She sailed away, a short and wide ship with much canvas laid on, with poor Peter as a rudder. I reached inside my doublet and felt for the crisp edges of the paper again, and the smooth wax. Confession.

Rosaline meant me to see Friar Lawrence, and quickly, or she’d not have risked sending Juliet’s nurse with the message. The old woman gossiped far too much for anyone’s safety. Rosaline’s own servants—as I’d already suspected—were loyal to her aunt, and not to her; she could trust no one else even as far as Juliet’s nurse.

If you go, something in me whispered—the rational piece of me that had always guided me toward caution where my cousin rushed headlong—if you go, you risk your life. Worse, your family’s honor.

I had risked my family’s honor nightly for years, crawling the rooftops of Verona. My grandmother had tacitly approved that, because it had pleased her to see me humiliate our enemies. But this was another kind of risk altogether—the risk of alliance with our greatest enemies.

Alliance with the ones who had just killed my sister.

If you go, that part of me continued, then take your dagger and put it in her breast, for revenge. Your grandmother would smile for that, even if you stretched a rope like that Capulet boy. And that also was true . . . she would approve of Rosaline’s death, and clap, and laugh.

The image sickened me.

I cast a quick look around. My uncle was gone already, limping homeward; his sycophants and favorites were clustered around, and he’d not miss me for some time. He’d assigned me guards, though, four of them, who bracketed me like walking statues as I headed for the cathedral itself. I thought of ordering them away, but my mother’s words had proved true: Our enemies had no respect for sacred spaces, and now I was virtually alone. If the Capulets had the stomach for a second course, they would find easier meat but a tougher sauce; I was in no mood to dance with them again.

Inside, the hushed vast cathedral held a sense of eternity; overhead, the ceiling vaulted high and clean, and the ever-present gray stone of Verona took the form of rows of huge columns marching into the dimness, while at the end, the curve of the main chapel exploded in color and light. A child was singing, coached by a patient priest, and his high, sweet voice rang like an angel’s from the shining marble floor. The cathedral was filled with penitents on their knees, and I did not know where to look for Rosaline.

The sound of my guards’ tread behind me echoed martial and warlike in these holy silences, and I turned to the one at my left—Paolo, a trusted aide of my uncle’s, and a fierce mercenary fighter. “I will go alone,” I said. “Wait here.”

“Wait?” He peered at me with frank puzzlement. “We go where you go, young sir. Your uncle takes no chances now with his sole remaining heir.”