Such Sweet Sorrow by Jenny Trout

leech-like mouth with its rows of horrible teeth.
    “Romeo!” She screamed, rolling away as it grabbed for her. The creature swiped both arms, suddenly longer, and ropey, but they came up empty.
    “We must kill it!” Juliet shouted. “Your sword, Romeo! Your sword!”
    No doubt she wondered why he didn’t simply kill the beast and get it over with. She didn’t know yet that he was not a wraith as well, that she had been far more effective than he at ending his life. His strength was still constrained by the limits of his mortal body.
    Still, he had to fight it, even if the battle was over before it began. He unsheathed his sword, ducking the reach of the monster’s arm as it tried to wipe him off its back. The maggot screeched its fury and lashed its body like a whip. Romeo fought to hold on, but his arms were too fatigued from his attempt to hold on to Juliet. His hand slipped, and he slid down the creature’s back, only to encounter Hamlet’s knife still protruding from the monster’s side.
    The sight was a fist to Romeo’s chest, shattering bones inward to pierce the place where his heart would have been. But he had no heart, he’d proved that when he’d abandoned the prince. There was no other way to describe it. Romeo had pulled Hamlet through the portal, he’d brought him to this place, and he’d left him to die.
    Romeo gripped the hilt of the dagger and pulled himself up, climbing the monster’s thrashing back. He withdrew his sword from its sheath and sank it as deeply into the beast’s hide as it would go. Gouts of black blood thick as tar poured from the wound, and Romeo swung to the side, wrenching the dagger from the worm’s flesh with one hand to hang suspended from the creature’s disgusting body.
    On the shore, Juliet backed up a step, then another step, her gaze never leaving the creature as she waited for it to strike.
    Despite the sheer, blood-pumping terror coursing through him, Romeo felt some admiration at that. She was not a delicate flower to wither and die from fright. She would not let the beast take her.
    The maggot jerked its upper body from left to right, and Hamlet’s sword came loose. He spun through the air, a dagger in one hand, the sword in the other, and he would give up neither. He landed awkwardly beside the river. It hurt, and it didn’t seem like it should, when all he’d fallen upon was darkness.
    Juliet ran to his side, and that was both a mistake and a blessing. A mistake, because the moment Juliet took her eyes off the horrible creature’s sightless head and greedy mouth, it lunged at her. It tracked her, a foul slime issuing from its evil mouth, and she dodged it as she ran. Romeo struggled to his feet, put himself between Juliet and the thing, and it was by the good will of fortune that he’d managed to get between them just in time. He hacked at the worm’s head with all his might, splitting down the center, his blade parting the creature’s swollen body like rotten cheese. The two halves wobbled, then split apart, a large, foul chunk sheered off at an angle by Romeo’s blade. It fell with a wet, bouncing smack on the black ground beside them.
    Panting in fear, Juliet fell against his side. He would have liked to take her into his arms, to give her the strength of his body, but he had none left. His hand on her shoulder, he steadied himself against her, and they both crashed down.
    “Romeo, are you hurt?” Juliet rolled him to his back. She dragged the backs of her fingers across his forehead; her palm cupped his cheek. Her large, brown eyes searched his with frantic worry, then moved to follow her hands down his chest. “Are you hurt, did it bite you?”
    “No.” He captured her delicate hand in his and brought it to his lips. Then he pressed it against the bony hollow where his ribs met. She recoiled, feeling his thinness beneath his doublet, but he held her palm against him. “Do you feel it?”
    “Romeo…” Juliet’s gaze darted from his