Juliet’s fireplace still held dull red embers. I shoved in more wood, grabbed hold of a lantern, and crashed it into the mess; the oil spewed out, and the wood caught with an eager rustle that quickly became a roar.

The door shivered beneath the hit of something large—a bench, perhaps, carried by willing hands. It would not hold.

“Be at peace, my friend,” I said, and I thought of Mercutio as I had known him best in life—laughing, sharp, brilliant, and tender when no one watched. I thought of the glimpse I had once had of him in embrace with Tomasso, and the purity of the passion in his face. “What a scourge is laid upon hate, and heaven means to kill our joys with love. Let it be finished.”

I kissed the rosary, and tried to fling it into the fire.

It clung to my hands.

No.

I gave a raw cry of fury, and shook them, but the rosary had wrapped tight and would not loose me. There was a filthy kind of life to it, as if it did not want to perish any more than I.

I heard Rosaline calling my name, chanting it in a wretched, broken voice. I heard the doom in it, the despair. If I did not give in to this, it would kill her, too. It would take away the only reason I had to draw breath. I knew this as if Mercutio whispered it in my ear, and when I turned my head I saw his shade there, bending close. Bound to this rosary ripped from the hands of the dead.

He was just as I remembered him now. Fire and beauty, passion and wit, love and longing. All his fineness and all his awful tragedy bound up together.

“You are my friend,” I told him, and I felt the grief and heartbreak of it. “I should have helped you. I should have saved him. You are right to hate me, but for the love of God, for the love of Tomasso, spare her your hate. She deserves none of it.”

His pale shade gazed at me, and just for a moment, I saw a smile curve his lips. He bent forward, and I felt his hand close over mine.

The rosary loosened its grip, but not enough, and I saw the regret and sorrow on his ghostly face. He could not stop it in death any more than he could in life.

There was only one thing I could do, and I did not pause to think. I dared not.

I thrust my whole hand into the flames.

The agony hit in an instant, but I held; I held, though I heard my cry go up to echo from the walls. My sleeve caught fire, and I heard flesh sizzle.

Mercutio’s ghost wept.

My whole body shook, and I knew that I would die if I did not pull my hand back.