My uncle stepped forward then. “Not Romeo, Prince. He was Mercutio’s friend. His fault concludes but what the law should have ended: the life of Tybalt.”

“Whose word have we that Benvolio Montague did not kill my cousin himself!” Lady Capulet spat. “Look, you, he is drenched in red blood that cries for vengeance!”

“Mercutio’s blood,” I said. “My friend lies in a hovel not far from here, if you wish to water him with your tears. And his blood did cry out for vengeance, and you hold that vengeance in your arms.”

She gave a raw shriek of fury, and let Tybalt’s body thump back to the street as she rose. “Will no one kill this Montague?” she demanded, and turned that basilisk’s gaze on her own bravos, who quailed. “Tybalt’s death demands it!”

No one stirred hand or foot. The watch’s armed presence ensured it, and so did the prince’s moody, cold stare.

As the silence fell, the prince said, “It is fair that Capulet have a measure of vengeance, and so, Romeo—”

My aunt gripped her husband’s arm hard.

“Romeo,” the prince continued doggedly, “is immediately exiled hence from Verona, never to return. I have an interest in your grief; my blood also for your rude brawls lies bleeding. But I’ll punish you not with death, but with so strong a fine that you shall all repent the loss of Mercutio. Nay, Lady Montague, I am deaf to pleadings and excuses, and tears and prayers shall not purchase out your son’s abuses, so give me none. Let Romeo go in haste, or when he’s found, that hour will be his last. Go now, take Tybalt’s body and attend our will.”

The Capulets were pleased, I thought; if they had lost the ever-raging Tybalt, then it was public justice to them that Romeo had been taken from the Montagues, if not in body, then in fact. He would no longer be the heir on whom we rested our family’s future. He was disgraced, cast out, and exiled. The enormity of it had only begun to strike me. My cousin, feckless and reckless as he was, had been unquestionably the hope of Montague, and now, in an instant, in a lucky strike in the heat of a battle he had not invited, he had lost everything. Exiled from our family, our city, from everything and everyone he knew and loved.

From his own love.

If there was anything, anything at all, that could be gleaned as silvery hope from the ashes of this disaster, it was that at least that Romeo would now be forced to give up his mad pursuit of Juliet. His life would be forfeit if he lingered inside the city beyond this hour, and Friar Lawrence had told me that though vows had been spoken, no marriage bed had been made. Even in the eyes of God, it was still no marriage at all.