He was shaking, every muscle gone rigid, and I knew this was the last. He was clinging tight to that frayed and breaking rope, and I held his gaze, hard though it was. His grief for Tomasso had driven him to this. No wonder he loathed love so much. And thinking bitterly on Romeo, on his folly with Juliet Capulet, I thought Mercutio must be right.

I held his grip, though it bade fair to break my bones, and said, “I do. I understand.”

He searched my face most earnestly, and then closed his eyes. It looked like defeat. “No,” he said. “No, you do not. Ben—”

But whatever he might have said next was lost in a terrible bout of coughing, as he struggled for breath and drowned in his own blood, and though his lips moved, I heard not another word.

I felt the exact moment his spirit departed. It was only then that I realized I had let him die unshriven, here in this dark hut full of witch’s charms and herbs. Mercutio’s hand went slack in mine, and the tension in his face fell away. His eyes looked into eternity, and for a long moment I could not move for fear of breaking, but then I reached over and folded his hands on his shattered, bloody breast, and closed his eyes. I put two gold coins on his lids, and then turned to look at the girl cowering in the corner, now terrified.

She shook her head so violently curls came free from beneath her neat kerchief, and pressed her trembling hands to her mouth. Her eyes were bright with tears and terror. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, sir, I know you think me evil, but I only wanted to help him—”

“I care not,” I said, and handed her another coin. “Fetch Friar Lawrence here. Tell him Mercutio Ordelaffi needs last rites. It is the least I can do for him now.”

She looked wary, but she snatched the coin away, wrapped it in a fold of her skirt, and darted out into the street. I went to the door and breathed in the hot, still air, and gradually became aware of the shouting and furor coming from the piazza. A well-dressed merchant scurried past, trailing harried attendants; I stopped one with an outstretched hand—one well reddened with blood. Well, it made for a useful warning. “What proceeds?” I asked him. He flinched away from me. “What is that noise?”

“Romeo Montague,” he said. “Romeo is bent on dying on Tybalt Capulet’s sword, it seems, for grief!”

I thought that I could not feel anything, but suddenly fear blazed back up within me, real and immediate. “Wait, does Romeo live?”

“I know not!” he shouted back, and broke into a run. “If so, not for long!”

I cast a tormented look back at my friend, but there was naught I could do for him now. If my cousin would recklessly throw himself onto Tybalt’s sword now . . .