It wasn’t a single dress: it was three silk dresses, layered on top of each other, so that the inner colors showed only at the hem and neck and sleeves. The outermost was gold, the middle layer was white, and the third—silky against her skin—was deep crimson.
“I know a handmaid who is splendid with cosmetics,” said Arajo, examining her critically, “but it would just be smeared all over your face when you put that mask on, so I won’t bother.”
Our women are beautiful enough without painting, Juliet thought. But she supposed that if she was Mahyanai now, she would need to learn their beauty.
That was not something she had ever expected. Even when she had planned to make them hers, when she had turned all her will to learning their ways—even before she had known that Romeo was alive, and she could only avoid killing him if she died—she had never imagined herself living with the Mahyanai.
She had never dreamed that she might be happy among them. That she might ever look forward to sunrise or sunset because it was going to bring something better.
The world was dying still, but at sundown, she would be in Romeo’s arms again. Every day that remained to her, she would be with him.
Suddenly she was very aware of her heart fluttering against her ribs. The shiver in her stomach.
“You don’t have to wear the mask,” said Arajo, looking at her with concern.
“If I don’t,” said Juliet, “I’m saying that everyone in the room is my better, and deserves to rule me.”
Arajo went very still. “Is that how you felt when you came here?” she asked.
Juliet hesitated a few moments, trying to find the truth.
“Yes,” she said finally. “But at least you were all shaming yourselves along with me.”
“Hm.” Arajo fiddled with the hair combs on the table, and then set them down. “You should have something gold, not silver. I’m going to go check my mother’s jewel box.”
“Arajo.” Juliet caught her hand before she could leave. “Thank you for saving Romeo.”
Arajo’s hand did not grip her back, but she didn’t draw it away either. The look she gave Juliet was . . . caught.
“I was ashamed,” she said quietly, after a few moments. “When I stopped being angry, I was ashamed of what we did to you. Whatever your people are like, you are—” Her mouth snapped shut and she stared at the ground. “I don’t understand how you forgave me.”
I never said I did, Juliet nearly replied, but she stopped herself just in time. She realized with a sudden, heartsore pang that Runajo would grin at the words but Arajo wouldn’t.
“You saved my husband,” she said instead, and Arajo smiled weakly before she left.
Juliet looked at the table, piled with discarded ornaments. Silently, she called out to Runajo: Am I going to see you at all tonight?
She had hardly seen Runajo at all the past three days. She had either been talking with the Sisterhood—helping restore the city’s walls had put her back in their favor—or she had been studying the dead Juliet.
Do you want to? Runajo asked, and her silent voice was rawer than Juliet had expected.
I’m going to see all my other enemies at this wedding, she replied.
Runajo was there barely a minute later. “A Mahyanai dress and a Catresou mask,” she said. “You will look atrocious to everyone.”
“Except Romeo,” said Juliet. “And he’s the only one I have to please.”
Runajo remained standing just inside the door. “And Lord Ineo,” she said bitterly.
Juliet grinned. “Not in bed.”
Runajo clapped a hand to her mouth, covering her laugh as if it were a sick cough.
“I thought Catresou girls were supposed to blush at these things,” she said.
“Yes,” said Juliet, “but I’m almost a married woman.”
And the memory welled up between them, so sudden and overwhelming that Juliet couldn’t tell which of them it came from: the last time that Juliet had been unashamed to speak of Romeo in her bed. When they had been prisoners in the Cloister together, and the High Priestess had given Runajo a knife and told her to sacrifice Juliet, and Juliet had believed she would.
When Runajo—
Juliet caught the thought, stopped it and the flood of bitter, hateful memories that went with it. Because Runajo had set her free. Because today was her wedding day. Because, very soon, everyone in the world would die anyway.
(She suspected that thought had sidled in from Runajo’s mind.)
She looked up at Runajo and said, “I don’t forgive you, but I am glad that I lived until today.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Runajo muttered, but she was almost halfway smiling.
And so, before both their peoples, Juliet Catresou was married to Mahyanai Romeo.
They joined hands, and the wedding scroll was wrapped around their wrists: a long strip of silk on which the magi had embroidered seals and sigils that invoked fertility and faithfulness. It was plainer and simpler than the wedding scrolls Juliet had seen as a child, but it was the only one that had survived the purge and the Ruining.
Juliet felt dizzy when Romeo’s fingers squeezed hers. When he looked into her eyes, and she told herself, This is real, this is real, as he swore aloud that he would love and cherish her, honor and guard her. When she replied with her vow to give him her life and her children, to honor him with breath and body, as two clans listened and she thought, They cannot take us apart now.
There was a feast afterward—though little more than a dinner, given the circumstances. Juliet hardly tasted the food. She did not have to wait long, anyway: the custom was that the bride and groom were escorted to their bed early.
It felt like a dream when they were led in procession to the bedroom: like a vision, something that might come to pass but was not yet real. But then Juliet sat on the bed, and she felt the mattress shift as Romeo sat down beside her. She felt his fingertips brush the side of her face as he undid her mask and lifted it away; and then she lifted his mask away, and she didn’t care that one of the magi was still droning the traditional blessing. She leaned forward, as easily and inevitably as breathing, and kissed him.
Somebody laughed, but she didn’t care either.
With that, the wedding was over. The crowd filed out of the room.
The door closed.
They were kissing still. But then Romeo’s hand drifted down the side of Juliet’s face to rest on her shoulder, and landed on the spot where he had wounded her. She flinched, her breath hissing in, and he jolted back.
“I’m sorry,” he said desperately. “I’m sorry.”
Juliet flexed the shoulder. “It’s not bad,” she said.
Runajo had managed to obtain some of the Sisterhood’s healing ointment for both of them; the cut on Romeo’s face was already gone completely. But deeper wounds took more time to heal.
Rome still looked haunted; he raised a hand, then snatched it back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Juliet put a hand on his face, and rubbed her thumb against his cheek, in the spot where her sword had once cut his skin open.
“I have hurt you,” she said. “I have hurt a lot of people. I can’t forgive myself. But I can forgive you.”
Romeo smiled, and he was the one who kissed her next. Kissed her, and did not stop.
Juliet remembered their first night together, how it had felt like they were the only people in the world. How she had pressed her lips to his and forgotten her name, forgotten her clan, forgotten everything but the boy in front of her and the cascading joy of his touch.
It was not like that now.
She could still hear the ragged echo of Catresou wedding songs. When Romeo slid off the first layer of the Mahyanai wedding dress, she felt another twinge of the wound in her shoulder. She knew that each touch, each kiss was hers only because of the alliance they had forged. That it was part of the alliance, as fragile and fierce and dearly bought as the walls girdling the city, holding back death for one more day.
In all her dreams, Juliet had never imagined she might have this gift: that this joy might be not just for her, and not just a secret to be shared with Romeo. That it could be part of her duty as well, a payment of debts and a promise for the future.
That here in this bed, they could be making peace between their peoples.
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