“Listen to me, old man,” said Makari, “I am giving you a chance to make one minuscule reparation to your daughter. Because once, long ago, she told me that she wished she knew.”
There were no weapons nearby except Makari’s sword. It would be a fitting way for him to die. Juliet shifted her weight a fraction, readying herself to spring.
“I would have told you,” said Justiran, “if you had asked before you broke another Juliet.”
Two thoughts flashed through Juliet’s mind, swift as lightning: I am not broken, and Now Makari’s going to look at me.
She thought, and she didn’t even decide, she simply acted: pivoted and slammed the side of her foot into the side of Makari’s knee. He staggered, pulling Justiran off-balance, and then the two of them went down together.
Juliet was on him the next instant—her hands found the hilt of his sword—
And Makari’s fingers closed around her wrist and the world went white.
There was no pain. There was only a cold hum that severed her mind from her body. She was kneeling on the floor—she realized this after few moments—and she could feel the cold tiles against her knees, and the breath moving in and out of her body, but she couldn’t control the slightest movement.
“Brave of you,” said Makari. “But stupid. It seems to be a Catresou trait.”
Juliet tried to speak, to tell him that another Catresou trait was destroying those who defied zoura, but all she could do was puff air between numb, half-open lips.
“Paris was like that, when he was alive,” said Makari. “Trying to save me, like I could be some sort of present for Romeo. I admired that ambition, I must admit, but I had to crush it.”
He stroked the top of Juliet’s head once, twice. She wanted to shudder, but she still didn’t have enough control over her body.
Justiran sat up. “Makari,” he said, his voice raw. “You deserve your revenge. But take it on me. Why do you need to hurt this girl?”
“Honestly,” said Makari, “haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? She’s a tool just as much as my lady was, and I’m going to wield her to give my lady freedom.”
Juliet flexed her mouth. She wanted to howl, Have you asked her if she wants to pay this price? But all she could force past her lips was a soft moan.
She thought, I will die speechless, and the idea set her stomach shaking with fear in a way that revenants and reapers hadn’t.
She didn’t fear death, but she feared dying without a fight, and speaking was fighting: Romeo had taught her that.
“Tell me, love,” Makari called out, “do you want your father to live?”
Juliet was able to lift her head, just a little. So she saw the girl’s face. She saw the girl tilt her head, and look at Justiran, and then look at Makari.
And say nothing.
He is your father, she wanted to cry. Even if he were evil as mine was evil, you would mourn his death.
But she could speak no words, only harsh gasps.
Makari leaned down and said to Justiran, “You see how it is. You see what she wants.”
Justiran ignored him. He looked past Makari, straight to his daughter, and he said with a terrible serenity, “I love you. And I’m so sorry.”
Makari drew a knife and plunged it into Justiran’s throat.
He drew the blade out again swiftly, and though it hadn’t been a wide slice, blood still gushed from the hole. Justiran choked and convulsed; Makari knelt, and dipped his hand in the pool of blood.
Then he stepped to Juliet, and with a bloody finger, traced a symbol on her forehead. Faintly, under his breath, she heard him whispering words that she couldn’t quite make out, but that made her skin buzz with trembling wrongness.
The world seemed to shiver around her. Juliet’s vision blurred for a moment; she felt like she was falling or perhaps shooting up in the air very quickly.
Darkness fell, and Juliet recognized this: the same unearthly darkness that had surrounded her and Romeo when they tried to create the bond and everything went wrong.
She heard the song of death: a rippling murmur like a thousand voices whispering to themselves. Light clung about her—and Makari, and Justiran, and Justiran’s daughter—but otherwise they seemed to stand on an infinite, empty plain filled with darkness.
She knew what would happen next: she would be drawn all the way into the land of the dead, and Makari would go with her, and use her to wrench its gates open and make all the living world dead. She would have failed everyone she had ever tried to protect.
No, she thought.
“It’s time,” said Makari. He held out a hand, beckoning to his lady. “Come, darling.”
She stepped toward him, her golden curls strangely bright in the darkness. She took his hand and leaned into his chest.
No, thought Juliet, no, no, no—
“No,” she whispered aloud, her voice barely more than a breath.
Once more, the world shivered.
Makari started. “What’s that?” he demanded, turning on Juliet.
She wasn’t sure. But she knew that she had felt the power of his magic running through her body, across her skin.
She knew that it had changed when she said no.
“No,” she said again, and her voice was stronger now. The world itself seemed to change her; she felt warmth curling at the bottom of her stomach, felt her fingers start to stiffen and clench with her own anger, and she said, “Stop.”
And the song of death grew quieter, and the darkness began to fade. There were still inky, unnatural shadows everywhere, but the air had lost that cold, sweet sense of blowing across an infinite expanse; faintly, Juliet could see the walls of the room. She could hear the hissing of the revenants in their cages.
Makari grabbed her hair. “What have you done?”
“You made me the key,” said Juliet, her lips still numb but curving in a grin. “You made the living Juliet the key.”
“The Juliet is only a weapon—”
“—forged for a single purpose, and that is protecting my people. What did you expect?”
He slammed her to the ground and knelt over her. He dipped a finger in Justiran’s blood and wrote a word on his palm. She knew that it was the sacred word for trust, which the Catresou used to form the bond between Juliet and Guardian.
Makari pressed his palm to her forehead. “Open the gate,” he said, his voice shaking with rage.
Juliet could feel the sign he had written burning on her skin, but it had no power over her.
“No,” she said.
Juliet was helpless, pinned to the ground, and would likely die in a moment, but her body thrilled with defiant exultation.
“I order you,” he snarled.
“You’re not my Guardian,” she said. “You don’t own me, Runajo does. You’re not Catresou, not Mahyanai. You are nobody I have to obey.”
Makari stood, his face becoming cold. “I will kill Romeo,” he said. “I will kill him and raise him again and again, as many times and as painfully as it takes until you obey.”
“No,” said Juliet.
She was not afraid. There was no room left in her for fear, not when every last scrap of her will was focused on defying him, on silently whispering no, no, no to the power that still rippled through her body.
She didn’t think she could move yet, but it didn’t matter. All she had to do was refuse.
“Romeo loves this world,” she said. “I will not destroy it to save him. I can watch him die if I must, but I will not break him.”
“I will break him,” Makari snarled, turning away from her, and then fear did stab through Juliet’s heart, because he was surely going to do it now—
And then Makari gasped and halted, shuddering.
From where she lay on the floor, Juliet couldn’t quite see what was happening. Makari fell to his knees with a thump, and gasped, “You.”
His lady stood over him, holding a bloody knife, and then Juliet understood.
Makari pitched to the side, gasping for breath. But he must have been stabbed straight through the heart—his shirt was already drenched with blood.
His lady sat beside him and gently lifted his head into her lap.
“Why?” he asked. “I would have—”
She muffled him with a kiss.
“I want to die,” she said when she raised her face. “I want to die.”