Slowly, she walked forward. She thought of Tybalt, whom she loved. She had not loved her father in a long time, but she was his daughter still.
“Father,” she said dutifully, “this is not the place for you.”
He sighed—the spare, dry sound that made her shudder as a child.
“You are only a Juliet,” he said. “What would you—”
“Look at me,” she demanded, stepping in front of him.
And her breath stopped.
His eyes had turned to pure white stone. Dust hung on his mouth and his fingers; he stood on bare feet, and they too were made of stone.
Her stomach twisted with something sick and unfamiliar. She realized it was pity.
“Don’t try to distract me,” said her father, twisting his hands. The building jolted and started to slide in another direction. “Be quiet and do as you’re told.”
She wanted to stay, and the wanting took her breath away. She didn’t think it was just the power of this place.
If she stayed, if she knelt beside him and let stone crust over her fingers and eyes and face, if she begged and pleaded for a thousand years, perhaps he would listen. Perhaps she could save him.
She wished that she could.
But there were too many people waiting for her, relying on her. She couldn’t throw herself away and become a statue just to save her father.
It was a calculating thought. Runajo would approve. In another world, where her father was a better man, perhaps he would too.
“Father,” she said. “I’m sorry that I killed you. I wish I could have obeyed you.”
She backed up until she felt the edge of the windowsill against the base of her spine. Her father stared past her with colorless eyes, saw the chaotic surge of the city. But not her.
“I did love you once,” she said, and then she flung herself backward, out the window.
She fell.
For one instant, she feared that she guessed wrong. But then she was falling still, and falling, down into darkness.
When the crash came, it hurt as if it was splitting all her bones apart. But when she raised her face from the ground, the city was gone.
34
ROMEO HAD LIVED HIS WHOLE life expecting that death would be nothing but darkness and forgetting.
Even when he spilled his blood, and took the Little Lady’s hand, and saw the land of the dead open around them—he more than half expected that all he would know was a swift, eternal silence.
As he and the Little Lady sank down into the dark waters, he had thought, Juliet, because he wanted it to be his last thought.
But as they sank, he remembered her, and then his feet landed on solid ground, and he loved and remembered her still.
He was Romeo still.
He looked about him, and wondered, Did we succeed?
There was nothing in the gentle, flowering slope to tell him yes or no. He could not even feel sure if he was dead: he felt the blood pulse in his throat, the breath move in his lungs. Was that an illusion? Was he so different from all the other dead, having walked here without dying?
He turned to the Little Lady. She had dropped his hand; she was looking about the landscape, her chin lifted, her face half smiling and alive, as it had never been before.
“Did we do it?” he asked. “Did we end the Ruining?”
She shrugged gracefully. “I do not know.”
“But—you knew this would help, so surely—”
“It is no more concern of mine,” said the Little Lady. “I am dead. I have only one purpose now.”
And she strode away from him, down the slope.
After a moment, Romeo followed her. He had no idea where else to go. He had no idea what he should do.
He had planned, many times and in many different ways, to sacrifice himself. He had never thought what might come after.
And he was not sure that his sacrifice was done. If more was required for him to save Viyara—to save Juliet—then he had to know, and following the Little Lady seemed the likeliest way for him to find out.
So together they walked down the slope for what seemed like hours. They were not always completely alone—Romeo saw other shadowy figures walking down the slope, sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes by the dozen. But they were always far away; Romeo could not make out their features clearly, and their voices were no more than a mutter on the soft breeze.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Romeo asked finally.
“I know the one my heart loves,” said the Little Lady.
Romeo’s own heart suddenly pounded against his ribs.
“Makari?” he said, halting. “You killed him.”
“I loved him,” said the Little Lady, not pausing in her slow, graceful stride.
After a moment, Romeo started walking again. “Was it . . . meant to be a kindness, when you killed him?”
The Little Lady looked over her shoulder, and in her face there was an echo of Juliet’s exquisite scorn. “I was the Juliet. To punish him was my duty and my joy.” She shrugged. “And I wanted him with me, when I rested. I am that selfish still.”
She turned away from him. Romeo stared at the back of her shoulders and imagined his Juliet bereft of friends, bereft of comfort or joy or a lover who could love her people.
He thought, I cannot blame her, and he followed her.
The slope seemed to go on forever. But then the moss began to dry out; the vines grew sparser, and the flowers wilted. At the same time, the slope began to ease, until at last they were walking on flat, raw earth. But the little sparks of light drifting through the air remained, the only thing in the world besides them, and the ground, and the starless sky.
Then Romeo saw shadows, outlined against the glow of the lights. A moment later, they drew closer—the lights shifted—
And he stopped, his heart thudding in fear and wonder.
Before them stood—no, floated, their toes barely a handspan off the ground—a line of reapers, their eyes closed, their huge wings beating the air with dreamlike slowness.
Dark, crow-like beaks. Long, pale fingers tipped in claws. Romeo knew them from stories that he had never believed. Juliet had told him that she had faced them, and he had believed her—but he had still never imagined that he would see any himself.
The Little Lady continued to walk peacefully toward them.
Juliet had told him of how ruthlessly the reapers desired to kill.
Romeo lunged forward and grabbed the Little Lady’s arm. “Wait,” he whispered, shoving himself in front of her. “They might—”
The reaper before them opened its eyes. They glowed bright gold.
“We have no need to kill the dead,” it said in a low, sweet voice.
“We do not kill in the world above,” said another reaper, opening its eyes.
“Except those that have refused death,” said a third.
“Or when the necromancers force us,” said a fourth.
And more eyes opened, more and more, a line of glowing eyes stretching endlessly in either direction.
Romeo didn’t dare move. He hardly dared breathe. And yet, as he stared up into the faces of the reapers, he couldn’t see them as monsters. They looked like Juliet once had, the first time he saw her: alien and perilous and lovely.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“We guard the ruination of our kingdom,” said the reaper before him.
“The rot must be prevented from spreading,” said another.
“We have at last made the great ruiner captive in it—”
“But we cannot pry loose the souls he has taken.”
“Until what is lost returns.”
“Until his sin returns.”
“I am here,” said the Little Lady, pushing Romeo aside.
There was a vast rustling among their wings as all the reapers turned to look.
“I am his dearest sin,” said the Little Lady, “and I seek him, for my heart loves him. Let me pass.”
Slowly, reverently, the reaper bowed to her, wings crossing over its head; then the wings were a puff of smoke and then it was gone. The other reapers vanished likewise.
Before them lay a plain of boiling mud: a bubbling, gray-brown ocean studded with white stones. Before them, the stones grew close enough together to form a twisting road. Clouds of white mist drifted across the surface.