And now there was no hope.
Romeo had escaped. She had learned that from Runajo. And now that he was far enough away, hidden in the Lower City, the compulsion didn’t drive her to search him out and destroy him. But if she ever saw him again—
“If you hadn’t stopped her,” said Lord Ineo, “she could have destroyed them all.”
“She could have.” Xu nodded. “I, for one, don’t trust battle frenzies created by Catresou magic, and I was the authority in that situation. You are the Exalted’s right hand. But you have no rank in the City Guard.” She bowed to him. “I’ll see you when you fancy another holy sacrifice. Good day, my lord.”
She turned crisply and strode out of the room.
Lord Ineo sighed, then looked to Runajo, who stood like a bloodless statue behind Juliet.
“May we go?” asked Runajo, her voice quiet and lifeless.
“There’s one other thing first,” said Lord Ineo. “People are already talking about the attack. They say that the Juliet kissed one of the attackers. Order her to tell me the truth about this.”
“Tell him,” said Runajo, again leaving Juliet free.
But this time, she wanted to tell him the truth.
She looked him in the eyes, and said, “I did. It was my duty to greet him with a kiss.”
Lord Ineo’s mouth flattened. “Explain.”
“He was Romeo,” said Juliet. “My husband. Your son. He’s alive. And now it’s my duty to kill him, my lord.”
For the first time Juliet could remember, Lord Ineo looked actually taken aback. “That’s not possible.”
“I don’t know how he survived,” said Juliet. “But he fights for the Catresou now. He killed one of your kinsmen today. So I will assuredly kill him in return. That’s what having a Juliet means. Did you think—”
“Stop,” said Runajo.
Juliet’s mouth snapped shut. She knew taunting him was dangerous and she didn’t care; she was shaking from sheer satisfaction that finally, finally he was helpless.
Did he think the Juliet was a tool forged only for his convenience? He would find he was wrong.
Lord Ineo looked down at her, his face expressionless.
“I consider it very likely that, in your grief for Romeo, you are confused,” he said finally. “And anyone who has joined with the Catresou is no son of mine. Runajo, order her not to tell any of our people this fancy of hers.”
“Do not tell anyone that Romeo is alive,” Runajo said tonelessly.
“Good,” said Lord Ineo. “Runajo, we will talk later.” Then he swept out of the room.
They were alone together.
“Is it true?” Runajo waited a moment, then sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “You can speak. Was Romeo really there?”
“Yes,” said Juliet.
They were the only truths left in her life: that she loved Romeo, and she was going to kill him.
“I don’t understand,” said Runajo, and she sounded . . . brittle. Tired, in a way that Juliet had never heard before. “You said he died—”
“I was wrong,” said Juliet, and a harsh laugh ripped out of her. “He was alive, all this time. I would have gone to him, if I’d known. I would have cut my way out of the Cloister and waded through a river of blood to find him, and none of this would have happened. None of it.”
Everything had nearly been so different, and they’d never known. She had nearly saved Romeo from his fate of dying at her hands, and she’d never known.
Runajo drew a shuddering breath. Juliet remembered that she had known Romeo since she was a child, that they had been something like friends. That Runajo, too, had regrets.
But her heart was too exhausted and broken to care. Seeing Romeo had torn open all her wounds, and it was like her first days in the Cloister: dazed with grief, unwilling to believe that everything had gone so terribly wrong, unable to accept surviving it.
“Is this what you wanted?” Juliet demanded. “Was it for this that you saved me?”
“No,” Runajo whispered, looking haunted, and that only made Juliet angry, because what right did she have to mourn what she’d done, when she was not the one who suffered for it? When she’d done it for such little reasons?
“I always knew you were a murderer,” she said. “That you watched the sacrifices every year and called them holy. But I thought at least you wanted to stop the Ruining.”
“I do,” said Runajo.
‘Then do it,” said Juliet. “Find out where the necromancer hid that key, walk into the land of the dead, and bargain with Death. Make the death of my people worth something. Or is it so delightful bowing to Lord Ineo, that you haven’t even tried?”
“I can’t,” Runajo burst out. “It’s too late. The Mouth of Death has dried up.”
Juliet had thought herself beyond all shock, all fear. But Runajo’s words still stunned her.
“Dried up,” she echoed.
Runajo’s arms were wrapped miserably around her middle. “There’s no way to walk into the land of the dead anymore.”
“You could die,” said Juliet, fighting the traitorous wish to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’ve even got a knife, if you need it.”
Runajo snorted. “Who knows in what state the normal dead meet Death? If such a one could bargain to end the Ruining, somebody would have managed it already. All we can do now is try to delay the end.”
That wasn’t enough. That was no excuse. Runajo had never, ever been content with what was possible; what right did she have to give up now?
“If we’re all doomed anyway, then what is the point of this slaughter? What is even the point of your sins?” Juliet’s hands were shaking, and she clenched them into fists as she leaned forward. “I had to be broken and enslaved before I would help Lord Ineo slaughter people. What’s your excuse?”
“I loved you,” said Runajo. Her voice was dazed, helpless, as if the words were bleeding out of her. “You were my friend. I wanted you to live.”
And Juliet knew that, she knew that, it didn’t change anything that Runajo was saying it with eyes like the nameless dead—
“If you had ever loved me,” she said, “you would have killed me when the Sisters told you to.”
Then she turned and fled. She couldn’t bear this knowledge any longer, that each breath took her closer to the moment she faced Romeo and slid a sword between his ribs—the moment when the walls died and the last city fell—
“Juliet. Juliet!”
She turned and saw Arajo behind her, eyes wide with concern.
“Are you all right? What happened?”
Juliet swallowed. She could feel Runajo’s order around her neck like a noose.
“There was a sacrifice,” she said. “The Catresou tried to stop us, and they failed.”
Arajo looked unhappy, her eyes darting uneasily side to side before she said, “People are saying—there are these rumors, but I know they can’t be true—”
“Yes,” said Juliet. “I kissed one.”
Arajo must have been expecting that, but she flinched. “Why?” she breathed.
The pure, heartbroken horror in her voice snapped Juliet’s anger back to life, and she realized that this order, too, had a way around it.
(Every order did. Every order but the one she most wanted to disobey.)
“If I were allowed to speak, I could say that I kissed my husband. I could say that Romeo is alive, and fights for the Catresou. But Lord Ineo has forbidden me to say that.”
Arajo looked dazed. “Why . . . would Romeo do that?”
“He married me,” said Juliet. “By your own customs, that made him part of my family.”
“But you’re one of us.”
“Not when I married him,” said Juliet. “You had not yet captured me.”
“Captured you?” said Arajo, and there was the beginning of anger in her voice now. “You were a slave to those monsters. We saved you.”
“No,” said Juliet, “you took me, because I was a weapon and you wanted to use me. I was a slave to the Catresou too, but at least they never sent me to kill my own kin.”
She was shaking with anger; she felt as if she might actually strike Arajo, and she whirled and fled before she could.