Our Violent Ends

Darling daughter”—Lord Cai pinched the bridge of his nose—“get in the car please.”

“Father,” Juliette shot back, “I crave violence.”

“Get in the car. Now.”

It was only then that Juliette realized what he had been saying, his eyes stricken like he had already lost hope of seeing her again.

I love you.

Even as the distance between them grew and grew, Roma had his eyes latched on Juliette, his face so pale under the shadow of the sky it was as if he were dead and executed already. Perhaps Juliette had an ill-divining soul. Perhaps she was seeing his future, perhaps by the day’s end he would be lying at the bottom of a tomb as the last of the Montagov line.

have and to hold, where even death cannot part us. In this life and the next, for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours. Those are my vows to you.

“I love you,” Juliette whispered fiercely. “I need you to know. I love you so much it feels like it could consume me.”

“I’m asking you to marry me.”

“With my whole heart,” she promised, “if I have any say in the matter, you will never lose me.”

“I thought you were dead,” Roma was saying to Juliette. “Don’t ever do that to me.”

“Is Rosalind the blackmailer?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice so quiet she could be heard only by herself . . . and Tyler, wherever he was. “If there is a life after this, one that is free of the blood feud, I hope we can be friends.”

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