Page 211 of Juliet & Her Romeos

This is it.

With a shocking screech of the violin, the two cages crack open.

A dancer from each cage, who’d been hidden at the back, leap out.

Both are wreathed in black and gray costumes that swirl around them like shadows. Yet the female dancer from the Romeo cage has roses in her hair, and the male dancer from the Cinders has crystals hanging from his curls like glass.

Has Olivia realized what’s going on yet?

Tears smart my eyes.

This is going to be fucking hard.

Swan’s fear and pain feels so real at being discovered in our secret affair that I almost can’t bear to break apart from him.

Except, itisreal.

Because we’re both imagining not only that this happened to Mom and Felix but that thiscould have been us.

In another life, Ambrose wouldn’t have selected and saved us.

Dimitri would have bonded with Swan, or Olivia would have found out about our forbidden love and destroyed us as well.

Our fingers trail across each other’s for the last time.

Swan dramatically tries to protect me, as the shadows dance closer, circling.

The music becomes sharper and more ominous.

When the female shadow snatches Swan by the hair, yanking him away from me, my heart genuinely leaps in my chest.

Swan is spun, thrown, and hurled to the floor in an explosive, aggressive dance routine that breaks my heart.

I fall to my knees in despair.

I hold out my hands, pleading for mercy, but none comes.

Inside the cage, Thiago leaps to his feet, copying my plea.

Then there’s a flash of a knife, a real one that Ambrose selected because it’s as close to the one that he remembers from that night.

I force myself not to look around at the sudden clatter of a seat in the stalls.

Is that Olivia?

I glance out of the corner of my eye at the audience.

Olivia is standing up, horror-stricken.

She’s staring, unable to look away, as Swan tries to pull away but is hauled back, once, twice, then finally a third time, before…

The man slashes the knife across Swan’s throat.

Swan falls to the boards.

The audience gasp.

I arch, before curling into a ball of grief on the stage.

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