And Kami Garcia: Lady, you just rock. Thanks for the love. Sarah Weiss and Janet Cadsawan also gave me much love and support and excitement about this project, as did NiNi Burkart.

Thanks also to the amazing Eloisa James for her recommendation, and to the kick-ass John Ziegler for casting a careful Shakespearean scholarly eye over what I’d done to the Bard, and not weeping (at least, not where I could hear him).

And last, thanks to Mr. William Shakespeare for making me love the English language even more than I already did.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

I stood in the dark corner of my enemy’s house, and thought of murder.

In his bed, Tybalt Capulet snored and drooled like a toothless old woman. I marveled as I thought of how the women of Verona—from dewy-eyed maids to dignified ladies—fell swooning in his wake. If they could see him like this (a drunken, undignified mess in sodden linen), they’d run shrieking to the arms of their fathers and husbands.

It would make a good, vivid story to retell, but only among my closest and dearest.

I turned a dagger restlessly in my gloved hand, feeling that murderous tingle working its way through my veins, but I was no assassin. I was not here to kill. I’d come stealthily into his house, into his rooms, for a purpose.

Tybalt, the heir of Capulet, swaggered the streets of Verona and used wit like weapons; that was nothing new among our class of young cocks. He was never above offering insults, to low or high, when opportunity came. Today he’d offended my house. House Montague.

The victim was a serving girl. Insults to servants didn’t call for open challenges from those of my station, but still, it pricked me, seeing the self-satisfied grin on Tybalt’s face as he emerged from that rank little alcove where he’d reduced her to tears; I’d seen her run from him red faced, holding the tattered rags of her clothes together. He’d injured the girl only to prove his contempt for my house, and that required an answer.

It required revenge, and that was something that I, Benvolio Montague, would serve him—not in the streets, in open war, but here, in the dark. Tonight I was clad head to toe in disguise, and there was nothing about me to indicate my station, or my house. Tonight I was a thief—the best thief in Verona. They called me the Prince of Shadows. For three years I had stolen from my peers without being caught, and tonight . . . tonight would be no different.