked me, and the childlike worry in his voice broke me within. “Ah, Ben, for love, I did it for love, and for justice; please, I never meant—I never meant it to harm you or Romeo. . . . Forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” I said. I thought it was confusion, as he wandered in the dark fogs closer to his end. “I would forgive you anything, Mercutio, my brother.”

Of a sudden, his eyes were bright and eerily clear, and he gripped my hand very hard as he said, “I will hold you to that, for I have done you dire wrongs. Love is the curse, Ben. Love is the curse. Do you understand?”