She will never come back.
Runajo’s clasped hands tightened. She had promised to wait. She had promised to hope. She did not want to be faithless to Juliet again.
But as the night wore on, she knew that waiting was the only part of her promise she could keep.
It wasn’t that she doubted Juliet. If courage and will could let anyone walk into the land of the dead, defeat the reapers, bargain with Death herself to end the Ruining, and then walk back out again—Juliet surely had enough of them.
But she remembered how desperately her mother had willed her father to live. How bravely they had both borne the pain of their illnesses, never complaining. It wasn’t enough to be willful or brave, any more than it was enough to be good and kind.
The Ruining had covered the whole world except Viyara. Surely somewhere on one of those continents had been Juliet’s equal. And that person had saved no one.
It was done before, Runajo told herself. There was another Ruining once, and a mortal woman ended it. Juliet can do it now.
But the woman who ended the last Ruining had not come back alive. It seemed scarcely likely that Juliet would do better.
And if Juliet did not come back—if the world was saved, but Juliet did not come back—
Runajo realized that her eyes were stinging with stupid, foolish tears. Because she knew what was going to happen. There had been so many moments like this, so many long nights like this, as she waited for her father and then her mother to die. Kneeling in silence, telling herself that a happy ending was still possible.
But it never was. She had said as much to Justiran: Didn’t you know she was mortal?
If Juliet did miraculously come back, she would only have to leave again. No matter what Runajo did, no matter how much she learned or how desperate she became, she would lose her in the end.
There was no other ending to anyone’s story. It was why she cut her parents out of her heart even before they died. Because she had seen the truth, that she was inevitably going to lose them.
She couldn’t do that to Juliet. There were tears running down Runajo’s face now, as she realized that she couldn’t do that. She could bear the death of her parents, she could bear becoming a murderer, but she couldn’t harden her heart against Juliet’s death.
And she couldn’t, here alone in the darkness, believe that Juliet was ever coming back.
But she could keep the other half of her promise.
She could wait.
For the first time in her life, on this one terrible night, she could not cut the person she was losing out of her heart. She could not try to scheme a way to escape the loss. She could wait, and know what was going to happen, and still wait.
It was all she could do now.
So she waited.
The night was very long.
33
JULIET MEANT TO BRING TYBALT with her, out the other side. No matter how terribly they had wronged each other, she owed him that much.
But the moment the blood touched her, she forgot him, forgot everything but the pull of the river. The scalding pain couldn’t stop her. She rushed forward, wading into the boiling blood up to her neck and up to her lips and until it flowed over her head.
She did not drown. The currents wrapped around her, dragged her down, down into a merciless crimson light that picked through her soul, finding each life she ended and saying, This one. This one. And this.
She saw each one. Knew each one. When she crawled, choking, onto the far bank of the river, she could barely remember that she existed; her mind was full of those she had killed or helped kill.
Her fingers scrabbled at the ground and clutched at the little pebbles that covered the riverbank. Her breath came in whimpering little gasps.
My fault, she thought, my fault, my fault, and shuddered with grief over the wrongs that could not be righted.
Slowly—very slowly—she remembered those she had no part in killing, yet had to watch die. And those who were yet alive, and hoping for her to succeed.
Juliet rose.
Then she did remember Tybalt, and looked back. But the smooth, glowing surface of the river was unbroken; no one else stood upon the bank.
Her heart twisted as she wondered if he suffered still at the bottom of the river. But perhaps he had already climbed out, and found his way farther down. In the end, he might have killed fewer than she had.
There was nothing more she could do for him, either way.
She still remember his twisted, animal face—his anger when she told him about Romeo—but she tried to think of the times she was a child, when he was the only one who hugged her and made her laugh. That part of him had been real too. She could mourn that much of him, even if she couldn’t forgive the rest.
“Farewell, cousin,” she whispered.
Then she turned, putting the dim glow of the river at her back.
Before her lay a city.
The buildings were made of stone and steel and ivory. Some were small, little cubes with one door and one window; some were huge, jumbles of rooms and gates and towers piled upon each other. Some were smooth and plain, while others were adorned with steel filigree, ivory arches carved so finely they looked like foam, statues jutting from every corner.
All of them were moving, some swift and others slow, across the flat stone plain of the ground.
A moment before, the only sound had been the rushing of the river and her own ragged breaths. Now all she could hear was the groan and scrape and clash of the city, as buildings plowed into each other. Some crashed thunderously, others settled to a halt, but none ceased to strive. Stairways unfolded from windows, statues moved and scaled walls, arches extended themselves and planted pillars. Two buildings would try to eat each other until one succeeded, wrapping its walls around the other, and then it resumed its course.
It was not fear that Juliet felt, gazing upon the city, so much as a terrible smallness. This city had not been built for human comfort. It would crush her in an instant without caring, and for a moment, she could almost believe it had the right. What was she, to challenge such relentless majesty?
She told herself, I am the sword of the Catresou. For the sake of zoura, I can challenge anyone.
Defiantly, she straightened her spine, and cried out, “I am looking for Death.”
But her voice was small and muffled by the din, and there was no reply.
She had forded the river of blood. The reaper had told her it was necessary. If it had not been enough, then she simply had more reapers to face before she found Death.
So she marched forward.
There was a sharp line between the pebbles of the riverbank and the slick stone of the plain. When she stepped over the line, the air seemed to thicken and cling about her for a moment.
Then the ground swelled beneath her feet, birthing a small, flat stone. When her other foot landed on it, the stone trembled and then slid free, carrying her forward. It didn’t move quickly, but the motion still caught her off guard, made her bend and wave her hands for balance. And that’s how she discovered, in those first few, dizzy moments, that cupping her hands one way turned the little stone raft to the left, while the other way turned it right. Beckoning gave her speed, holding up her palm slowed her down, and flexing her fingers just like so made little walls start building themselves up around the rim of her raft.
At first it was dizzying and frightening, trying to control the tiny, half-made house and dodge the vast, hurtling buildings on either side. But soon it grew easier, and then it was like a game: dancing between the buildings as she once danced between the swords of the men who trained her.
And then she saw him.
He was very high up—she only glimpsed him for a moment, silhouetted in a window—but she would know the shape of her father’s shoulders anywhere.