If I could change one thing, it would be sharpening that knife. Even dull, it slid between her ribs like, well, like a hot knife through butter. And the gasp she made, I’ll never forget that.

Pneumothorax, they call it. A collapsed lung, a pocket of air.

So I stabbed her back to life. It’s funny, really, like some old magical item, a sword of healing.

She said my name. I don’t know if she’ll remember that, later, but she said it. Her lips were as dry as the ground on which I knelt, as dead as the tree that sheltered us. We held each other in the cracks, in the space between worlds, while I begged her to come back to me.

She didn’t.

I mean, that should have been the end of the story, right? I save her like so much white knight, she comes with me. But she didn’t. Just held her ribs together and left. It was fair, though.

Us Montagues, we were always her enemy.