Page 42 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“Paris, please, we dishonor Juliet by fighting,” I shout as my sword meets his again.
“Nay, I honor her. She would not want a Montague in her tomb!” Paris swings at my face, and the edge of his blade slices across my brow and glances over my left eye.
I cry out and grab at my face with my free hand. Blood obliterates my vision.
With my defenses down, he strikes my sword out of my hand, and it clatters onto the stone below.
I don’t go down easily, though, and I hurl myself at him. The collision knocks the torch from his hand, and blackness swallows the mausoleum whole as we both tumble to the ground. The force of impact breaks my grip on him and we roll apart.
I fumble for the dagger in my belt. I cannot see anything through the blood and the dark, but I know Paris is near.
“Truth be told,” he says, “I would be doing all of Verona a vast favor were I to exterminate you tonight.”
His condescension burrows under my skin. But now that he has spoken, I can track his voice. He is next to the bier upon which Juliet lies.
I dash at him and jab so deeply the handle hits flesh. He gasps as I yank out the blade, and then there is a flurry of movement, the silk of Juliet’s gown rustling as Paris scrambles against her resting place to escape my attack, and I am so enraged that he might be climbing over my beloved’s sacred body that I launch myself at Paris again and impale him with my dagger, twisting violently to ensure his end.
But the cry that is uttered is not the voice of a man.
It is Juliet’s.
“Oh God, no!” I shout.
Light enters the tomb as someone else opens the heavy mausoleum door. “Romeo!” Friar Lawrence’s voice echoes down the stairwell.
Paris is slumped on the ground, bleeding on the stone floor.
And Juliet is sitting upright on the bier, eyes wide in shock as she looks down at the deep crimson unfurling like petals of death on the white lace of her gown.
My dagger is stuck straight in the center of the bloody bloom.
She must’ve woken during my struggle with Paris, and my second blow was not into his torso, but hers.
“Romeo?” she whispers, confused eyes meeting mine for a fleeting second.
Then she collapses onto the bier, her final breath escaping in a single, sorrowful rush.
“No! What have I done, what have I done?” I throw myself over Juliet’s body and try to staunch the flow of blood, as if my embrace can somehow force the life back into her.
But Juliet doesn’t move.
Friar Lawrence bursts into the room. He stops short at the sight of me with Juliet, and Paris dead at my feet.
“What in heaven’s name has transpired?” the friar whispers.
I cannot answer. All I can do is stroke Juliet’s cheek, run my fingers through her hair. Tears fall from my face onto hers.
This is all my fault, my doing. If I hadn’t killed Tybalt, if I hadn’t rushed Juliet to marry me, if I hadn’t been a coward and insisted that we hide our love from our families…
Yet none of that matters now. Blood pours out of Juliet, and she is no longer pale, but gray. She was my light in a world driven by bitterness and vengeance. How can I continue to exist when she does not?
I yank the dagger from her side and press the tip of the blade just below my breastbone. A single thrust upward, and it will impale my heart.
“Halt!” Friar Lawrence grabs my wrist. “There has already been too much bloodshed today.”
“If Juliet does not live, nor shall I.”
“This is not the solution.” He twists my wrist until I drop the knife. “You will live, Romeo.”
