Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub

might smile at her fury.
My lady Thorn
, he used to call her, because, he said, she was much too prickly for her sweet, flowery name, but if he remembered how he’d once teased a small Rosaline to distraction with the nickname when he was a boy, he gave no sign.
    Rosaline stood, meeting her sovereign’s gaze with a deep breath. “Your pardon for my conduct, but if you only knew what they were planning, Your Grace—when I tell you of this sodden-witted plan of betrothal—”
    “I know it well. ’Twas my idea.”
    Rosaline’s voice lost its stridency. “Yours?” she whispered.
    The smile he gave her was not unkind. “Indeed,” he said. “One of my better ones too.” He looked around at them, hands clasped in front of him. “You Montagues and Capulets are a plague on this city,” he said. “I’ve lost too many subjects and too many friends to your senseless hatred. I know”—he held up a hand when Lords Montague and Capulet both moved as though to protest—“you swore on your children’s graves that your hatred died with them, but ’tis not the first time such vows were made. ’Twill take more than pretty statues to keep them.” The prince gave them a hard stare, and Rosaline and Benvolio exchanged a glance. It seemed the prince knew about how Juliet’s statue had been defiled, but their uncles appeared oblivious. She decided not to speak ofit. She was not at all sure Lords Montague and Capulet would be much better at keeping their tempers than their nephews. Better to let them find out on their own, separately.
    The prince turned to Rosaline once more. A little of the regal coolness left his face as he looked at her. For a moment, she was able to see the tall blond boy who had once run and chased her through the palace garden. During her days of playing in the palace she’d thought Isabella’s elder brother the handsomest, bravest knight in all of Italy, for all that he’d been only three years older than she. Before he was sent away to foster in Venice and learn the ways of knighthood, he’d had a small, adoring Rosaline-shaped shadow that followed him everywhere. He’d treated her with the same exasperated affection he held for Isabella.
    Her own feelings toward him had never been sisterly, though. Now, as he reached for her hand, her heart stuttered out an odd rhythm at the feeling of his warm fingers around hers.
    “Dearest Rosaline,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. She tried to breathe. His eyes were so blue, so full of honest affection. “My earliest playfellow. There is no dearer soul in all Verona. That is why I chose you to be Benvolio’s wife, you see.”
    Rosaline stood frozen, unable to do anything but stare. How could it be he who had chosen this fate for her?
    “Your families must not further destroy each other,” the prince was saying. “ ’Tis clear you cannot exist as two, so you must become one.” He turned to the Montagues. “Benvoliois now the highest-ranked unmarried gentleman who bears the name of Montague; Rosaline the closest kinswoman to Juliet yet a maid.” Prince Escalus reached for Benvolio’s hand and pressed it together with Rosaline’s, sealing them together with his own. “You will marry, and the two families will be knit together. And the city will see that a marriage of Montague and Capulet need not end with a half-dozen corpses.”
    The prince’s words were light, almost jesting, but there was strength in his grip on their hands. “I do not normally interest myself in whom my subjects marry, but in this case I truly believe my city’s survival depends on it. Be ruled by your families and your sovereign in this.”
    Rosaline’s gaze caught Benvolio’s. His face was set in an inscrutable scowl as he stared at her. He opened his mouth as though to protest, then closed it again. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Rosaline’s heart sank. If even a man who loathed her would not speak out against their marriage, who would?
    “There is another