Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet by Rachel Caine Read Free Book Online Page A

great deal of expense and indulgence, for a girl—and that moment was my downfall.
    I hadn’t heard her move. Not at all. Yet on my next indrawn breath, I felt the ice-cold prickle of a blade on the back of my neck, and a lovely, calm, no-nonsense voice said, “The Prince of Shadows, yet again. I let you have one visit, my prince, but two casts grave doubt upon my honor. I think this time I will summon my brother, Tybalt.”
    “Don’t,” I said, very quietly. “I come peacefully enough, on a mission to aid you.”
    “Aid
me
?” She seemed amused, and no little mocking. “I’ve heard bravos boasting in the streets of making free with Capulet women. Have you come to prove yourself as bold?”
    “It is not how I fight my battles, threatening women. Though I have heard your own house’s hired killers say they would take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s. What wall do you think they meant, for the maids?”
    She was silent for a moment. I thought of telling her what had started this misadventure, of Tybalt and the Montague girl in the alley, but it seemed cruel. He was a brother to her, as much as he was a vile serpent to me.
    “Turn,” she said. “Turn and face me.” A candle sparked to life in a rush of gold.
    I did turn, because I wanted to see her face as well. Just to remind myself of what she was like. She was still wearing a nightgown, but this time she had donned a heavy mantle as well. A little disappointing, perhaps. I remembered how luminous she’d been, glowing through that fabric.
    I bowed silently to her.
    “Masked as always,” she said, and I thought she almost smiled. Almost.
    “Will you ask me to remove it?” I asked.
    “Perhaps. What do you want here?”
    “Nothing too dear,” I said. “Love poems.”
    She was far too intelligent for her own good, because that was all I had to say: Two words, and she knew. “From your height and shoulders, you’re not Romeo; nor would you be some hired sword sent for something so indelicate. You’d be the cousin, then. Benvolio. Did you come to rob from me, or kill? Surely killing would be simpler, to ensure I didn’t speak of it later.”
    The mask might as well have been made of air. I felt utterly at a loss now. . . . What was there to do? Beat her? Threaten her? Already, I knew that Rosaline was not a woman to be intimidated, though she was no older than I was. Killing her was out of the question. I’d not kill a woman in any case, but it was a moot point; she held the dagger. Competently.
    “As a formal introduction, I suppose it must serve,” I finally said, and bowed again. “Lady Rosaline.”
    “Forgive me if I don’t offer my hand to be kissed,” she said. “Poetry? That awful drivel that Romeo has been sending me, I assume. I was hoping someone would have the sense to stop him.”
    “As bad as that?”
    “Your cousin reads by rote and cannot spell,” she said. “But his enthusiasm, at least, seems genuine.”
    “Then there is no cause to keep it,” I said. “Give me the papers and I’ll be on my way.”
    “I burned them,” she said, and tossed her loose dark hair over her shoulders as I frowned. “Do you think me a blockhead? Had anyone discovered I had made such nonsense a home, I’d have been punished, and poor love-struck Romeo hunted down and cut to pieces by my brother. He doesn’t deserve that. He’s just a foolish boy.”
    I wasn’t used to women like this—unsentimental, brisk, brilliantly foresighted. I’d thought that a bookish aging virgin would have hoarded love poems to greedily warm her in the cold, but Rosaline clearly held her own source of heat. She radiated it like a bonfire, and beside it I felt very, very cold.
    I cleared my throat, because I realized that I was staring like a boy in a brothel. “Your word on it?”
    She smiled, just a little. “I am a Capulet, sir. Why would you believe my word?”
    “Why indeed, but I think I would. If you gave it.”
    “Then you have