The sun is bright against my eyelids, but I am wary to open them, for I fear it may all turn out to be a dream. Handsome is not the word for he who hath saved me. He is beyond handsome. He is whatever compliment comes above it—beauteous, perhaps, or stunning.
He is Mercutio.
The pain in my head is eclipsed briefly by a new ache near my heart as I watch him disappear round the side of the cathedral. Were I not plagued with such maddening dizziness, God’s truth, I would chase him down. All of me trembles; ‘tis as though I have swallowed fireflies. Or falcons. I recognize nothing of the girl I was just moments before, the girl who imagined for herself a life of chaste solitude. Aye, this me, this Rosaline, is altogether new,
for though I promised ne’er to allow myself the folly of romance, I find myself suddenly overwhelmed with a nameless longing I can only think is love.
Mercutio saved me. ’Tis more than reason enough to love him.
O, by the ecstasy of Saint Catherine, how is it I did ever think him crass? How could I, or any maid, mistrust one so heroic? I tamp down a curl of warning in my middle that reminds me this boy is a devil and a near Montague.
I have forsworn love. Denied it, insulted it, and feared it. Now I believe I am in it. I can only pray that Mercutio will join me there.
Rising on legs that shiver—as much from this remarkable realization as from my recent injury—I see the prince has entered the common. I would hear him reprimand the criminals, but the spinning in my skull is too alarming to ignore. I must return to the Healer’s cottage and bid her see to it at once.