Could Lucy be right? Was Balthazar’s existence, like Edward’s, a blessing?
Some evils are necessary, Newcastle had said.
I felt a nuzzle at my ankle and looked down to find Sharkey wagging his short tail. I bent to scratch his bony head, thinking of how much the little dog loved Balthazar, and Edward too. Dogs had a way of sensing if people were good.
“Juliet?” Montgomery asked. “I could use your assistance.”
“Of course,” I said, brushing my hands off. He handed me a beaker while he read through Father’s notes. My attention kept trailing to the cellar door, wondering if Edward also felt conflicted feelings over the prospect of the cure. Would he feel incomplete without the Beast? Would he miss it?
Montgomery and I worked through the afternoon and into the evening, not stopping even for tea. In the next room Elizabeth and Lucy exchanging frustrated words as they decoded page after page of useless observations. The first two serum batches failed, but Montgomery adjusted the ingredients, and as darkness fell outside on Christmas Eve, he held up a vial.
“This one has held steady for three minutes. I think it might work.” His blue eyes met mine. “Are you ready to try it?”
“Yes,” I said. “But let’s not tell the others yet. If it doesn’t work, I don’t want them to lose hope for Edward.”
A corner of his mouth pulled into a bittersweet smile. He went to the table and readied the syringe. I rolled up my sleeve, touching the soft skin on the inside of my elbow where I’d injected myself daily for my entire life. Soon, if this worked, I would never need to hold a syringe again.
“Are you ready?” came Montgomery’s gentle words.
I nodded, and he pressed the tip of the needle against my skin, sliding it expertly beneath the surface until he found a vein. I winced as the hot liquid spread. First came warmth. Then pain. My arm jerked suddenly as a white-hot light seared me and I knocked the syringe from Montgomery’s arm, heard the glass crunch under my bare foot, and felt a sting of pain as I stumbled toward the window.
“Juliet?” I was vaguely aware of his arms around me, keeping me from falling, but it felt like my body belonged to someone else.
“The window,” I rasped. “Air.”
He threw open the pane behind the herb garden, and I gasped cold evening air that still smelled of rosemary and thyme. The lights of the city beyond were too bright. I squeezed my eyes closed, covering them with my hand, but they still burned behind my eyelids. All the sounds of the city—coal plants churning, rumbling carriages, people snoring—were magnified a thousand times.
The pain diffused through me, steady and throbbing. The sensation of my bones separating themselves from flesh had never been so great. My fingers curled against the open window, reaching for something that wasn’t there. Wanting to hold myself together but finding nothing more than air. My body started to shake uncontrollably, though by its own accord or Montgomery shaking me out of some kind of fit, I wasn’t certain.
“Juliet,” he called. “Juliet!”
And then my vision telescoped back into focus, my hearing sharpened, my bones crunched together as the disparate parts of my body pulled back together. Bones along bones, muscles quiet beneath skin, like all the disparate notes of an orchestra tuning up in a concert hall, coming together with a single jerk of the conductor’s bow.
I blinked, returning to my senses. Montgomery’s hands on mine no longer felt rough as sandpaper. I rediscovered my own legs.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. I blinked again, taking in the room with eyes that no longer burned. A fire roared in the stove. Sharkey wagged his tail at my feet. I stretched my fingers out, studying them, waiting for the telltale pops and clicks.
They were beautifully silent.
“Well.” My voice was rusty, but I wet my dry lips. “I feel
well.”
Montgomery smoothed the sweat-soaked hair off my face. “It near enough killed you.”
I couldn’t stop looking at my hands. Moving them, flexing the fingers. Something was missing, and when I realized what it was I nearly laughed. The stiff, lingering pain I’d lived with forever was gone.
This is what life was meant to feel like.
“Have some water,” Montgomery said. I clutched the glass, drinking it greedily, then thrust the empty glass back at him. I wanted to cry with relief. I had been so worried and conflicted over nothing; the Beast was wrong when he said that I would miss that twisted, ill part of me. I didn’t miss it at all. Even better, if we’d cured me, we’d certainly be able to cure Edward, too.
I steadied myself against the door, no longer dizzy, but head reeling with our success. From the dining room came sounds of Lucy and Elizabeth arguing, but I couldn’t focus on anything except this feeling.
Montgomery shook me again, holding my chin to study my eyes, checking for illness, but I could feel it, deep inside.
I was cured.
I wanted to laugh. I was whole now, just like I always wanted.
Montgomery had told me once that my unnatural curiosity about my father’s work was a symptom of my illness, just the same as the popping knuckles and pain behind my left eye. At the time I’d doubted him, wondering if it was truly possible to cure a dark heart, but now . . .
“You were right,” I said, kneading the fabric of his shirt, wanting to never let go. We’d be married now, live the type of normal life that normal people did, church on Sundays and dancing on Saturdays and maybe, years from now, even pushing a baby pram through the park.
He smiled, and I matched it, and I had never felt such sweet relief in my life.
If only Edward can feel this way too . . .
Sharp voices came from the dining room, rupturing the perfect stillness between Montgomery and me. Lucy and Elizabeth were arguing in heated voices, and Montgomery frowned and headed for the doorway. I started to hold him back, to savor a few more precious seconds of this calm I’d never known. But just because the world had turned right side up for me didn’t mean it had for everyone else.
“No!” came Lucy’s voice.
I stood in the doorway with Montgomery, watching as she balled her fists in the papers as Elizabeth tried to calm her. “It’s not true! It can’t be. . . .”
“There’s no other way,” Elizabeth said.
Lucy looked up suddenly and, through the layer of tears, her eyes met mine. Blinded by her own panic, she didn’t see how changed I was since the cure. She rushed over and grabbed me by the shoulders. “It’s all there, in the journal. The unknown ingredient. And it’s impossible to replicate. Juliet, there’s no hope for him!”