“Traitor to your blood and your line,” she spat, and raised her cane. “Half-blooded unnatural thing! My curse upon you, fool boy—look you, my prince, upon the face of that villain you’ve sought all these years, who foxed your guards and defied your edicts. Look you upon that lawless wretch, the Prince of Shadows!” She stamped the metal-shrouded butt end of the cane upon the marble, with enough force I thought the stone might crack, and the impact rang through the room like the tolling of a death bell. Shock waves went through it, and faces turned toward me, and then toward the prince. Half of those here had been victims of my crimes, and they waited only upon his reaction to cry my neck into a noose.

Prince Escalus, in turn, looked to Montague and my mother. I held out no hopes. For too long, my grandmother had terrorized our house; she had ruled with fear and hatred, and driven us all before her like leaves in a storm.

But now my uncle straightened his back and said, “My apologies to you, good prince, but my mother is unwell. Her mind has wandered these past few weeks, and she sees threats and phantoms everywhere, as the frail and elderly sometimes do. I beg you, pay no heed to her wild fancies. We will tend to all her needs in our home, and see that she never spreads such wicked lies again.”

Her mouth gaped open, and the dumb surprise on my grandmother’s face was so remarkable that I thought I might spoil it with laughter. Had she ever in her life been so directly contradicted? And by him?

My mother curtsied to the prince and said, “My lord, I will take her home, with your kind permission. She is not enough in her wits to be seen here.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind!” my grandmother spat, and shook her cane hard at the prince. “You vile English whore, you weak-bellied coward of a son, I tell you my grandnephew is—”

“See she is well cared for,” the prince interrupted. “And that she is neither seen nor heard from this day forward.”

“My lord,” my mother said. She snapped her fingers at Grandmother’s attendants, and they closed around her feebly struggling body, like black-clad ants, and bore her away, still protesting.

My mother followed, and I thought that I could almost see the mantle of leadership settle from the old woman’s shoulders to hers as my mother took charge of House Montague.

A new day, indeed.