Fool, I told myself in a sudden, ice-cold fury. She’ll betray you; she must betray you; she is a Capulet born and bred, sister to Tybalt, dead by Montague hands . . . and you’ve trusted her with the life of Tybalt’s killer, on the day of his death. Yet I could not help but trust her. It was a faith that had no basis in fact, but what faith ever does?

I took the bar from the door and blew out the candle, then waited by the new-opened exit in tense silence. I heard nothing—no outcry, not even a muffled argument. What if instead she had gone down the stairs, warned her aunt and uncle? What if even now Capulet guards massed at my back and below in the garden? I could scramble up to the roof, but the Capulet palazzo was too removed from its neighbors. Not even I, with all my practice, could make such a leap, and not from rain-slicked tiles. I’d tumble to broken bones, at the very least, and capture, and a slow death.

I heard the creak of the door behind me, soft and stealthy, and drew my sword without turning.

I closed my eyes in sweet relief as Rosaline’s hands closed on my shoulders, and she leaned forward to whisper, “I would not betray you, Prince of Shadows. Not even today.”

I put up the sword, closed the balcony doors on the pounding silver curtain of rain, and braced them again with the wooden beam. When I turned back, she had sparked tinder to light the candle anew, and in its glow I saw there was high color in her cheeks, and a strange look in her eyes. She placed the light upon the table and sat, hands folded together. After a moment of hesitation, I did the same.

“Was he within?” I asked her, and saw the blush in her cheeks grow brighter.

“You might say it so,” she said, and avoided my gaze by fixing her own upon her hands. “Even if my uncle discovers this treachery and voids the vows they exchanged, Juliet will not go virgin to Paris’s marriage bed.”

I imagined her stumbling upon so intimate a scene, and silently removing herself without giving an alarm—because an alarm would do no good. The act of love brought the marriage vows to life, and Romeo’s sin was now made holy. It did not mean the Capulets would not see it undone, but Juliet would never marry highly, or marry at all, even if they cut Romeo down in the streets and hid the secret. The roles of the two girls had now been switched. Juliet was bound, at best, for the convent if they prevented her from escaping with Romeo; Rosaline, the untouched maiden, would be Capulet’s asset to spend now.

Perhaps Paris would take her. Or some other, richer man.

But not me.

Never me.