“Montgomery!” I choked, crawling toward him over broken glass, heedless of the sharp pain in my palms and knees. He’d thrown himself through the glass.
“Juliet,” he breathed, straining with the weight of his wounds. One hand held a pistol and the other a hunting knife, but he threw his bloody arms around me. “We were held up. A fire on Eastwick and all the roads shut down, blocked by police. We couldn’t get the carriage through so I came on foot as fast as I could. I feared I’d be too late.”
“My God, you’re bleeding everywhere.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No—I dazed him, at least for now.” I pulled away, gasping at the sight of blood dripping down the crown of his head, glass still tangled in his hair. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”
Montgomery shook his head. “Not before we finish with Edward.”
“There are chains attached to that palm tree. He can’t break through them, but he can dislocate his joints and free himself, so we’ll have to take care.”
I tripped on my torn skirt as we hurried with the chains. The Beast was fading back into what was left of Edward, though he moaned in pain.
“Let me handle him,” Montgomery said. “Run outside and fetch Balthazar. By now he’ll have found his way to the gate with the carriage. I can’t carry the Beast by myself.”
I started to turn toward the broken glass panel, but paused. A cold blast of air pushed through my thin dress.
“Juliet, what are you waiting for? We must hurry.”
I had once sworn that Edward Prince would not have another chance to kill anyone else I loved. I’d been so drunk on anger, right after the professor’s death.
And yet.
I couldn’t shake the Beast’s words. That one was not me, love. He was the type to revel in lies, and yet there’d been no mirth on his face when he’d denied killing the professor.
It was madness, surely—but I actually almost believed him.
“You’ll kill him once I go,” I whispered.
Montgomery raised an eyebrow. When he didn’t deny it, I grabbed a handful of his torn shirt. “Promise me you won’t,” I said.
“He was about to kill you. This is what we agreed to.”
“Maybe he deserves to die, maybe he doesn’t. Edward knew this was a trap but came anyway to turn himself in. He assumed his darker half had killed the professor, but the Beast swore he didn’t do it. I know it’s probably a lie, but I don’t want it to end like this. I want to take him back to the professor’s house and decide his fate there.” At Montgomery’s silence, I shook him again. “Promise me!”
“All right!” Montgomery dragged me toward the broken panel, one hand on his pistol. “You have my word.” His eyes were angry, but they were honest.
I climbed over the tangling ferns and away from that terrible grotto of Plumeria selva. My skirt was in tatters; I’d lost a boot somewhere. As I ducked through the broken pane, my bare toes didn’t even feel the cold—every sensation I had was fixated on the urgency of the moment. I darted across the bridge to where Balthazar waited by the gate.
“Come quickly,” I said. “We need your help!”
Balthazar hitched the horses to a post and climbed the fence with surprising agility for a man of his size, and we raced back to the greenhouse. I smelled the traces of chloroform in the air and saw a rag tucked into Montgomery’s pocket. One glance at Edward’s slowly rising chest told me he was unconscious but still alive. Montgomery had managed to wind the chains in a pattern around his limbs so that no matter of shifting bones could set him free.
“Can you carry him?” Montgomery asked Balthazar, who nodded and slung Edward over his shoulder as though he was a sack of oats. All together we raced to the carriage, back into a city I’d never felt I belonged in, but that I greeted now as an old friend.
Balthazar climbed the fence and helped lift Edward’s body over. Montgomery made a stirrup of his blood-soaked hands to help me scale the fence, and we both landed on the other side and climbed into the back of the carriage while Balthazar took the driver’s seat. With a crack of the whip, we were off.
I looked around the carriage for some scrap of fabric and settled on the curtains, which I ripped down to staunch the bleeding on Montgomery’s face.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “You need medical attention, and there’s no telling how long the chloroform will keep Edward sedated.”
My own bleeding hands shook uncontrollably as I let out a single sob. Montgomery took the torn curtains from my hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “We got Edward before he could kill anyone else, and before the King’s Club could get their hands on him. It’s over.”
I ran a hand over my face. “It’s not over! They’re negotiating with the French military. Spending a fortune on shipping crates for the creatures. They aren’t going to just give up.”
His big hand smoothed my hair back. “For tonight, at least, it’s over.”
Before I knew it, his lips found mine. He tasted of blood and sweat, and it twisted my insides into sharp angles. Tears started down my face but he kissed them away, cupping my cheek, trailing rough fingers along the smooth skin of my neck.
“I was so afraid I’d be too late,” he whispered into my hair. “I would have torn him apart if he’d hurt you.”
I let my eyes sink closed so I could exist in this single instant. I’d had few moments in my life that felt so right. The last time I’d felt this way had been on the island, before I knew of Father’s gruesome crimes, and I had thought we could be a family again. I’d been wrong then, naive. Surely I wasn’t wrong now, too. . . .