1.

“Are you sleepwalking?” a voice asked behind me.
I spun around, startled. Dimitri stood there watching me, looking both amused and curious. It would figure that while I was raging over the problems in my unfair love life, the source of those problems would be the one to find me. I hadn’t heard him approach at all. So much for my ninja skills. And honestly, would it have killed me to pick up a brush before I went outside? Hastily, I ran a hand through my long hair, knowing it was a little too late. It probably looked like an animal had died on top of my head.
“I was testing dorm security,” I said. “It sucks.”
A hint of a smile played over his lips. The cold was really starting to seep into me now, and I couldn’t help but notice how warm his long leather coat looked. I wouldn’t have minded wrapping up in it.
As though reading my mind, he said, “You must be freezing. Do you want my coat?”
I shook my head, deciding not to mention that I couldn’t feel my feet. “I’m fine. What are you doing out here? Are you testing security too?”
“I am security. This is my watch.” Shifts of school guardians always patrolled the grounds while everyone else slept. Strigoi, the undead vampires who stalked living Moroi vampires like Lissa, didn’t come out in sunlight, but students breaking rules—say, like, sneaking out of their dorms—were a problem night and day.
“Well, good work,” I said. “I’m glad I was able to help test your awesome skills. I should be going now.”
“Rose—” Dimitri’s hand caught my arm, and despite all the wind and chill and slush, a flash of heat shot through me. He released me with a start, as though he too had been burned. “What are you really doing out here?”
He was using the stop fooling around voice, so I gave him as truthful an answer as I could. “I had a bad dream. I wanted some air.”
“And so you just rushed out. Breaking the rules didn’t even cross your mind—and neither did putting on a coat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“Rose, Rose.” This time it was his exasperated voice. “You never change. Always jumping in without thinking.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve changed a lot.”
The amusement on his face suddenly faded, his expression growing troubled. He studied me for several moments. Sometimes I felt as though those eyes could see right into my soul. “You’re right. You have changed.”
He didn’t seem very happy about the admission. He was probably thinking about what had happened almost three weeks ago, when some friends and I had gotten ourselves captured by Strigoi. It was only through sheer luck that we’d managed to escape—and not all of us had gotten out. Mason, a good friend and a guy who’d been crazy about me, had been killed, and part of me would never forgive myself for it, even though I’d killed his murderers.
It had given me a darker outlook on life. Well, it had given everyone here at St. Vladimir’s Academy a darker outlook, but me especially. Others had begun to notice the difference in me. I didn’t like to see Dimitri concerned, though, so I played off his observation with a joke.
“Well, don’t worry. My birthday’s coming up. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’ll be an adult, right? I’m sure I’ll wake up that morning and be all mature and stuff.”
As I’d hoped, his frown softened into a small smile. “Yes, I’m sure. What is it, about a month?”
“Thirty-one days,” I announced primly.
“Not that you’re counting.”
I shrugged, and he laughed.
“I suppose you’ve made a birthday list too. Ten pages? Single-spaced? Ranked by order of priority?” The smile was still on his face. It was one of the relaxed, genuinely amused ones that were so rare to him.
I started to make another joke, but the image of Lissa and Christian flared into my mind again. That sad and empty feeling in my stomach returned. Anything I might have wanted—new clothes, an iPod, whatever—suddenly seemed trivial. What did material things like that mean compared to the one thing I wanted most of all? God, I really had changed.
“No,” I said in a small voice. “No list.”
He tilted his head to better look at me, making some of his shoulder-length hair blow into his face. His hair was brown, like mine, but not nearly as dark. Mine looked black at times. He brushed the unruly strands aside, only to have them immediately blow back into his face. “I can’t believe you don’t want anything. It’s going to be a boring birthday.”
Freedom, I thought. That was the only gift I longed for. Freedom to make my own choices. Freedom to love who I wanted.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said instead.
“What do you—” He stopped. He understood. He always did. It was part of why we connected like we did, in spite of the seven-year gap in our ages. We’d fallen for each other last fall when he’d been my combat instructor. As things heated up between us, we’d found we had more things to worry about than just age. We were both going to be protecting Lissa when she graduated, and we couldn’t let our feelings for each other distract us when she was our priority.

In a not-so-obvious attempt to change the subject, he said, “You can deny it all you want, but I know you’re freezing. Let’s go inside. I’ll take you in through the back.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little surprised. Dimitri was rarely one to avoid uncomfortable subjects. In fact, he was notorious for pushing me into conversations about topics I didn’t want to deal with. But talking about our dysfunctional, star-crossed relationship? That was a place he apparently didn’t want to go today. Yeah. Things were definitely changing.
“I think you’re the one who’s cold,” I teased, as we walked around the side of the dorm where novice guardians lived. “Shouldn’t you be all tough and stuff, since you’re from Siberia?”
“I don’t think Siberia’s exactly what you imagine.”
“I imagine it as an arctic wasteland,” I said truthfully.
“Then it’s definitely not what you imagine.”
“Do you miss it?” I asked, glancing back to where he walked behind me. It was something I’d never considered before. In my mind, everyone would want to live in the U.S. Or, well, they at least wouldn’t want to live in Siberia.
“All the time,” he said, his voice a little wistful. “Sometimes I wish—”
“Belikov!”
A voice was carried on the wind from behind us. Dimitri muttered something, and then shoved me further around the corner I’d just rounded. “Stay out of sight.”

2.

“Rose—”
“Dashkov?” I exclaimed, trying to keep my voice low so Alberta wouldn’t hear. “As in Victor Dashkov?”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Yes. Victor Dashkov.”
“And you guys were talking about . . . Do you mean . . .” I was so startled, so dumbstruck, that I could barely get my thoughts together. This was unbelievable. “I thought he was locked up! Are you saying he hasn’t been on trial yet?”
Yes. This was definitely unbelievable. Victor Dashkov. The guy who’d stalked Lissa and tortured her mind and body in order to control her powers. Every Moroi could use magic in one of the four elements: earth, air, water, or fire. Lissa, however, worked an almost unheard of fifth element called spirit. She could heal anything—including the dead. It was the reason I was now psychically linked to her—“shadow-kissed,” some called it. She’d brought me back from the car accident that had killed her parents and brother, binding us together in a way that allowed me to feel her thoughts and experiences.
Victor had learned long before any of us that she could heal, and he’d wanted to lock her away and use her as his own personal Fountain of Youth. He also hadn’t hesitated to kill anyone who got in his way—or, in the case of Dimitri and me, use more creative ways to stop his opponents. I’d made a lot of enemies in seventeen years, but I was pretty sure there was no one I hated as much as Victor Dashkov—at least among the living.
Dimitri had a look on his face I knew well. It was the one he got when he thought I might punch someone. “He’s been locked up—but no, no trial yet. Legal proceedings sometimes take a long time.”
“But there’s going to be a trial now? And you’re going?” I spoke through clenched teeth, trying to be calm. I suspected I still had the I’m going to punch someone look on my face.
“Next week. They need me and some of the other guardians to testify about what happened to you and Lissa that night.” His expression changed at the mention of what had occurred four months ago, and again, I recognized the look. It was the fierce, protective one he got when those he cared about were in danger.
“Call me crazy for asking this, but, um, are Lissa and I going with you?” I had already guessed the answer, and I didn’t like it.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Look, doesn’t it seem reasonable that if you’re going to talk about what happened to us, then you should have us there?”
Dimitri, fully in strict-instructor mode now, shook his head. “The queen and some of the other guardians thought it’d be best if you didn’t go. There’s enough evidence between the rest of us, and besides, criminal or not, he is—or was—one of the most powerful royals in the world. Those who know about this trial want to keep it quiet.”
“So, what, you thought if you brought us, we’d tell everyone?” I exclaimed. “Come on, comrade. You really think we’d do that? The only thing we want is to see Victor locked up. Forever. Maybe longer. And if there’s a chance he might walk free, you have to let us go.”
After Victor had been caught, he’d been taken to prison, and I’d thought that was where the story had ended. I’d figured they’d locked him up to rot. It had never occurred to me—though it should have—that he’d need a trial first. At the time, his crimes had seemed so obvious. But, although the Moroi government was secret and separate from the human one, it operated in a lot of the same ways. Due process and all that.
“It’s not my decision to make,” Dimitri said.
“But you have influence. You could speak up for us, especially if . . .” Some of my anger dimmed just a little, replaced by a sudden and startling fear. I almost couldn’t say the next words. “Especially if there really is a chance he might get off. Is there? Is there really a chance the queen could let him go?”
“I don’t know. There’s no telling what she or some of the other high-up royals will do sometimes.” He suddenly looked tired. He reached into his pocket and tossed over a set of keys. “Look, I know you’re upset, but we can’t talk about it now. I have to go meet Alberta, and you need to get inside. The square key will let you in the far side door. You know the one.”
I did. “Yeah. Thanks.”

3.

“You want some hot chocolate?” he asked.
I hadn’t expected that. “Sure.”
He dumped four packets of instant hot chocolate into two Styrofoam cups and then added in hot water.
“Doubling it is the secret,” he said when the cups were full.
He handed me mine, along with a wooden stirrer, and then walked toward a side door. Presuming I was supposed to follow him, I scurried to catch up without spilling my hot chocolate.
“Where are we—oh.”
I stepped through the doorway and found myself in a little glass-enclosed porch filled with small patio tables. I’d had no idea this porch was adjacent to the meeting room, but then, this was the building the guardians conducted all campus business out of. Novices were rarely allowed. I also hadn’t realized the building was built around a small courtyard, which was what this porch looked out to. In the summer, I imagined one could open the windows and be surrounded in greenery and warm air. Now, encased in glass and frost, I felt like I was in some kind of an ice palace.
Dimitri swept his hand over a chair, brushing off dust. I did the same and sat down opposite him. Apparently this room didn’t see a lot of use in the winter. Because it was enclosed, the room was warmer than outdoors, but it wasn’t heated otherwise. The air felt chilly, and I warmed my hands on my cup. Silence fell between Dimitri and me. The only noise came from me blowing on my hot chocolate. He drank his right away. He’d been killing Strigoi for years. What was a little scalding water here and there?
As we sat, and the quiet grew, I studied him over the edge of my cup. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew he knew I was watching. Like every other time I looked at him, I was always struck by his looks first. The soft dark hair that he often tucked behind his ears without realizing it, hair that never quite wanted to stay in its tie at the back of his neck. His eyes were brown too, somehow gentle and fierce at the same time. His lips had that same contradictory quality, I realized. When he was fighting or dealing with something grim, those lips would flatten and turn hard. But in lighter times . . . when he laughed or kissed . . . well, then they’d become soft and wonderful.
Today, more than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people, I felt a need to be the center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake to be a guardian, seeing as that job required so much silence. But with Dimitri, I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn’t have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other’s presence—smoldering sexual tension aside—that we lost all sense of self-consciousness. I exhaled and drank my cocoa.
“What happened out there?” he asked at last, meeting my gaze. “You didn’t crack under the pressure.”
His voice was curious, not accusatory. He wasn’t treating me as a student right now, I realized. He was regarding me as an equal. He simply wanted to know what was going on with me. There was no discipline or lecturing here.
And that just made it all the worse when I had to lie to him.
“Of course it was,” I told him, looking down into my cup. “Unless you believe I really did let Stan ‘attack’ Christian.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that. I never did. I knew you’d be unhappy when you found out about the assignments, but I never once doubted that you’d do what you’d have to for this. I knew you wouldn’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your duty.”
I looked up again and met his eyes, so full of faith and absolute confidence in me. “I didn’t. I was mad. . . . Still am a little. But once I said I’d do it, I meant it. And after spending some time with him . . . well, I don’t hate him. I actually think he’s good for Lissa, and he cares about her, so I can’t get upset about that. He and I just clash sometimes, that’s all . . . but we did really well together against the Strigoi. I remembered that while I was with him today, and arguing against this assignment just seemed stupid. So I decided to do the best job I could.”
I hadn’t meant to talk so much, but it felt good to let out what was inside of me, and the look on Dimitri’s face would have gotten me to say anything. Almost anything.
“What happened then?” he asked. “With Stan?”
I averted my eyes and played with my cup again. I hated keeping things from him, but I couldn’t tell him about this. In the human world, vampires and dhampirs were creatures of myth and legend—bedtime stories to scare children. Humans didn’t know we were real and walking the earth. But just because we were real didn’t mean that every other story-time paranormal creature was. We knew that and had our own myths and bedtime stories about things we didn’t believe in. Werewolves. Bogeymen. Ghosts.
Ghosts played no real role in our culture, short of being fodder for pranks and campfire tales. Ghosts inevitably came up on Halloween, and some legends endured over the years. But in real life? No ghosts. If you came back after death, it was because you were a Strigoi.
At least, that’s what I’d always been taught. I honestly didn’t know enough now to say what was going on. Me imagining Mason seemed more likely than him being a true ghost, but man, that meant I might seriously be heading into crazy territory. All this time I’d worried about Lissa losing it. Who had known it might be me?
Dimitri was still watching me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know what happened out there. My intentions were good . . . I just . . . I just messed up.”
“Rose. You’re a terrible liar.”
I glanced up. “No, I’m not. I’ve told a lot of good lies in my life. People have believed them.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m sure. But it doesn’t work with me. For one thing, you won’t look me in the eye. As for the other . . . I don’t know. I can just tell.”
Damn. He could tell. He just knew me that well. I stood up and moved to the door, keeping my back to him. Normally, I treasured every minute with him, but I couldn’t stick around today. I hated lying, but I didn’t want to tell the truth either. I had to leave.
“Look, I appreciate you being worried about me . . . but really, it’s okay. I just messed up. I’m embarrassed about it—and sorry I put your awesome training to shame—but I’ll rebound. Next time, Stan’s ass is mine.”
I hadn’t even heard him get up, but suddenly, Dimitri was right behind me. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I froze in front of the door leading out. He didn’t touch me anywhere else. He didn’t try to pull me closer. But, oh, that one hand on my shoulder held all the power in the world.
“Rose,” he said, and I knew he was no longer smiling. “I don’t know why you’re lying, but I know you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. And if there’s something wrong—something you’re afraid to tell the others—”
I spun around rapidly, somehow managing to pivot in place in such a way that his hand never moved yet ended up on my other shoulder.
“I’m not afraid,” I cried. “I do have my reasons, and believe me, what happened with Stan was nothing. Really. All of this is just something stupid that got blown out of proportion. Don’t feel sorry for me or feel like you have to do anything. What happened sucks, but I’ll just roll with it and take the black mark. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of me.” It took all of my strength just then not to shake. How had this day gotten so bizarre and out of control?
Dimitri didn’t say anything. He just looked down at me, and the expression on his face was one I’d never seen before. I couldn’t interpret it. Was he mad? Disapproving? I just couldn’t tell. The fingers on my shoulder tightened slightly and then relaxed.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he said at last. He sounded almost wistful, which made no sense. He was the one who’d been telling me for so long that I needed to be strong. I wanted to throw myself into his arms just then, but I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t help a smile. “You say that . . . but tell me the truth. Do you go running to others when you have problems?”
“That’s the not the same—”
“Answer the question, comrade.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“And don’t avoid the question either.”
“No,” he said. “I try to deal with my problems on my own.”
I slipped away from his hand. “See?”
“But you have a lot of people in your life you can trust, people who care about you. That changes things.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have people who care about you?”
He frowned, obviously rethinking his words. “Well, I’ve always had good people in my life . . . and there have been people who cared about me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I could trust them or tell them everything.”
I was often so distracted by the weirdness of our relationship that I rarely thought about Dimitri as someone with a life away from me. He was respected by everyone on campus. Teachers and students alike knew him as one of the deadliest guardians here. Whenever we ran into guardians from outside the school, they always seemed to know and respect him too. But I couldn’t recall ever having seen him in any sort of social setting. He didn’t appear to have any close friends among the other guardians—just coworkers he liked. The friendliest I’d ever seen him get with someone had been when Christian’s aunt, Tasha Ozera, visited. They’d known each other for a long time, but even that hadn’t been enough for Dimitri to pursue once her visit was over.
Dimitri was alone an awful lot, I realized, content to hole up with his cowboy novels when not working. I felt alone a lot, but in truth, I was almost always surrounded by people. With him being my teacher, I tended to view things as one-sided: He was the one always giving me something, be it advice or instruction. But I gave him something too, something harder to define—a connection with another person.
“Do you trust me?” I asked him.
The hesitation was brief. “Yes.”
“Then trust me now, and don’t worry about me just this once.”
I stepped away, out of the reach of his arm, and he didn’t say anything more or try to stop me. Cutting through the room that I’d had the hearing in, I headed for the building’s main exit, tossing the remnants of my hot chocolate in a garbage can as I walked past.

4.

When the service ended that Sunday, however, I had to stick around the chapel, because that was where my community service was going to happen. When the place had cleared out, I was surprised to see one other person had lingered with me: Dimitri.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Thought you might need some help. I hear the priest wants to do a lot of housecleaning.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the one being punished here. And this is your day off too. We—well, everyone else—spent the whole week battling it out, but you guys were the ones picking the fights the whole time.” In fact, I noticed now that Dimitri had a couple bruises too—though not nearly as many as Stan had. It had been a long week for everyone, and it was only the first of six.
“What else would I do today?”
“I could think of a hundred other things,” I noted dryly. “There’s probably a John Wayne movie on somewhere that you haven’t seen.”
He shook his head. “No, there isn’t. I’ve seen them all. Look—the priest is waiting for us.”
I turned around. Sure enough. Father Andrew stood at the front, watching us expectantly. He’d taken off the rich robes he’d worn during service and now stood in simple slacks and a button down shirt. He looked like he was ready to work too, and I wondered whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest.
As Dimitri and I approached to get our assignments, I pondered what could have actually made Dimitri stay here in the first place. Surely he hadn’t really wanted to work on his day off. I wasn’t used to puzzles with him. His intentions were usually straightforward, and I had to assume there was a simple explanation now. It just wasn’t clear yet.
“Thank you both for volunteering to help me.” Father Andrew smiled at us. I tried not to scoff at the “volunteering” reference. He was a Moroi in his late forties, with thinning gray hair. Even without much faith in religion, I still liked and respected him. “We aren’t doing anything particularly complex today,” he continued. “It’s a bit boring, really. We’ll have to do the regular cleaning, of course, and then I’d like to sort the boxes of old supplies I have sitting up in the attic.”
“We’re happy to do whatever you need,” Dimitri said solemnly. I repressed a sigh and tried not to think of all the other things I could be doing.
We set to it.
I was put on mop duty, and Dimitri took over dusting and polishing the wooden pews. He appeared thoughtful and intent as he cleaned, looking like he actually took pride in his work. I was still trying to figure out why he was here at all. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to have him. His presence made me feel better, and of course I always loved watching him.
I thought maybe he was there to get more information out of me about what had happened that day with Stan, Christian, and Brandon. Or maybe he wanted to chastise me about the other day with Stan, where I’d been accused of jumping into battle for selfish reasons. These seemed like likely explanations, yet he never said a word. Even when the priest stepped out of the sanctuary to go to his office, Dimitri continued working quietly. I would have figured if he’d had anything to say, he would have done it then.
When we finished the cleaning, Father Andrew had us haul box after box of stuff down from the attic and into a storeroom at the back of the chapel. Lissa and Christian frequently used that attic as a secret getaway, and I wondered if having it cleaner would be a pro or a con for their romantic interludes. Maybe they would abandon it, and I could start getting some sleep.
With all of the stuff downstairs, the three of us settled on the floor and began sorting it all out. Father Andrew gave us instructions on what to save and what to throw out, and it was a relief to be off my feet for a change this week. He made small talk as we worked, asking me about classes and other things. It wasn’t so bad.
And as we worked, a thought came to me. I’d done a good job convincing myself that Mason had been a delusion brought on by lack of sleep, but getting assurance from an authority figure that ghosts weren’t real would go a long way toward making me feel better.
“Hey,” I said to Father Andrew. “Do you believe in ghosts? I mean, is there any mention of them in—” I gestured around us. “—in this stuff?”
The question clearly surprised him, but he didn’t appear to take offense at me calling his vocation and life’s work “this stuff.” Or at the fact that I was obviously ignorant about it all, despite seventeen years of sitting through services. A bemused expression crossed his face, and he paused in his work.
“Well . . . it depends on how you define ‘ghost,’ I suppose.”
I tapped a theology book with my finger. “The whole point of this is that when you die, you go to heaven or hell. That makes ghosts just stories, right? They’re not in the Bible or anything.”
“Again,” he said, “it depends on your definition. Our faith has always held that after death, the spirit separates from the body and may indeed linger in this world.”
“What?” A dusty bowl I was holding dropped out of my hand. Fortunately, it was wood and didn’t break. I quickly retrieved it. That was not the answer I’d been expecting. “For how long? Forever?”
“No, no, of course not. That flies in the face of the resurrection and salvation, which form the cornerstone of our beliefs. But it’s believed the soul can stay on earth for three to forty days after death. It eventually receives a ‘temporary’ judgment that sends it on from this world to heaven or hell—although no one will truly experience either until the actual Judgment Day, when the soul and body are reunited to live out eternity as one.”
The salvation stuff was lost on me. The “three to forty days” was what caught my attention. I completely forgot about my sorting. “Yeah, but is it true or not? Are spirits really walking the earth for forty days after death?”
“Ah, Rose. Those who have to ask if faith is true are opening up a discussion they may not be ready for.”
I had a feeling he was right. I sighed and turned back to the box in front of me.
“But,” he said kindly, “if it helps you, some of these ideas parallel folk beliefs from Eastern Europe about ghosts that existed before the spread of Christianity. Those traditions have long upheld the idea of spirits staying around for a short time after death—particularly if the person in question died young or violently.”
I froze. Whatever progress I’d made in convincing myself Mason had been brought on by stress instantly vanished. Young or violently.
“Why?” I asked in a small voice. “Why would they stay? Is it . . . is it for revenge?”
“I’m sure there are some who believe that, just as some believe it’s because the soul has trouble finding peace after something so unsettling.”
“What do you believe?” I asked.
He smiled. “I believe the soul separates from the body, just as our fathers teach us, but I doubt the soul’s time on earth is anything the living can perceive. It’s not like in the movies, with ghosts haunting buildings or coming to visit those they knew. I envision these spirits as more of an energy existing around us, something beyond our perception as they wait to move on and find peace. Ultimately, what matters is what happens beyond this earth when we attain the eternal life our savior bought for us with his great sacrifice. That’s what’s important.”
I wondered if Father Andrew would be so quick to say that if he’d seen what I’d seen. Young or violently. Both had applied to Mason, and he had died less than forty days ago. That sad, sad face came back to me, and I wondered what it had meant. Revenge? Or could he truly not find peace?
And how did Father Andrew’s theology about heaven and hell fit with someone like me, who had died and come back to life? Victor Dashkov had said I’d gone to the world of the dead and returned when Lissa had healed me. What world of the dead? Was that heaven or hell? Or was it another way of referring to this in-between state on earth that Father Andrew was talking about?
I didn’t say anything after that, because the idea of a revenge-seeking Mason was so startling. Father Andrew sensed the change in me, but he obviously didn’t know what had brought it about. He tried to coax me out.
“I just got some new books in from a friend in another parish. Interesting stories about St. Vladimir.” He tilted his head. “Are you still interested in him? And Anna?”
Theoretically, I was. Until we’d met Adrian, we’d only known of two other spirit users. One was our former teacher, Ms. Karp, who’d gone completely nuts from spirit and become a Strigoi to stop the madness. The other person was St. Vladimir, the school’s namesake. He’d lived centuries ago and had brought his guardian, Anna, back from the dead, just as Lissa had me. It had made Anna shadow-kissed and created a bond between them too.
Normally, Lissa and I tried to get our hands on everything we could about Anna and Vlad, in order to learn more about ourselves. But, as incredible as it was for me to admit, I had bigger problems right now than the ever-present and ever-puzzling psychic link between Lissa and me. It had just been trumped by a ghost who could possibly be pissed off over my role in his untimely death.
“Yeah,” I said evasively, not making eye contact. “I’m interested . . . but I don’t think I can get to it anytime soon. I’m kind of busy with all this . . . you know, field experience stuff.”
I fell silent again. He took the hint and let me work on without further interruption. Dimitri never said a word throughout any of this. When we finally finished sorting, Father Andrew told us we had one more task before our work was done. He pointed to some boxes that we’d organized and repacked.
“I need you to carry these over to the elementary campus,” he said. “Leave them off at the Moroi dorm there. Ms. Davis has been teaching Sunday school for some of the kindergartners and might be able to use those.”
It would take at least two trips between Dimitri and me, and the elementary campus was a fair distance away. Still, that put me one step closer to freedom.
“Why are you interested in ghosts?” Dimitri asked me on our first trip.
“Just making conversation,” I said.
“I can’t see your face right now, but I have a feeling you’re lying again.”
“Jeez, everyone thinks the worst of me lately. Stan accused me of glory-seeking.”
“I heard about that,” said Dimitri, as we rounded a corner. The buildings of the elementary campus loomed up in front of us. “That might have been a little unfair of him.”
“A little, huh?” Hearing him admit that thrilled me, but it didn’t change my anger against Stan. That dark, grouchy feeling that had plagued me lately sprang to life. “Well, thanks, but I’m starting to lose faith in this field experience. Sometimes in the whole Academy.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know. The school just seems so caught up in rules and policies that don’t have anything to do with real life. I saw what was out there, comrade. I went right to the monster’s lair. In some ways . . . I don’t know if this really prepares us.”
I expected him to argue, but to my surprise he said, “Sometimes I agree.”
I nearly stumbled as we stepped inside one of the two Moroi dorms on the elementary campus. The lobby looked a lot like the ones on the secondary campus. “Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, a small smile on his face. “I mean, I don’t agree that novices should be put out in the world when they’re ten or anything, but sometimes I’ve thought the field experience should actually be in the field. I probably learned more in my first year as a guardian than I did in all my years of training. Well . . . maybe not all. But it’s a different situation, absolutely.”

5.

Dimitri, understanding my need to rush in and take action, seemed surprised by my unusual behavior. “You’re right—she should be there, but again, it’s nothing I can do anything about. You keep thinking I can control this, but I can’t.”
“But did you do everything you could?” I thought back to Adrian’s words in the dream, about how Dimitri could have done more. “You have a lot of influence. There must be something. Anything.”
“Not as much influence as you think. I’ve got a high position here at the Academy, but in the rest of the guardian world, I’m still pretty young. And yes, I did actually speak up for you.”
“Maybe you should have spoken up louder.”
I could sense him shutting down. He’d discuss most things reasonably but wouldn’t encourage me when I was just being a bitch. So, I tried to be more reasonable.
“Victor knows about us,” I said. “He could say something.”
“Victor has bigger things to worry about with this trial than us.”
“Yeah, but you know him. He doesn’t exactly act like a normal person would. If he feels like he’s lost all hope of getting off, he might decide to bust us just for the sake of revenge.”
I’d never been able to confess my relationship with Dimitri to Lissa, yet our worst enemy knew about it. It was weirder even than Adrian knowing. Victor had figured it out by watching us and gathering data. I guess when you’re a scheming villain, you get good at that stuff. He’d never made the knowledge public, though. Instead, he’d used it against us with the lust charm he’d made from earth magic. A charm like that wouldn’t work if there wasn’t already attraction in place. The charm just cranked things up. Dimitri and I had been all over each other and had been only a heartbeat away from having sex. It had been a pretty smart way for Victor to distract us without using violence. If anyone had tried to attack us, we could have put up a good fight. But turn us loose on each other? We had trouble fighting that.
Dimitri was silent for several moments. I knew he knew I had a point. “Then we’ll have to deal with that as best we can,” he said at last. “But if Victor’s going to tell, he’s going to do it whether or not you testify.”
I refused to say anything else until we got to the church. When we did, Father Andrew told us that after going over some more things, he’d decided he really only needed one more box brought over to Ms. Davis.
“I’ll do it,” I told Dimitri crisply, once the priest was out of earshot. “You don’t have to come.”
“Rose, please don’t make a big deal about this.”
“It is a big deal!” I hissed. “And you don’t seem to get it.”
“I do get it. Do you really think I want to see Victor loose? Do you think I want us all at risk again?” It was the first time in a long time I’d seen his control on the verge of snapping. “But I told you, I’ve done all I can do. I’m not like you—I can’t keep making a scene when things don’t go my way.”
“I do not.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
He was right. Some part of me knew I’d crossed a line . . . but just like with everything else recently, I couldn’t stop talking.
“Why did you even help me today?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Is that so strange?” he asked. He almost looked hurt.
“Yes. I mean, are you are you trying to spy on me? Figure out why I messed up? Make sure I don’t get into any trouble?”
He studied me, brushing hair out of his eyes. “Why does there have to be some ulterior motive?”
I wanted to blurt out a hundred different things. Like, if there wasn’t a motive, then that meant he just wanted to spend time with me. And that made no sense, because we both knew we were only supposed to have a teacher-student relationship. He of all people should know that. He was the one who’d told me.
“Because everyone has motives.”
“Yes. But not always the motives you think.” He pushed open the door. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him go, my feelings a tangle of confusion and anger. If the situation hadn’t been so strange, I would have almost said it was like we’d just gone on a date.

6.

“I’m sorry,” I gulped out. “I’m so sorry.”
He turned toward me, his face schooled to that perfect picture of neutrality that he was so good at. “Sorry for what?”
“For all the horrible things I said yesterday. You did it—you really did it. You got them to let us go.”
Despite my nervousness about seeing Victor, I was filled with elation. Dimitri had come through. I’d known all along that he really cared about me—this just proved it. If there hadn’t been so many people around, I would have hugged him.
Dimitri’s face didn’t change. “It wasn’t me, Rose. I had nothing to do with it.”

7.

He was surprised to see me at his door—and a little wary. The last time this had happened, I’d been under the influence of Victor’s lust charm and had behaved . . . aggressively.
“I have to talk to you,” I said.
He let me come in, and I immediately handed over the note.
“V. D.—”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dimitri. He handed the note back. “Victor Dashkov.”
“What are we going to do? I mean, we talked about this, but now he really is saying he’s going to sell us out.”
Dimitri didn’t answer, and I could tell he was assessing every angle of this, just like he would a fight. Finally, he pulled out his cell phone, which was a lot cooler than having to rely on the room’s phone. “Give me a moment.”
I started to sit on his bed, decided that was dangerous, and instead sat on the couch. I didn’t know who he was calling, but the conversation took place in Russian.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he finished.
“I’ll let you know soon. For now, we have to wait.”
“Great. My favorite thing to do.”
He dragged an armchair up and sat opposite me. It seemed too small for someone as tall as him, but, as always, he managed to make it work and appear graceful in the process.
Beside me was one of the Western novels he always carried around. I picked it up, again thinking about how alone he was. Even now, at the Court, he’d chosen to stay in his room. “Why do you read these?”
“Some people read books for fun,” he observed.
“Hey, watch the dig. And I do read books. I read them to solve mysteries that threaten my best friend’s life and sanity. I don’t think reading this cowboy stuff is really saving the world like I do.”
He took it from me and flipped it over, face thoughtful and not as intense as usual. “Like any book, it’s an escape. And there’s something . . . mmm. I don’t know. Something appealing about the Old West. No rules. Everyone just lives by their own code. You don’t have to be tied down by others’ ideas of right and wrong in order to bring justice.”
“Wait,” I laughed. “I thought I was the one who wanted to break rules.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to. Just that I can see the appeal.”
“You can’t fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.”
“No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”
I grinned, and suddenly, it was a lot like when we cleaned the church—before the fight, at least. Easy. Comfortable. In fact, it was a lot like the old days when we’d first begun training together, way back before everything had gotten so complicated. Well, okay . . . things had always been complicated, but for a while, they’d been less complicated. It made me sad. I wished we could relive those early days. There’d been no Victor Dashkov, no blood on my hands.
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said all of a sudden.
“For what? Reading cheesy novels?”
“For not being able to get you here. I feel like I let you down.” I glimpsed a shadow of worry on his face, like he was concerned he might have caused some irreparable damage.
The apology totally caught me off guard. For a moment, I wondered if he was jealous of Adrian’s influence in the same way Christian had been. Then I realized it was completely different. I’d been giving Dimitri a hard time because I’d been convinced he could do anything. Somewhere—deep inside—he felt the same, at least where I was concerned. He didn’t want to deny me anything. My earlier bad mood had long since vanished, and I suddenly just felt drained. And stupid.
“You didn’t,” I told him. “I acted like a total brat. You’ve never let me down before. You didn’t let me down with this.”
The grateful look he gave me made me feel as if I had wings. If another moment had passed, I suspected he would have said something so sweet that I would have flown away. Instead, his phone rang.
Another conversation in Russian took place, and then he stood up. “All right, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To see Victor Dashkov.”

8.

“Why are we doing this?” I whispered as we walked down the hall toward Victor’s cell. I’d really, really hoped for stone walls and torches, but the place looked very modern and efficient, with marble floors and stark white walls. At least there were no windows. “You think we can talk him out of it?”
Dimitri shook his head. “If Victor wanted to take revenge on us, he’d just do it without any warning. He doesn’t do things without a reason. The fact that he told you first means he wants something, and now we’re going to find out what it is.”

9.

“And Victor’s not going to say anything about us,” said Dimitri, tugging my arm. “He’s achieved his goal. He brought you here because he wanted to know about Lissa.”
“He didn’t find out much,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” said Victor. He grinned at Dimitri. “And what makes you so certain I won’t enlighten the world about your romantic indiscretions?”
“Because it won’t save you from prison. And if you ruin Rose, you’ll destroy whatever weak chance you had of Lissa helping you with your warped fantasy.” Victor flinched just a little; Dimitri was right. Dimitri stepped forward, pressing close to the bars as I had earlier. I’d thought I had a scary voice, but when he spoke his next words, I realized I wasn’t even close. “And it’ll all be pointless anyway, because you won’t stay alive long enough in prison to stage your grand plans. You aren’t the only one with connections.”
My breath caught a little. Dimitri brought so many things to my life: love, comfort, and instruction. I got so used to him sometimes that I forgot just how dangerous he could be. As he stood there, tall and threatening while he glared down at Victor, I felt a chill run down my spine. I remembered how when I had first come to the Academy, people had said Dimitri was a god. In this moment, he looked it.
If Victor was frightened by Dimitri’s threat, he didn’t show it. His jade green eyes glanced between the two of us. “You two are a match made in heaven. Or somewhere.”
“See you in court,” I said.
Dimitri and I left. On our way out, he said a few words in Russian to the guardian on duty. From their manners, my guess was Dimitri was offering thanks.
We ventured outdoors, walking across a wide, beautiful parklike space to get back to our rooms. The sleet had stopped, and it had left everything—buildings and trees alike—coated in ice. It was like the world was made of glass. Glancing at Dimitri, I saw him staring straight ahead. It was hard to tell while walking, but I could have sworn he was shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“As okay as I can be.”
“Do you think he’ll tell everyone about us?”
“No.”
We walked in silence for a bit. I finally asked the question I’d been dying to know.
“Did you mean it . . . that if Victor did tell . . . that you’d . . .” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words have him killed.
“I don’t have much influence in the upper levels of Moroi royalty, but I have plenty among the guardians who handle the dirty work in our world.”
“You didn’t answer the question. If you’d really do it.”
“I’d do a lot of things to protect you, Roza.”
My heart pounded. He only used “Roza” when he was feeling particularly affectionate toward me.
“It wouldn’t exactly be protecting me. It’d be after the fact—cold-blooded. You don’t do that kind of thing,” I told him. “Revenge is more my thing. I’ll have to kill him.”
I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t think it was funny. “Don’t talk like that. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Victor’s not going to say anything.”

10.

“My grandmother was like Rhonda,” he explained. “That is, she practiced the same kind of arts. Personality-wise, they’re very different.”
“Your grandmother was a . . . v-whatever?”
“It’s called something else in Russian, but yes, same meaning. She used to read cards and give advice too. It was how she made her living.”
I bit off any comments about frauds. “Was she right? In her predictions?”
“Sometimes. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got this look on your face that says you think I’m delusional, but you’re too nice to say anything.”
“Delusional’s kind of harsh. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never expected you to buy into this stuff.”
“Well, I grew up with it, so it doesn’t seem that strange to me. And like I said, I’m not sure I buy into it 100 percent.”
Adrian had joined the group by the plane and was protesting loudly about us not being able to board yet.
“I never thought of you as having a grandmother, either,” I told Dimitri. “I mean, obviously, you’d have to. But still . . . it’s just weird to think about growing up with one.” Contact with my own mother was rare enough, and I’d never even met any of my other family members. “Was it weird having a witch grandma? Scary? Was she always, like, threatening to cast spells if you were bad?”
“Most of the time she just threatened to send me to my room.”
“That doesn’t sound so scary to me.”
“That’s because you haven’t met her.”
I noted the wording. “Is she still alive?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll take more than old age to kill her off. She’s tough. She was actually a guardian for a while.”
“Really?” Much like with Ambrose, my fixed ideas about dhampirs, guardians, and blood whores were getting muddled. “So she gave it up to become a—uh, to stay with her kids?”
“She has very strong ideas about family—ideas that probably sound kind of sexist to you. She believes all dhampirs should train and put in time as guardians, but that the women should eventually return home to raise their children together.”
“But not the men?”
“No,” he said wryly. “She thinks men still need to stay out there and kill Strigoi.”
“Wow.” I remembered Dimitri telling me a little about his family. His father had popped back every so often, but that was about it for the men in his life. All of his siblings were sisters. And honestly, the idea didn’t sound so sexist. I had the same ideas about men going off to fight, which was why meeting Ambrose had been so weird. “You were the one who had to go. The women in your family kicked you out.”
“Hardly,” he laughed. “My mother would take me back in a second if I wanted to come home.” He was smiling like it was a joke, but I saw something in his eyes that looked a lot like homesickness.

11.

Dimitri came to an abrupt stop and turned so that he stood right in front of me, blocking my path. I skidded to a halt, nearly running into him. He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to him than I would have expected him to do in public. His fingers bit deep into me, but they didn’t hurt.
“Rose,” he said, the pain in his voice making my heart stop, “this shouldn’t have been the first time I heard about this! Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know what it was like? Do you know it was like for me to see you like that and not know what was happening? Do you know how scared I was?”
I was stunned, both from his outburst and our proximity. I swallowed, unable to speak at first. There was so much on his face, so many emotions. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen that much of him on display. It was wonderful and frightening at the same time. I then said the stupidest thing possible.
“You’re not scared of anything.”
“I’m scared of lots of things. I was scared for you.” He released me, and I stepped back. There was still passion and worry written all over him. “I’m not perfect. I’m not invulnerable.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I always saw Dimitri as larger than life. All-knowing. Invincible. It was hard for me to believe that he could worry about me so much.
“And this has been going on for a long time too,” he added. “It was going on with Stan, when you were talking to Father Andrew about ghosts—you were dealing with it this whole time! Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you tell Lissa . . . or . . . me?”
I stared into those dark, dark eyes, those eyes I loved. “Would you have believed me?”
He frowned. “Believed what?”
“That I’m seeing ghosts.”
“Well . . . they aren’t ghosts, Rose. You only think they are because—”
“That’s why,” I interrupted. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you or anybody. Nobody would believe me, not without thinking I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said. “But I think you’ve been through a lot.” Adrian had said almost the exact same thing when I asked him how I could tell if I was crazy or not.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I started walking again.
Without even taking another step, he reached out and grabbed me once more. He pulled me back to him, so that we now stood even closer than before. I glanced uneasily around again, wondering if someone might see us, but the campus was deserted. It was early, not quite sunset, so early that most people probably weren’t even up for the school day yet. We wouldn’t see activity around here for at least another hour. Still, I was surprised to see Dimitri was still risking it.
“Tell me then,” he said. “Tell me how it’s more than that.”
“You won’t believe me,” I said. “Don’t you get it? No one will. Even you . . . of all people.” Something in that thought made my voice catch. Dimitri understood so much about me. I wanted—needed—him to understand this too.
“I’ll . . . try. But I still don’t think you really understand what’s happening to you.”
“I do,” I said firmly. “That’s what no one realizes. Look, you have to decide once and for all if you really do trust me. If you think I’m a child, too naive to get what’s going on with her fragile mind, then you should just keep walking. But if you trust me enough to remember that I’ve seen things and know things that kind of surpass those of others my age . . . well, then you should also realize that I might know a little about what I’m talking about.”
A lukewarm breeze, damp with the scent of melted snow, swirled around us. “I do trust you, Roza. But . . . I don’t believe in ghosts.”
The earnestness was there. He did want to reach out to me, to understand . . . but even as he did, it warred with beliefs he wasn’t ready to change yet. It was ironic, considering tarot cards apparently spooked him.
“Will you try to?” I asked. “Or at the very least try not to write this off to some psychosis?”
“Yes. That I can do.”
So I told him about my first couple of Mason sightings and how I’d been afraid to explain the Stan incident to anyone. I talked about the shapes I’d seen on the plane and described in more detail what I’d seen on the ground.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of, um, specific for a random stress reaction?” I asked when I finished.
“I don’t know that you can really expect ‘stress reactions’ to be random or specific. They’re unpredictable by nature.” He had that thoughtful expression I knew so well, the one that told me he was turning over all sorts of things in his head. I could also tell that he still wasn’t buying this as a real ghost story but that he was trying very hard to keep an open mind. He affirmed as much a moment later: “Why are you so certain these aren’t just things you’re imagining?”
“Well, at first I thought I was imagining it all. But now . . . I don’t know. There’s something about it that feels real . . . even though I know that isn’t actually evidence. But you heard what Father Andrew said—about ghosts sticking around after they die young or violently.”
Dimitri actually bit his lip. He’d been about to tell me not to take the priest literally. Instead he asked, “So you think Mason’s back for revenge?”
“I thought that at first, but now I’m not so sure. He’s never tried to hurt me. He just seems like he wants something. And then . . . all those other ghosts seemed to want something too—even the ones I didn’t know. Why?”
Dimitri gave me a sage look. “You have a theory.”
“I do. I was thinking about what Victor said. He mentioned that because I’m shadow-kissed—because I died—I have a connection to the world of the dead. That I’ll never entirely leave it behind me.”
His expression hardened. “I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what Victor Dashkov tells you.”
“But he knows things! You know he does, no matter how big an ******* he is.”
“Okay, supposing that’s true, that being shadow-kissed lets you see ghosts, why is it happening now? Why didn’t it happen right after the car accident?”
“I thought of that,” I said eagerly. “It was something else Victor said—that now that I was dealing in death, I was that much closer to the other side. What if causing someone else’s death strengthened my connection and now makes this possible? I just had my first real kill. Kills, even.”
“Why is it so haphazard?” asked Dimitri. “Why does it occur when it does? Why the airplane? Why not at Court?”
My enthusiasm dimmed a little. “What are you, a lawyer?” I snapped. “You question everything I’m saying. I thought you were going to have an open mind.”
“I am. But you need to too. Think about it. Why this pattern of sightings?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I sagged in defeat. “You still think I’m crazy.”
He reached out and cupped my chin, tipping my face up to look at his. “No. Never. Not one of these theories makes me think you’re crazy. But I’ve always believed the simplest explanation makes sense. Dr. Olendzki’s does. The ghost one has holes. But, if you can find out more . . . then we may have something to work with.”
“We?” I asked.
“Of course. I’m not leaving you alone on this, no matter what. You know I’d never abandon you.”
There was something very sweet and noble about his words, and I felt the need to return them, though mostly I ended up sounding idiotic. “And I won’t ever abandon you, you know. I mean it . . . not that this stuff ever happens to you, of course, but if you start seeing ghosts or anything, I’ll help you through it.”
He gave a small, soft laugh. “Thanks.”
Our hands found each other’s, fingers lacing together. We stood like that for almost a full minute, neither of us saying anything. The only place we touched was our hands. The breeze picked up again, and although the temperature was probably only in the forties, it felt like spring to me. I expected flowers to burst into bloom around us. As though sharing the same thought, we released our hands at the same time.

12.

“Rose, is everything okay?” He started to stand, and I motioned him down as I slid into the spot beside him. The faint smell of incense lingered in the air.
“Yeah . . . well, kind of. No breakdowns, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just had a question. Or, well, a theory.”
I explained the conversation with Alice and what I’d deduced from it. He listened patiently, expression thoughtful.
“I know Alice. I’m not sure she’s credible,” he said when I finished. It was similar to what he’d said about Victor.
“I know. I thought the same thing. But a lot of it makes sense.”
“Not quite. As you pointed out, why are your visions so irregular here? That doesn’t go along with the ward theory. You should feel like you did on the plane.”
“What if the wards are just weak?” I asked.
He shook his head. “That’s impossible. Wards take months to wear down. New ones are put in place here every two weeks.”
“That often?” I asked, unable to hide my disappointment. I’d known maintenance was frequent but not that frequent. Alice’s theory had almost provided a sound explanation, one that didn’t involve me being insane.
“Maybe they’re getting staked,” I suggested. “By humans or something—like we saw before.”
“Guardians walk the grounds a few times a day. If there was a stake in the borders of campus, we’d notice.”
I sighed.
Dimitri moved his hand over mine, and I flinched. He didn’t remove it, though, and as he did so frequently, guessed my thoughts. “You thought if she was right, it would explain everything.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to be crazy.”
“You aren’t crazy.”
“But you don’t believe I’m really seeing ghosts.”
He glanced away, his eyes staring at the flickering of candles on the altar. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to keep an open mind. And being stressed isn’t the same as being crazy.”
“I know,” I admitted, still very conscious of how warm his hand was. I shouldn’t have been thinking about things like that in a church. “But . . . well . . . there’s something else. . . .”
I told him then about Anna possibly “catching” Vladimir’s insanity. I also explained Adrian’s aura observations. He turned his gaze back on me, expression speculative.
“Have you told anyone else about this? Lissa? Your counselor?”
“No,” I said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “I was afraid of what they’d think.”
He squeezed my hand. “You have to stop this. You aren’t afraid of throwing yourself in the path of danger, but you’re terrified of letting anyone in.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him. “I guess.”
“Then why’d you tell me?”
I smiled. “Because you told me I should trust people. I trust you.”
“You don’t trust Lissa?”
My smile faltered. “I trust her, absolutely. But I don’t want to tell her things that’ll make her worry. I guess it’s a way of protecting her, just like keeping Strigoi away.”
“She’s stronger than you think,” he said. “And she would go out of her way to help you.”
“So what? You want me to confide in her and not you?”
“No, I want you to confide in both of us. I think it’d be good for you. Does what happened to Anna bother you?”
“No.” I looked away again. “It scares me.”
I think the admission stunned both of us. I certainly hadn’t expected to say it. We both froze for a moment, and then Dimitri wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. A sob built up in me as I rested my cheek against the leather of his coat and heard the steady beating of his heart.
“I don’t want to be like that,” I told him. “I want to be like everyone else. I want my mind to be . . . normal. Normal by Rose standards, I mean. I don’t want to lose control. I don’t want to be like Anna and kill myself. I love being alive. I’d die to save my friends, but I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope we all live long, happy lives. Like Lissa said—one big happy family. There’s so much I want to do, but I’m so scared . . . scared that I’ll be like her. . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop it. . . .”
He held me tighter. “It’s not going to happen,” he murmured. “You’re wild and impulsive, but at the end of the day, you’re one of the strongest people I know. Even if you are the same as Anna—and I don’t think you are—you two won’t share the same fate.”
It was funny. I’d often told Lissa the same thing about her and Vladimir. She’d always had a hard time believing it, and now I understood. Giving advice was a lot harder than following it.
“You’re also missing something,” he continued, running a hand over my hair. “If you are in danger from Lissa’s magic, then at least you understand why. She can stop using her magic, and that’ll be the end of it.”
I pulled away slightly so I could look at him. Hastily, I ran my hand over my eyes in case any tears had escaped.
“But can I ask her to do that?” I said. “I’ve felt how it makes her feel. I don’t know if I can take that away from her.”
He regarded me with surprise. “Even at the cost of your own life?”
“Vladimir did great things—so could she. Besides, they come first, right?”
“Not always.”
I stared. I’d had they come first drilled into me since I was a child. It was what all guardians believed. Only the dhampirs who’d run away from their duty didn’t subscribe to that. What he said was almost like treason.
“Sometimes, Rose, you have to know when to put yourself first.”
I shook my head. “Not with Lissa.” I might as well have been with Deirdre or Ambrose again. Why was everyone suddenly challenging something that I’d held as absolute truth my entire life?
“She’s your friend. She’ll understand.” To make his point, he reached forward and tugged at the chotki peeking out underneath my sleeve, his fingertips brushing my wrist.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I pointed to the cross. “If anything, this proves it. I’m bound to her, to protect the Dragomirs, at all costs.”
“I know, but . . .” He didn’t finish, and honestly, what could he have said? This was becoming an old argument, one without a solution.
“I need to get back,” I said abruptly. “It’s past curfew.”
A wry smile crossed Dimitri’s face. “And you need me to get you back or you’ll get in trouble.”
“Well, yeah, I was kind of hoping. . . .”

13.

Facing my opponent, I saw: Dimitri.
It was unexpected. Some little voice in the back of my head said I couldn’t fight Dimitri. The rest of me reminded that voice that I’d been doing it for the last six months, and besides, he wasn’t Dimitri right now. He was my enemy.
I sprang toward him with the stake, hoping to catch him by surprise. But Dimitri was hard to catch by surprise. And he was fast. Oh, so fast. It was like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He halted my attack with a glancing blow to the side of the head. I knew it would hurt later, but my adrenaline was running too strong for me to pay attention to it now.
Distantly, I realized some other people had come to watch us. Dimitri and I were celebrities in different ways around here, and our mentoring relationship added to the drama. This was prime-time entertainment.
My eyes were only on Dimitri, though. As we tested each other, attacking and blocking, I tried to remember everything he’d taught me. I also tried to remember everything I knew about him. I’d practiced with him for months. I knew him, knew his moves, just as he knew mine. I could anticipate him the same way. Once I started using that knowledge, the fight grew tricky. We were too well matched, both of us too fast. My heart thumped in my chest, and sweat coated my skin.
Then Dimitri finally got through. He moved in for an attack, coming at me with the full force of his body. I blocked the worst of it, but he was so strong that I was the one who stumbled from the impact. He didn’t waste the opportunity and dragged me to the ground, trying to pin me. Being trapped like that by a Strigoi would likely result in the neck being bitten or broken. I couldn’t let that happen.
So, although he held most of me to the ground, I managed to shove my elbow up and nail him in the face. He flinched, and that was all I needed. I rolled him over and held him down. He fought to push me off, and I pushed right back while also trying to maneuver my stake. He was so strong, though. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to hold him. Then, just as I thought I’d lose my hold, I got a good grip on the stake. And like that, the stake came down over his heart. It was done.
Behind me, people were clapping, but all I noticed was Dimitri. Our gazes were locked. I was still straddling him, my hands pressed against his chest. Both of us were sweaty and breathing heavily. His eyes looked at me with pride—and a hell of a lot more. He was so close, and my whole body yearned for him, again thinking he was a piece of me I needed in order to be complete. The air between us seemed warm and heady, and I would have given anything in that moment to lie down with him and have his arms wrap around me. His expression showed me that he was thinking the same thing. The fight was finished, but remnants of the adrenaline and animal intensity remained.

14.

“Rose! Snap out of this!” He was yelling now too. “You don’t mean any of it. You’ve been stressed and under a lot of pressure—it’s making a terrible event that much worse.”
“Stop it!” I shouted back at him. “You’re doing it—just like you always do. You’re always so reasonable, no matter how awful things are. What happened to you wanting to kill Victor in prison, huh? Why was that okay, but not this?”
“Because that was an exaggeration. You know it was. But this . . . this is something different. There’s something wrong with you right now.”
“No, there’s something right with me.” I was sizing him up, hoping my words distracted him. If I was fast enough, maybe—just maybe—I could get past him. “I’m the only one who wants to do anything around here, and if that’s wrong, I’m sorry. You keep wanting me to be some impossible, good person, but I’m not! I’m not a saint like you.”
“Neither of us is a saint,” he said dryly. “Believe me, I don’t—”
I made my move, leaping out and shoving him away. It got him off me, but I didn’t get far. I’d barely gotten two feet from the bed when he seized me again and pinned me down, this time using the full weight of his body to keep me immobilized. Somehow, I knew I should have realized it was an impossible escape plan, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Let me go!” I yelled for the hundredth time tonight, trying to free my hands.
“No,” he said, voice hard and almost desperate. “Not until you break out of this. This isn’t you!”
There were hot tears in my eyes. “It is! Let me go!”
“It’s not. It isn’t you! It isn’t you.” There was agony in his voice.
“You’re wrong! It is—”
My words suddenly dropped off. It isn’t you. It was the same thing I’d said to Lissa when I watched, terrified, as she used her magic to torture Jesse. I’d stood there, unable to believe what she was doing. She hadn’t realized she’d lost control and was on the verge of becoming a monster. And now, looking into Dimtiri’s eyes, seeing his panic and love, I realized it was happening to me. I was the same as she’d been, so caught up, so blinded by irrational emotions that I didn’t even recognize my own actions. It was like I was being controlled by something else.
I tried to fight it off, to shake off the feelings burning through me. They were too strong. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them go. They would take me over completely, just as they’d done to Anna and Ms. Karp.
“Rose,” said Dimitri. It was only my name, but it was so powerful, filled with so much. Dimitri had such absolute faith me, faith in my own strength and goodness. And he had strength too, a strength I could see he wasn’t afraid to lend me if I needed it. Deirdre might have been onto something about me resenting Lissa, but she was completely off about Dimitri. What we had was love. We were like two halves of a whole, always ready to support the other. Neither of us was perfect, but that didn’t matter. With him, I could defeat this rage that filled me. He believed I was stronger than it. And I was.
Slowly, slowly, I felt that darkness fade away. I stopped fighting him. My body trembled, but it was no longer with fury. It was fear. Dimitri immediately recognized the change and released his hold.
“Oh my God,” I said, voice shaking.
His hand touched the side of my face, fingers light on my cheek. “Rose,” he breathed. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed back more tears. “I . . . I think so. For now.”
“It’s over,” he said. He was still touching me, this time brushing the hair from my face. “It’s over. Everything’s all right.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not. You . . . you don’t understand. It’s true—everything I was worried about. About Anna? About me taking away spirit’s craziness? It’s happening, Dimitri. Lissa lost it out there with Jesse. She was out of control, but I stopped her because I sucked away her anger and put it into myself. And it’s—it’s horrible. It’s like I’m, I don’t know, a puppet. I can’t control myself.”
“You’re strong,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“No,” I said. I could hear my voice cracking as I struggled to sit up. “It will happen again. I’m going to be like Anna. I’m going to get worse and worse. This time it was bloodlust and hate. I wanted to destroy them. I needed to destroy them. Next time? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll just be craziness, like Ms. Karp. Maybe I’m already crazy, and that’s why I’m seeing Mason. Maybe it’ll be depression like Lissa used to get. I’ll keep falling and falling into that pit, and then I’ll be like Anna and kill—”
“No,” Dimitri interrupted gently. He moved his face toward mine, our foreheads nearly touching. “It won’t happen to you. You’re too strong. You’ll fight it, just like you did this time.”
“I only did because you were here.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. “I can’t do it by myself,” I whispered.
“You can,” he said. There was a tremulous note in his voice. “You’re strong—you’re so, so strong. It’s why I love you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “You shouldn’t. I’m going to become something terrible. I might already be something terrible.” I thought back to past behaviors, the way I’d been snapping at everyone. The way I’d tried to scare Ryan and Camille.
Dimitri pulled away so that he could look me in the eyes. He cupped my face in his hands. “You aren’t. You won’t,” he said. “I won’t let you. No matter what, I won’t let you.”

15.

Emotion filled my body again, but now it wasn’t hate or rage or anything like that. It was warm and wonderful and made my heart ache—in a good way. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and our lips met. The kiss was pure love, sweet and blissful, with no despair or darkness. Steadily, though, the intensity of our kissing increased. It was still filled with love but became much more—something hungry and powerful. The electricity that had crackled between us when I’d fought and held him down earlier returned, wrapping around us now.
It reminded me of the night we’d been under Victor’s lust spell, both of us driven by inner forces we couldn’t control. It was like we were starving or drowning, and only the other person could save us. I clung to him, one arm around his neck while my other hand gripped his back so hard that my nails practically dug in. He laid me back down on the bed. His hands wrapped around my waist, and then one of them slid down the back of my thigh and pulled it up so that it nearly wrapped around him.
At the same time, we both pulled back briefly, still oh so close. Everything in the world rested on that moment.
“We can’t . . .” he told me.
“I know,” I agreed.
Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time, I knew there would be no turning back. There were no walls this time. Our bodies wrapped together as he tried to get my coat off, then his shirt, then my shirt. . . . It really was a lot like when we’d fought out on the quad earlier—that same passion and heat. I think at the end of the day, the instincts that power fighting and sex aren’t so different. They all come from an animal side of us.
Yet, as more and more clothes came off, it went beyond just animal passion. It was sweet and wonderful at the same time. When I looked into his eyes, I could see without a doubt that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, that I was his salvation, the same way that he was mine. I’d never expected my first time to be in a cabin in the woods, but I realized the place didn’t matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn’t matter if you were with someone you didn’t love.
And oh, I loved him. I loved him so much that it hurt. All of our clothes finally ended up in a pile on the floor, but the feel of his skin on mine was more than enough to keep me warm. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and his began, and I decided then that was how I always wanted it to be. I didn’t want us to ever be apart.
I wish I had the words to describe sex, but nothing I can say would really capture how amazing it was. I felt nervous, excited, and about a gazillion other things. Dimitri seemed so wise and skilled and infinitely patient—just like with our combat trainings. Following his lead seemed like a natural thing, but he was also more than willing to let me take control too. We were equals at last, and every touch held power, even the slightest brushing of his fingertips.
When it was over, I lay back against him. My body hurt . . . yet at the same time, it felt amazing, blissful and content. I wished I’d been doing this a long time ago, but I also knew it wouldn’t have been right until exactly this moment.
I rested my head on Dimitri’s chest, taking comfort in his warmth. He kissed my forehead and ran his fingers through my hair.
“I love you, Roza.” He kissed me again. “I’ll always be here for you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
The words were wonderful and dangerous. He shouldn’t have said anything like that to me. He shouldn’t have been promising he’d protect me, not when he was supposed to dedicate his life to protecting Moroi like Lissa. I couldn’t be first in his heart, just like he couldn’t be first in mine. That was why I shouldn’t have said what I said next—but I did anyway.
“And I won’t let anything happen to you,” I promised. “I love you.” He kissed me again, swallowing off any other words I might have added.
We lay together for a while after that, wrapped in each other’s arms, not saying much. I could have stayed that way forever, but finally, we knew we had to go. The others would eventually come looking for us to get my report, and if they found us like that, things would almost certainly get ugly.
So we got dressed, which wasn’t easy since we kept stopping to kiss. Finally, reluctantly, we left the cabin. We held hands, knowing we could only do so for a few brief moments. Once we were closer to the heart of campus, we’d have to go back to business as usual. But for now, everything in the world was golden and wonderful. Every step I took was filled with joy, and the air around us seemed to hum.

16.

“We gotta find another one,” I said.
“There are no others,” a familiar voice said.
I turned and looked into Dimitri’s face. He was alive. All the fear for him I’d held back burst through me. I wanted to throw myself at him and hold him as close to me as possible. He was alive—battered and bloody, yes—but alive.
His gaze held mine for just a moment, reminding me of what had happened in the cabin. It felt like a hundred years ago, but in that brief glance, I saw love and concern—and relief. He’d been worried about me too. Then Dimitri turned and gestured to the eastern sky. I followed the motion. The horizon was pink and purple. It was nearly sunrise.
“They’re either dead or have run away,” he told me. He glanced between Christian and me. “What you two did—”
“Was stupid?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Half of those are yours.”

17.

“Let’s get back inside,” Dimitri said.
We turned around, and as we walked toward the heart of the secondary campus, I saw it. The cabin. Neither of us slowed down or obviously looked at it, but I knew he was just as acutely aware of it as I was. He proved it when he spoke a moment later.
“Rose, about what happened—”
I groaned. “I knew it. I knew this was going to happen.”
He glanced over at me, startled. “That what was going to happen?”
“This. The part where you give me the huge lecture about how what we did was wrong and how we shouldn’t have done it and how it’s never going to happen again.” Until the words left my mouth, I didn’t realize how much I’d feared he would say that.
He still looked shocked. “Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s how you are,” I told him. I think I sounded a little hysterical. “You always want to do the right thing. And when you do the wrong thing, you then have to fix it and do the right thing. And I know you’re going to say that what we did shouldn’t have happened and that you wish—”
The rest of what I might have said was smothered as Dimitri wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in the shadow of a tree. Our lips met, and as we kissed, I forgot all about my worries and fears that he’d say what we’d done was a mistake. I even—as impossible as it seems—forgot about the death and destruction of the Strigoi. Just for a moment.
When we finally broke apart, he still kept me close to him. “I don’t think what we did was wrong,” he said softly. “I’m glad we did it. If we could go back in time, I’d do it again.”
A swirling feeling burned within my chest. “Really? What made you change your mind?”
“Because you’re hard to resist,” he said, clearly amused at my surprise. “And . . . do you remember what Rhonda said?”
There was another shock, hearing her brought up. But then I recalled his face when he’d listened to her and what he’d said about his grandmother. I tried to remember Rhonda’s exact words.
“Something about how you’re going to lose something. . . .” I apparently didn’t remember it so well.
“‘You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.’”
Naturally, he knew it word for word. I’d scoffed at the words at the time, but now I tried to decipher them. At first, I felt a surge of joy: I was what he valued most. Then I gave him a startled look. “Wait. You think I’m going to die? That’s why you slept with me?”
“No, no, of course not. I did what I did because . . . believe me, it wasn’t because of that. Regardless of the specifics—or if it’s even true—she was right about how easily things can change. We try to do what’s right, or rather, what others say is right. But sometimes, when that goes against who we are . . . you have to choose. Even before the Strigoi attack, as I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you—so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It’s not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that’s something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision . . . there was nothing to hold us back.” He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. “Well, to hold me back. I’m speaking for myself. I don’t mean to act like I know exactly why you did it.”
“I did it because I love you,” I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was.
He laughed. “You can sum up in one sentence what it takes me a whole speech to get out.”
“Because it’s that simple. I love you, and I don’t want to keep pretending like I don’t.”
“I don’t either.” His hand dropped from my face and found my hand. Fingers entwined, we began walking again. “I don’t want any more lies.”
“Then what’ll happen now? With us, I mean. Once all of this is done . . . with the Strigoi . . .”
“Well, as much as I hate to reinforce your fears, you were right about one thing. We can’t be together again—for the rest of the school year, that is. We’re going to have to keep our distance.”
I felt a little disappointed by this, but I knew with certainty he was right. We might finally have reached the point where we weren’t going to deny our relationship anymore, but we could hardly flaunt it while I was still his student.
Our feet splashed through slush. A few scattered birds sang in the trees, undoubtedly surprised to see so much activity in daylight around here. Dimitri stared off into the sky ahead, face thoughtful. “After you graduate and are out with Lissa . . .” He didn’t finish. It took me a moment, but I realized what he was about to say. My heart nearly stopped.
“You’re going to ask to be reassigned, aren’t you? You won’t be her guardian.”
“It’s the only way we can be together.”
“But we won’t actually be together,” I pointed out.
“Us staying with her gives us the same problem—me worrying more about you than her. She needs two guardians perfectly dedicated to her. If I can get assigned somewhere at Court, we’ll be near each other all the time. And in a secure place like that, there’s more flexibility with a guardian’s schedule.”
A whiny, selfish part of me wanted to immediately jump in with how much that sucked, but really, it didn’t. There was no option we had that was ideal. Each one came with hard choices. I knew it was hard for him to give up Lissa. He cared about her and wanted to keep her safe with a passion that almost rivaled my own. But he cared about me more, and he had to make that sacrifice if he still wanted to honor his sense of duty.
“Well,” I said, realizing something, “we might actually see more of each other if we’re guarding different people. We can get time off together. If we were both with Lissa, we’d be swapping shifts and always be apart.”

18.

Dimitri and I didn’t say anything else for a while. Like always, we didn’t have to. I knew he was feeling the same happy buzz I was, despite that stoic exterior. We were almost out of the forest, back in sight of the others, when he spoke again.
“You’ll be eighteen soon, but even so . . .” He sighed. “When this comes out, a lot of people aren’t going to be happy.”
“Yeah, well, they can deal.” Rumors and gossip I could handle.
“I also have a feeling your mother’s going to have a very ugly conversation with me.”
“You’re about to face down Strigoi, and my mother’s the one you’re scared of?”
I could see a smile playing at his lips. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. Where do you think you got it from?”
I laughed. “It’s a wonder you bother with me then.”
“You’re worth it, believe me.”
He kissed me again, using the last of the forest’s shadows for cover. In a normal world, this would have been a happy, romantic walk the morning after sex. We wouldn’t be preparing for battle and worrying about our loved ones. We’d be laughing and teasing each other while secretly planning our next romantic getaway.
We didn’t live in a normal world, of course, but in this kiss, it was easy to imagine we did.
He and I reluctantly broke apart and left the woods, heading back toward the guardians’ building. Dark times were ahead of us, but with his kiss still burning on my lips, I felt like I could do anything.

1.

“Are you sleepwalking?” a voice asked behind me.
I spun around, startled. Dimitri stood there watching me, looking both amused and curious. It would figure that while I was raging over the problems in my unfair love life, the source of those problems would be the one to find me. I hadn’t heard him approach at all. So much for my ninja skills. And honestly, would it have killed me to pick up a brush before I went outside? Hastily, I ran a hand through my long hair, knowing it was a little too late. It probably looked like an animal had died on top of my head.
“I was testing dorm security,” I said. “It sucks.”
A hint of a smile played over his lips. The cold was really starting to seep into me now, and I couldn’t help but notice how warm his long leather coat looked. I wouldn’t have minded wrapping up in it.
As though reading my mind, he said, “You must be freezing. Do you want my coat?”
I shook my head, deciding not to mention that I couldn’t feel my feet. “I’m fine. What are you doing out here? Are you testing security too?”
“I am security. This is my watch.” Shifts of school guardians always patrolled the grounds while everyone else slept. Strigoi, the undead vampires who stalked living Moroi vampires like Lissa, didn’t come out in sunlight, but students breaking rules—say, like, sneaking out of their dorms—were a problem night and day.
“Well, good work,” I said. “I’m glad I was able to help test your awesome skills. I should be going now.”
“Rose—” Dimitri’s hand caught my arm, and despite all the wind and chill and slush, a flash of heat shot through me. He released me with a start, as though he too had been burned. “What are you really doing out here?”
He was using the stop fooling around voice, so I gave him as truthful an answer as I could. “I had a bad dream. I wanted some air.”
“And so you just rushed out. Breaking the rules didn’t even cross your mind—and neither did putting on a coat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“Rose, Rose.” This time it was his exasperated voice. “You never change. Always jumping in without thinking.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve changed a lot.”
The amusement on his face suddenly faded, his expression growing troubled. He studied me for several moments. Sometimes I felt as though those eyes could see right into my soul. “You’re right. You have changed.”
He didn’t seem very happy about the admission. He was probably thinking about what had happened almost three weeks ago, when some friends and I had gotten ourselves captured by Strigoi. It was only through sheer luck that we’d managed to escape—and not all of us had gotten out. Mason, a good friend and a guy who’d been crazy about me, had been killed, and part of me would never forgive myself for it, even though I’d killed his murderers.
It had given me a darker outlook on life. Well, it had given everyone here at St. Vladimir’s Academy a darker outlook, but me especially. Others had begun to notice the difference in me. I didn’t like to see Dimitri concerned, though, so I played off his observation with a joke.
“Well, don’t worry. My birthday’s coming up. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’ll be an adult, right? I’m sure I’ll wake up that morning and be all mature and stuff.”
As I’d hoped, his frown softened into a small smile. “Yes, I’m sure. What is it, about a month?”
“Thirty-one days,” I announced primly.
“Not that you’re counting.”
I shrugged, and he laughed.
“I suppose you’ve made a birthday list too. Ten pages? Single-spaced? Ranked by order of priority?” The smile was still on his face. It was one of the relaxed, genuinely amused ones that were so rare to him.
I started to make another joke, but the image of Lissa and Christian flared into my mind again. That sad and empty feeling in my stomach returned. Anything I might have wanted—new clothes, an iPod, whatever—suddenly seemed trivial. What did material things like that mean compared to the one thing I wanted most of all? God, I really had changed.
“No,” I said in a small voice. “No list.”
He tilted his head to better look at me, making some of his shoulder-length hair blow into his face. His hair was brown, like mine, but not nearly as dark. Mine looked black at times. He brushed the unruly strands aside, only to have them immediately blow back into his face. “I can’t believe you don’t want anything. It’s going to be a boring birthday.”
Freedom, I thought. That was the only gift I longed for. Freedom to make my own choices. Freedom to love who I wanted.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said instead.
“What do you—” He stopped. He understood. He always did. It was part of why we connected like we did, in spite of the seven-year gap in our ages. We’d fallen for each other last fall when he’d been my combat instructor. As things heated up between us, we’d found we had more things to worry about than just age. We were both going to be protecting Lissa when she graduated, and we couldn’t let our feelings for each other distract us when she was our priority.

In a not-so-obvious attempt to change the subject, he said, “You can deny it all you want, but I know you’re freezing. Let’s go inside. I’ll take you in through the back.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little surprised. Dimitri was rarely one to avoid uncomfortable subjects. In fact, he was notorious for pushing me into conversations about topics I didn’t want to deal with. But talking about our dysfunctional, star-crossed relationship? That was a place he apparently didn’t want to go today. Yeah. Things were definitely changing.
“I think you’re the one who’s cold,” I teased, as we walked around the side of the dorm where novice guardians lived. “Shouldn’t you be all tough and stuff, since you’re from Siberia?”
“I don’t think Siberia’s exactly what you imagine.”
“I imagine it as an arctic wasteland,” I said truthfully.
“Then it’s definitely not what you imagine.”
“Do you miss it?” I asked, glancing back to where he walked behind me. It was something I’d never considered before. In my mind, everyone would want to live in the U.S. Or, well, they at least wouldn’t want to live in Siberia.
“All the time,” he said, his voice a little wistful. “Sometimes I wish—”
“Belikov!”
A voice was carried on the wind from behind us. Dimitri muttered something, and then shoved me further around the corner I’d just rounded. “Stay out of sight.”

2. - Eliminated in ROUND ONE

“Rose—”
“Dashkov?” I exclaimed, trying to keep my voice low so Alberta wouldn’t hear. “As in Victor Dashkov?”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Yes. Victor Dashkov.”
“And you guys were talking about . . . Do you mean . . .” I was so startled, so dumbstruck, that I could barely get my thoughts together. This was unbelievable. “I thought he was locked up! Are you saying he hasn’t been on trial yet?”
Yes. This was definitely unbelievable. Victor Dashkov. The guy who’d stalked Lissa and tortured her mind and body in order to control her powers. Every Moroi could use magic in one of the four elements: earth, air, water, or fire. Lissa, however, worked an almost unheard of fifth element called spirit. She could heal anything—including the dead. It was the reason I was now psychically linked to her—“shadow-kissed,” some called it. She’d brought me back from the car accident that had killed her parents and brother, binding us together in a way that allowed me to feel her thoughts and experiences.
Victor had learned long before any of us that she could heal, and he’d wanted to lock her away and use her as his own personal Fountain of Youth. He also hadn’t hesitated to kill anyone who got in his way—or, in the case of Dimitri and me, use more creative ways to stop his opponents. I’d made a lot of enemies in seventeen years, but I was pretty sure there was no one I hated as much as Victor Dashkov—at least among the living.
Dimitri had a look on his face I knew well. It was the one he got when he thought I might punch someone. “He’s been locked up—but no, no trial yet. Legal proceedings sometimes take a long time.”
“But there’s going to be a trial now? And you’re going?” I spoke through clenched teeth, trying to be calm. I suspected I still had the I’m going to punch someone look on my face.
“Next week. They need me and some of the other guardians to testify about what happened to you and Lissa that night.” His expression changed at the mention of what had occurred four months ago, and again, I recognized the look. It was the fierce, protective one he got when those he cared about were in danger.
“Call me crazy for asking this, but, um, are Lissa and I going with you?” I had already guessed the answer, and I didn’t like it.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Look, doesn’t it seem reasonable that if you’re going to talk about what happened to us, then you should have us there?”
Dimitri, fully in strict-instructor mode now, shook his head. “The queen and some of the other guardians thought it’d be best if you didn’t go. There’s enough evidence between the rest of us, and besides, criminal or not, he is—or was—one of the most powerful royals in the world. Those who know about this trial want to keep it quiet.”
“So, what, you thought if you brought us, we’d tell everyone?” I exclaimed. “Come on, comrade. You really think we’d do that? The only thing we want is to see Victor locked up. Forever. Maybe longer. And if there’s a chance he might walk free, you have to let us go.”
After Victor had been caught, he’d been taken to prison, and I’d thought that was where the story had ended. I’d figured they’d locked him up to rot. It had never occurred to me—though it should have—that he’d need a trial first. At the time, his crimes had seemed so obvious. But, although the Moroi government was secret and separate from the human one, it operated in a lot of the same ways. Due process and all that.
“It’s not my decision to make,” Dimitri said.
“But you have influence. You could speak up for us, especially if . . .” Some of my anger dimmed just a little, replaced by a sudden and startling fear. I almost couldn’t say the next words. “Especially if there really is a chance he might get off. Is there? Is there really a chance the queen could let him go?”
“I don’t know. There’s no telling what she or some of the other high-up royals will do sometimes.” He suddenly looked tired. He reached into his pocket and tossed over a set of keys. “Look, I know you’re upset, but we can’t talk about it now. I have to go meet Alberta, and you need to get inside. The square key will let you in the far side door. You know the one.”
I did. “Yeah. Thanks.”

3.

“You want some hot chocolate?” he asked.
I hadn’t expected that. “Sure.”
He dumped four packets of instant hot chocolate into two Styrofoam cups and then added in hot water.
“Doubling it is the secret,” he said when the cups were full.
He handed me mine, along with a wooden stirrer, and then walked toward a side door. Presuming I was supposed to follow him, I scurried to catch up without spilling my hot chocolate.
“Where are we—oh.”
I stepped through the doorway and found myself in a little glass-enclosed porch filled with small patio tables. I’d had no idea this porch was adjacent to the meeting room, but then, this was the building the guardians conducted all campus business out of. Novices were rarely allowed. I also hadn’t realized the building was built around a small courtyard, which was what this porch looked out to. In the summer, I imagined one could open the windows and be surrounded in greenery and warm air. Now, encased in glass and frost, I felt like I was in some kind of an ice palace.
Dimitri swept his hand over a chair, brushing off dust. I did the same and sat down opposite him. Apparently this room didn’t see a lot of use in the winter. Because it was enclosed, the room was warmer than outdoors, but it wasn’t heated otherwise. The air felt chilly, and I warmed my hands on my cup. Silence fell between Dimitri and me. The only noise came from me blowing on my hot chocolate. He drank his right away. He’d been killing Strigoi for years. What was a little scalding water here and there?
As we sat, and the quiet grew, I studied him over the edge of my cup. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew he knew I was watching. Like every other time I looked at him, I was always struck by his looks first. The soft dark hair that he often tucked behind his ears without realizing it, hair that never quite wanted to stay in its tie at the back of his neck. His eyes were brown too, somehow gentle and fierce at the same time. His lips had that same contradictory quality, I realized. When he was fighting or dealing with something grim, those lips would flatten and turn hard. But in lighter times . . . when he laughed or kissed . . . well, then they’d become soft and wonderful.
Today, more than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people, I felt a need to be the center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake to be a guardian, seeing as that job required so much silence. But with Dimitri, I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn’t have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other’s presence—smoldering sexual tension aside—that we lost all sense of self-consciousness. I exhaled and drank my cocoa.
“What happened out there?” he asked at last, meeting my gaze. “You didn’t crack under the pressure.”
His voice was curious, not accusatory. He wasn’t treating me as a student right now, I realized. He was regarding me as an equal. He simply wanted to know what was going on with me. There was no discipline or lecturing here.
And that just made it all the worse when I had to lie to him.
“Of course it was,” I told him, looking down into my cup. “Unless you believe I really did let Stan ‘attack’ Christian.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that. I never did. I knew you’d be unhappy when you found out about the assignments, but I never once doubted that you’d do what you’d have to for this. I knew you wouldn’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your duty.”
I looked up again and met his eyes, so full of faith and absolute confidence in me. “I didn’t. I was mad. . . . Still am a little. But once I said I’d do it, I meant it. And after spending some time with him . . . well, I don’t hate him. I actually think he’s good for Lissa, and he cares about her, so I can’t get upset about that. He and I just clash sometimes, that’s all . . . but we did really well together against the Strigoi. I remembered that while I was with him today, and arguing against this assignment just seemed stupid. So I decided to do the best job I could.”
I hadn’t meant to talk so much, but it felt good to let out what was inside of me, and the look on Dimitri’s face would have gotten me to say anything. Almost anything.
“What happened then?” he asked. “With Stan?”
I averted my eyes and played with my cup again. I hated keeping things from him, but I couldn’t tell him about this. In the human world, vampires and dhampirs were creatures of myth and legend—bedtime stories to scare children. Humans didn’t know we were real and walking the earth. But just because we were real didn’t mean that every other story-time paranormal creature was. We knew that and had our own myths and bedtime stories about things we didn’t believe in. Werewolves. Bogeymen. Ghosts.
Ghosts played no real role in our culture, short of being fodder for pranks and campfire tales. Ghosts inevitably came up on Halloween, and some legends endured over the years. But in real life? No ghosts. If you came back after death, it was because you were a Strigoi.
At least, that’s what I’d always been taught. I honestly didn’t know enough now to say what was going on. Me imagining Mason seemed more likely than him being a true ghost, but man, that meant I might seriously be heading into crazy territory. All this time I’d worried about Lissa losing it. Who had known it might be me?
Dimitri was still watching me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know what happened out there. My intentions were good . . . I just . . . I just messed up.”
“Rose. You’re a terrible liar.”
I glanced up. “No, I’m not. I’ve told a lot of good lies in my life. People have believed them.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m sure. But it doesn’t work with me. For one thing, you won’t look me in the eye. As for the other . . . I don’t know. I can just tell.”
Damn. He could tell. He just knew me that well. I stood up and moved to the door, keeping my back to him. Normally, I treasured every minute with him, but I couldn’t stick around today. I hated lying, but I didn’t want to tell the truth either. I had to leave.
“Look, I appreciate you being worried about me . . . but really, it’s okay. I just messed up. I’m embarrassed about it—and sorry I put your awesome training to shame—but I’ll rebound. Next time, Stan’s ass is mine.”
I hadn’t even heard him get up, but suddenly, Dimitri was right behind me. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I froze in front of the door leading out. He didn’t touch me anywhere else. He didn’t try to pull me closer. But, oh, that one hand on my shoulder held all the power in the world.
“Rose,” he said, and I knew he was no longer smiling. “I don’t know why you’re lying, but I know you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. And if there’s something wrong—something you’re afraid to tell the others—”
I spun around rapidly, somehow managing to pivot in place in such a way that his hand never moved yet ended up on my other shoulder.
“I’m not afraid,” I cried. “I do have my reasons, and believe me, what happened with Stan was nothing. Really. All of this is just something stupid that got blown out of proportion. Don’t feel sorry for me or feel like you have to do anything. What happened sucks, but I’ll just roll with it and take the black mark. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of me.” It took all of my strength just then not to shake. How had this day gotten so bizarre and out of control?
Dimitri didn’t say anything. He just looked down at me, and the expression on his face was one I’d never seen before. I couldn’t interpret it. Was he mad? Disapproving? I just couldn’t tell. The fingers on my shoulder tightened slightly and then relaxed.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he said at last. He sounded almost wistful, which made no sense. He was the one who’d been telling me for so long that I needed to be strong. I wanted to throw myself into his arms just then, but I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t help a smile. “You say that . . . but tell me the truth. Do you go running to others when you have problems?”
“That’s the not the same—”
“Answer the question, comrade.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“And don’t avoid the question either.”
“No,” he said. “I try to deal with my problems on my own.”
I slipped away from his hand. “See?”
“But you have a lot of people in your life you can trust, people who care about you. That changes things.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have people who care about you?”
He frowned, obviously rethinking his words. “Well, I’ve always had good people in my life . . . and there have been people who cared about me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I could trust them or tell them everything.”
I was often so distracted by the weirdness of our relationship that I rarely thought about Dimitri as someone with a life away from me. He was respected by everyone on campus. Teachers and students alike knew him as one of the deadliest guardians here. Whenever we ran into guardians from outside the school, they always seemed to know and respect him too. But I couldn’t recall ever having seen him in any sort of social setting. He didn’t appear to have any close friends among the other guardians—just coworkers he liked. The friendliest I’d ever seen him get with someone had been when Christian’s aunt, Tasha Ozera, visited. They’d known each other for a long time, but even that hadn’t been enough for Dimitri to pursue once her visit was over.
Dimitri was alone an awful lot, I realized, content to hole up with his cowboy novels when not working. I felt alone a lot, but in truth, I was almost always surrounded by people. With him being my teacher, I tended to view things as one-sided: He was the one always giving me something, be it advice or instruction. But I gave him something too, something harder to define—a connection with another person.
“Do you trust me?” I asked him.
The hesitation was brief. “Yes.”
“Then trust me now, and don’t worry about me just this once.”
I stepped away, out of the reach of his arm, and he didn’t say anything more or try to stop me. Cutting through the room that I’d had the hearing in, I headed for the building’s main exit, tossing the remnants of my hot chocolate in a garbage can as I walked past.

4.

When the service ended that Sunday, however, I had to stick around the chapel, because that was where my community service was going to happen. When the place had cleared out, I was surprised to see one other person had lingered with me: Dimitri.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Thought you might need some help. I hear the priest wants to do a lot of housecleaning.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the one being punished here. And this is your day off too. We—well, everyone else—spent the whole week battling it out, but you guys were the ones picking the fights the whole time.” In fact, I noticed now that Dimitri had a couple bruises too—though not nearly as many as Stan had. It had been a long week for everyone, and it was only the first of six.
“What else would I do today?”
“I could think of a hundred other things,” I noted dryly. “There’s probably a John Wayne movie on somewhere that you haven’t seen.”
He shook his head. “No, there isn’t. I’ve seen them all. Look—the priest is waiting for us.”
I turned around. Sure enough. Father Andrew stood at the front, watching us expectantly. He’d taken off the rich robes he’d worn during service and now stood in simple slacks and a button down shirt. He looked like he was ready to work too, and I wondered whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest.
As Dimitri and I approached to get our assignments, I pondered what could have actually made Dimitri stay here in the first place. Surely he hadn’t really wanted to work on his day off. I wasn’t used to puzzles with him. His intentions were usually straightforward, and I had to assume there was a simple explanation now. It just wasn’t clear yet.
“Thank you both for volunteering to help me.” Father Andrew smiled at us. I tried not to scoff at the “volunteering” reference. He was a Moroi in his late forties, with thinning gray hair. Even without much faith in religion, I still liked and respected him. “We aren’t doing anything particularly complex today,” he continued. “It’s a bit boring, really. We’ll have to do the regular cleaning, of course, and then I’d like to sort the boxes of old supplies I have sitting up in the attic.”
“We’re happy to do whatever you need,” Dimitri said solemnly. I repressed a sigh and tried not to think of all the other things I could be doing.
We set to it.
I was put on mop duty, and Dimitri took over dusting and polishing the wooden pews. He appeared thoughtful and intent as he cleaned, looking like he actually took pride in his work. I was still trying to figure out why he was here at all. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to have him. His presence made me feel better, and of course I always loved watching him.
I thought maybe he was there to get more information out of me about what had happened that day with Stan, Christian, and Brandon. Or maybe he wanted to chastise me about the other day with Stan, where I’d been accused of jumping into battle for selfish reasons. These seemed like likely explanations, yet he never said a word. Even when the priest stepped out of the sanctuary to go to his office, Dimitri continued working quietly. I would have figured if he’d had anything to say, he would have done it then.
When we finished the cleaning, Father Andrew had us haul box after box of stuff down from the attic and into a storeroom at the back of the chapel. Lissa and Christian frequently used that attic as a secret getaway, and I wondered if having it cleaner would be a pro or a con for their romantic interludes. Maybe they would abandon it, and I could start getting some sleep.
With all of the stuff downstairs, the three of us settled on the floor and began sorting it all out. Father Andrew gave us instructions on what to save and what to throw out, and it was a relief to be off my feet for a change this week. He made small talk as we worked, asking me about classes and other things. It wasn’t so bad.
And as we worked, a thought came to me. I’d done a good job convincing myself that Mason had been a delusion brought on by lack of sleep, but getting assurance from an authority figure that ghosts weren’t real would go a long way toward making me feel better.
“Hey,” I said to Father Andrew. “Do you believe in ghosts? I mean, is there any mention of them in—” I gestured around us. “—in this stuff?”
The question clearly surprised him, but he didn’t appear to take offense at me calling his vocation and life’s work “this stuff.” Or at the fact that I was obviously ignorant about it all, despite seventeen years of sitting through services. A bemused expression crossed his face, and he paused in his work.
“Well . . . it depends on how you define ‘ghost,’ I suppose.”
I tapped a theology book with my finger. “The whole point of this is that when you die, you go to heaven or hell. That makes ghosts just stories, right? They’re not in the Bible or anything.”
“Again,” he said, “it depends on your definition. Our faith has always held that after death, the spirit separates from the body and may indeed linger in this world.”
“What?” A dusty bowl I was holding dropped out of my hand. Fortunately, it was wood and didn’t break. I quickly retrieved it. That was not the answer I’d been expecting. “For how long? Forever?”
“No, no, of course not. That flies in the face of the resurrection and salvation, which form the cornerstone of our beliefs. But it’s believed the soul can stay on earth for three to forty days after death. It eventually receives a ‘temporary’ judgment that sends it on from this world to heaven or hell—although no one will truly experience either until the actual Judgment Day, when the soul and body are reunited to live out eternity as one.”
The salvation stuff was lost on me. The “three to forty days” was what caught my attention. I completely forgot about my sorting. “Yeah, but is it true or not? Are spirits really walking the earth for forty days after death?”
“Ah, Rose. Those who have to ask if faith is true are opening up a discussion they may not be ready for.”
I had a feeling he was right. I sighed and turned back to the box in front of me.
“But,” he said kindly, “if it helps you, some of these ideas parallel folk beliefs from Eastern Europe about ghosts that existed before the spread of Christianity. Those traditions have long upheld the idea of spirits staying around for a short time after death—particularly if the person in question died young or violently.”
I froze. Whatever progress I’d made in convincing myself Mason had been brought on by stress instantly vanished. Young or violently.
“Why?” I asked in a small voice. “Why would they stay? Is it . . . is it for revenge?”
“I’m sure there are some who believe that, just as some believe it’s because the soul has trouble finding peace after something so unsettling.”
“What do you believe?” I asked.
He smiled. “I believe the soul separates from the body, just as our fathers teach us, but I doubt the soul’s time on earth is anything the living can perceive. It’s not like in the movies, with ghosts haunting buildings or coming to visit those they knew. I envision these spirits as more of an energy existing around us, something beyond our perception as they wait to move on and find peace. Ultimately, what matters is what happens beyond this earth when we attain the eternal life our savior bought for us with his great sacrifice. That’s what’s important.”
I wondered if Father Andrew would be so quick to say that if he’d seen what I’d seen. Young or violently. Both had applied to Mason, and he had died less than forty days ago. That sad, sad face came back to me, and I wondered what it had meant. Revenge? Or could he truly not find peace?
And how did Father Andrew’s theology about heaven and hell fit with someone like me, who had died and come back to life? Victor Dashkov had said I’d gone to the world of the dead and returned when Lissa had healed me. What world of the dead? Was that heaven or hell? Or was it another way of referring to this in-between state on earth that Father Andrew was talking about?
I didn’t say anything after that, because the idea of a revenge-seeking Mason was so startling. Father Andrew sensed the change in me, but he obviously didn’t know what had brought it about. He tried to coax me out.
“I just got some new books in from a friend in another parish. Interesting stories about St. Vladimir.” He tilted his head. “Are you still interested in him? And Anna?”
Theoretically, I was. Until we’d met Adrian, we’d only known of two other spirit users. One was our former teacher, Ms. Karp, who’d gone completely nuts from spirit and become a Strigoi to stop the madness. The other person was St. Vladimir, the school’s namesake. He’d lived centuries ago and had brought his guardian, Anna, back from the dead, just as Lissa had me. It had made Anna shadow-kissed and created a bond between them too.
Normally, Lissa and I tried to get our hands on everything we could about Anna and Vlad, in order to learn more about ourselves. But, as incredible as it was for me to admit, I had bigger problems right now than the ever-present and ever-puzzling psychic link between Lissa and me. It had just been trumped by a ghost who could possibly be pissed off over my role in his untimely death.
“Yeah,” I said evasively, not making eye contact. “I’m interested . . . but I don’t think I can get to it anytime soon. I’m kind of busy with all this . . . you know, field experience stuff.”
I fell silent again. He took the hint and let me work on without further interruption. Dimitri never said a word throughout any of this. When we finally finished sorting, Father Andrew told us we had one more task before our work was done. He pointed to some boxes that we’d organized and repacked.
“I need you to carry these over to the elementary campus,” he said. “Leave them off at the Moroi dorm there. Ms. Davis has been teaching Sunday school for some of the kindergartners and might be able to use those.”
It would take at least two trips between Dimitri and me, and the elementary campus was a fair distance away. Still, that put me one step closer to freedom.
“Why are you interested in ghosts?” Dimitri asked me on our first trip.
“Just making conversation,” I said.
“I can’t see your face right now, but I have a feeling you’re lying again.”
“Jeez, everyone thinks the worst of me lately. Stan accused me of glory-seeking.”
“I heard about that,” said Dimitri, as we rounded a corner. The buildings of the elementary campus loomed up in front of us. “That might have been a little unfair of him.”
“A little, huh?” Hearing him admit that thrilled me, but it didn’t change my anger against Stan. That dark, grouchy feeling that had plagued me lately sprang to life. “Well, thanks, but I’m starting to lose faith in this field experience. Sometimes in the whole Academy.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know. The school just seems so caught up in rules and policies that don’t have anything to do with real life. I saw what was out there, comrade. I went right to the monster’s lair. In some ways . . . I don’t know if this really prepares us.”
I expected him to argue, but to my surprise he said, “Sometimes I agree.”
I nearly stumbled as we stepped inside one of the two Moroi dorms on the elementary campus. The lobby looked a lot like the ones on the secondary campus. “Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, a small smile on his face. “I mean, I don’t agree that novices should be put out in the world when they’re ten or anything, but sometimes I’ve thought the field experience should actually be in the field. I probably learned more in my first year as a guardian than I did in all my years of training. Well . . . maybe not all. But it’s a different situation, absolutely.”

5.

Dimitri, understanding my need to rush in and take action, seemed surprised by my unusual behavior. “You’re right—she should be there, but again, it’s nothing I can do anything about. You keep thinking I can control this, but I can’t.”
“But did you do everything you could?” I thought back to Adrian’s words in the dream, about how Dimitri could have done more. “You have a lot of influence. There must be something. Anything.”
“Not as much influence as you think. I’ve got a high position here at the Academy, but in the rest of the guardian world, I’m still pretty young. And yes, I did actually speak up for you.”
“Maybe you should have spoken up louder.”
I could sense him shutting down. He’d discuss most things reasonably but wouldn’t encourage me when I was just being a bitch. So, I tried to be more reasonable.
“Victor knows about us,” I said. “He could say something.”
“Victor has bigger things to worry about with this trial than us.”
“Yeah, but you know him. He doesn’t exactly act like a normal person would. If he feels like he’s lost all hope of getting off, he might decide to bust us just for the sake of revenge.”
I’d never been able to confess my relationship with Dimitri to Lissa, yet our worst enemy knew about it. It was weirder even than Adrian knowing. Victor had figured it out by watching us and gathering data. I guess when you’re a scheming villain, you get good at that stuff. He’d never made the knowledge public, though. Instead, he’d used it against us with the lust charm he’d made from earth magic. A charm like that wouldn’t work if there wasn’t already attraction in place. The charm just cranked things up. Dimitri and I had been all over each other and had been only a heartbeat away from having sex. It had been a pretty smart way for Victor to distract us without using violence. If anyone had tried to attack us, we could have put up a good fight. But turn us loose on each other? We had trouble fighting that.
Dimitri was silent for several moments. I knew he knew I had a point. “Then we’ll have to deal with that as best we can,” he said at last. “But if Victor’s going to tell, he’s going to do it whether or not you testify.”
I refused to say anything else until we got to the church. When we did, Father Andrew told us that after going over some more things, he’d decided he really only needed one more box brought over to Ms. Davis.
“I’ll do it,” I told Dimitri crisply, once the priest was out of earshot. “You don’t have to come.”
“Rose, please don’t make a big deal about this.”
“It is a big deal!” I hissed. “And you don’t seem to get it.”
“I do get it. Do you really think I want to see Victor loose? Do you think I want us all at risk again?” It was the first time in a long time I’d seen his control on the verge of snapping. “But I told you, I’ve done all I can do. I’m not like you—I can’t keep making a scene when things don’t go my way.”
“I do not.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
He was right. Some part of me knew I’d crossed a line . . . but just like with everything else recently, I couldn’t stop talking.
“Why did you even help me today?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Is that so strange?” he asked. He almost looked hurt.
“Yes. I mean, are you are you trying to spy on me? Figure out why I messed up? Make sure I don’t get into any trouble?”
He studied me, brushing hair out of his eyes. “Why does there have to be some ulterior motive?”
I wanted to blurt out a hundred different things. Like, if there wasn’t a motive, then that meant he just wanted to spend time with me. And that made no sense, because we both knew we were only supposed to have a teacher-student relationship. He of all people should know that. He was the one who’d told me.
“Because everyone has motives.”
“Yes. But not always the motives you think.” He pushed open the door. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him go, my feelings a tangle of confusion and anger. If the situation hadn’t been so strange, I would have almost said it was like we’d just gone on a date.

6.

“I’m sorry,” I gulped out. “I’m so sorry.”
He turned toward me, his face schooled to that perfect picture of neutrality that he was so good at. “Sorry for what?”
“For all the horrible things I said yesterday. You did it—you really did it. You got them to let us go.”
Despite my nervousness about seeing Victor, I was filled with elation. Dimitri had come through. I’d known all along that he really cared about me—this just proved it. If there hadn’t been so many people around, I would have hugged him.
Dimitri’s face didn’t change. “It wasn’t me, Rose. I had nothing to do with it.”

7.

He was surprised to see me at his door—and a little wary. The last time this had happened, I’d been under the influence of Victor’s lust charm and had behaved . . . aggressively.
“I have to talk to you,” I said.
He let me come in, and I immediately handed over the note.
“V. D.—”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dimitri. He handed the note back. “Victor Dashkov.”
“What are we going to do? I mean, we talked about this, but now he really is saying he’s going to sell us out.”
Dimitri didn’t answer, and I could tell he was assessing every angle of this, just like he would a fight. Finally, he pulled out his cell phone, which was a lot cooler than having to rely on the room’s phone. “Give me a moment.”
I started to sit on his bed, decided that was dangerous, and instead sat on the couch. I didn’t know who he was calling, but the conversation took place in Russian.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he finished.
“I’ll let you know soon. For now, we have to wait.”
“Great. My favorite thing to do.”
He dragged an armchair up and sat opposite me. It seemed too small for someone as tall as him, but, as always, he managed to make it work and appear graceful in the process.
Beside me was one of the Western novels he always carried around. I picked it up, again thinking about how alone he was. Even now, at the Court, he’d chosen to stay in his room. “Why do you read these?”
“Some people read books for fun,” he observed.
“Hey, watch the dig. And I do read books. I read them to solve mysteries that threaten my best friend’s life and sanity. I don’t think reading this cowboy stuff is really saving the world like I do.”
He took it from me and flipped it over, face thoughtful and not as intense as usual. “Like any book, it’s an escape. And there’s something . . . mmm. I don’t know. Something appealing about the Old West. No rules. Everyone just lives by their own code. You don’t have to be tied down by others’ ideas of right and wrong in order to bring justice.”
“Wait,” I laughed. “I thought I was the one who wanted to break rules.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to. Just that I can see the appeal.”
“You can’t fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.”
“No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”
I grinned, and suddenly, it was a lot like when we cleaned the church—before the fight, at least. Easy. Comfortable. In fact, it was a lot like the old days when we’d first begun training together, way back before everything had gotten so complicated. Well, okay . . . things had always been complicated, but for a while, they’d been less complicated. It made me sad. I wished we could relive those early days. There’d been no Victor Dashkov, no blood on my hands.
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said all of a sudden.
“For what? Reading cheesy novels?”
“For not being able to get you here. I feel like I let you down.” I glimpsed a shadow of worry on his face, like he was concerned he might have caused some irreparable damage.
The apology totally caught me off guard. For a moment, I wondered if he was jealous of Adrian’s influence in the same way Christian had been. Then I realized it was completely different. I’d been giving Dimitri a hard time because I’d been convinced he could do anything. Somewhere—deep inside—he felt the same, at least where I was concerned. He didn’t want to deny me anything. My earlier bad mood had long since vanished, and I suddenly just felt drained. And stupid.
“You didn’t,” I told him. “I acted like a total brat. You’ve never let me down before. You didn’t let me down with this.”
The grateful look he gave me made me feel as if I had wings. If another moment had passed, I suspected he would have said something so sweet that I would have flown away. Instead, his phone rang.
Another conversation in Russian took place, and then he stood up. “All right, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To see Victor Dashkov.”

8.

“Why are we doing this?” I whispered as we walked down the hall toward Victor’s cell. I’d really, really hoped for stone walls and torches, but the place looked very modern and efficient, with marble floors and stark white walls. At least there were no windows. “You think we can talk him out of it?”
Dimitri shook his head. “If Victor wanted to take revenge on us, he’d just do it without any warning. He doesn’t do things without a reason. The fact that he told you first means he wants something, and now we’re going to find out what it is.”

9.

“And Victor’s not going to say anything about us,” said Dimitri, tugging my arm. “He’s achieved his goal. He brought you here because he wanted to know about Lissa.”
“He didn’t find out much,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” said Victor. He grinned at Dimitri. “And what makes you so certain I won’t enlighten the world about your romantic indiscretions?”
“Because it won’t save you from prison. And if you ruin Rose, you’ll destroy whatever weak chance you had of Lissa helping you with your warped fantasy.” Victor flinched just a little; Dimitri was right. Dimitri stepped forward, pressing close to the bars as I had earlier. I’d thought I had a scary voice, but when he spoke his next words, I realized I wasn’t even close. “And it’ll all be pointless anyway, because you won’t stay alive long enough in prison to stage your grand plans. You aren’t the only one with connections.”
My breath caught a little. Dimitri brought so many things to my life: love, comfort, and instruction. I got so used to him sometimes that I forgot just how dangerous he could be. As he stood there, tall and threatening while he glared down at Victor, I felt a chill run down my spine. I remembered how when I had first come to the Academy, people had said Dimitri was a god. In this moment, he looked it.
If Victor was frightened by Dimitri’s threat, he didn’t show it. His jade green eyes glanced between the two of us. “You two are a match made in heaven. Or somewhere.”
“See you in court,” I said.
Dimitri and I left. On our way out, he said a few words in Russian to the guardian on duty. From their manners, my guess was Dimitri was offering thanks.
We ventured outdoors, walking across a wide, beautiful parklike space to get back to our rooms. The sleet had stopped, and it had left everything—buildings and trees alike—coated in ice. It was like the world was made of glass. Glancing at Dimitri, I saw him staring straight ahead. It was hard to tell while walking, but I could have sworn he was shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“As okay as I can be.”
“Do you think he’ll tell everyone about us?”
“No.”
We walked in silence for a bit. I finally asked the question I’d been dying to know.
“Did you mean it . . . that if Victor did tell . . . that you’d . . .” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words have him killed.
“I don’t have much influence in the upper levels of Moroi royalty, but I have plenty among the guardians who handle the dirty work in our world.”
“You didn’t answer the question. If you’d really do it.”
“I’d do a lot of things to protect you, Roza.”
My heart pounded. He only used “Roza” when he was feeling particularly affectionate toward me.
“It wouldn’t exactly be protecting me. It’d be after the fact—cold-blooded. You don’t do that kind of thing,” I told him. “Revenge is more my thing. I’ll have to kill him.”
I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t think it was funny. “Don’t talk like that. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Victor’s not going to say anything.”

10.

“My grandmother was like Rhonda,” he explained. “That is, she practiced the same kind of arts. Personality-wise, they’re very different.”
“Your grandmother was a . . . v-whatever?”
“It’s called something else in Russian, but yes, same meaning. She used to read cards and give advice too. It was how she made her living.”
I bit off any comments about frauds. “Was she right? In her predictions?”
“Sometimes. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got this look on your face that says you think I’m delusional, but you’re too nice to say anything.”
“Delusional’s kind of harsh. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never expected you to buy into this stuff.”
“Well, I grew up with it, so it doesn’t seem that strange to me. And like I said, I’m not sure I buy into it 100 percent.”
Adrian had joined the group by the plane and was protesting loudly about us not being able to board yet.
“I never thought of you as having a grandmother, either,” I told Dimitri. “I mean, obviously, you’d have to. But still . . . it’s just weird to think about growing up with one.” Contact with my own mother was rare enough, and I’d never even met any of my other family members. “Was it weird having a witch grandma? Scary? Was she always, like, threatening to cast spells if you were bad?”
“Most of the time she just threatened to send me to my room.”
“That doesn’t sound so scary to me.”
“That’s because you haven’t met her.”
I noted the wording. “Is she still alive?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll take more than old age to kill her off. She’s tough. She was actually a guardian for a while.”
“Really?” Much like with Ambrose, my fixed ideas about dhampirs, guardians, and blood whores were getting muddled. “So she gave it up to become a—uh, to stay with her kids?”
“She has very strong ideas about family—ideas that probably sound kind of sexist to you. She believes all dhampirs should train and put in time as guardians, but that the women should eventually return home to raise their children together.”
“But not the men?”
“No,” he said wryly. “She thinks men still need to stay out there and kill Strigoi.”
“Wow.” I remembered Dimitri telling me a little about his family. His father had popped back every so often, but that was about it for the men in his life. All of his siblings were sisters. And honestly, the idea didn’t sound so sexist. I had the same ideas about men going off to fight, which was why meeting Ambrose had been so weird. “You were the one who had to go. The women in your family kicked you out.”
“Hardly,” he laughed. “My mother would take me back in a second if I wanted to come home.” He was smiling like it was a joke, but I saw something in his eyes that looked a lot like homesickness.

11.

Dimitri came to an abrupt stop and turned so that he stood right in front of me, blocking my path. I skidded to a halt, nearly running into him. He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to him than I would have expected him to do in public. His fingers bit deep into me, but they didn’t hurt.
“Rose,” he said, the pain in his voice making my heart stop, “this shouldn’t have been the first time I heard about this! Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know what it was like? Do you know it was like for me to see you like that and not know what was happening? Do you know how scared I was?”
I was stunned, both from his outburst and our proximity. I swallowed, unable to speak at first. There was so much on his face, so many emotions. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen that much of him on display. It was wonderful and frightening at the same time. I then said the stupidest thing possible.
“You’re not scared of anything.”
“I’m scared of lots of things. I was scared for you.” He released me, and I stepped back. There was still passion and worry written all over him. “I’m not perfect. I’m not invulnerable.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I always saw Dimitri as larger than life. All-knowing. Invincible. It was hard for me to believe that he could worry about me so much.
“And this has been going on for a long time too,” he added. “It was going on with Stan, when you were talking to Father Andrew about ghosts—you were dealing with it this whole time! Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you tell Lissa . . . or . . . me?”
I stared into those dark, dark eyes, those eyes I loved. “Would you have believed me?”
He frowned. “Believed what?”
“That I’m seeing ghosts.”
“Well . . . they aren’t ghosts, Rose. You only think they are because—”
“That’s why,” I interrupted. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you or anybody. Nobody would believe me, not without thinking I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said. “But I think you’ve been through a lot.” Adrian had said almost the exact same thing when I asked him how I could tell if I was crazy or not.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I started walking again.
Without even taking another step, he reached out and grabbed me once more. He pulled me back to him, so that we now stood even closer than before. I glanced uneasily around again, wondering if someone might see us, but the campus was deserted. It was early, not quite sunset, so early that most people probably weren’t even up for the school day yet. We wouldn’t see activity around here for at least another hour. Still, I was surprised to see Dimitri was still risking it.
“Tell me then,” he said. “Tell me how it’s more than that.”
“You won’t believe me,” I said. “Don’t you get it? No one will. Even you . . . of all people.” Something in that thought made my voice catch. Dimitri understood so much about me. I wanted—needed—him to understand this too.
“I’ll . . . try. But I still don’t think you really understand what’s happening to you.”
“I do,” I said firmly. “That’s what no one realizes. Look, you have to decide once and for all if you really do trust me. If you think I’m a child, too naive to get what’s going on with her fragile mind, then you should just keep walking. But if you trust me enough to remember that I’ve seen things and know things that kind of surpass those of others my age . . . well, then you should also realize that I might know a little about what I’m talking about.”
A lukewarm breeze, damp with the scent of melted snow, swirled around us. “I do trust you, Roza. But . . . I don’t believe in ghosts.”
The earnestness was there. He did want to reach out to me, to understand . . . but even as he did, it warred with beliefs he wasn’t ready to change yet. It was ironic, considering tarot cards apparently spooked him.
“Will you try to?” I asked. “Or at the very least try not to write this off to some psychosis?”
“Yes. That I can do.”
So I told him about my first couple of Mason sightings and how I’d been afraid to explain the Stan incident to anyone. I talked about the shapes I’d seen on the plane and described in more detail what I’d seen on the ground.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of, um, specific for a random stress reaction?” I asked when I finished.
“I don’t know that you can really expect ‘stress reactions’ to be random or specific. They’re unpredictable by nature.” He had that thoughtful expression I knew so well, the one that told me he was turning over all sorts of things in his head. I could also tell that he still wasn’t buying this as a real ghost story but that he was trying very hard to keep an open mind. He affirmed as much a moment later: “Why are you so certain these aren’t just things you’re imagining?”
“Well, at first I thought I was imagining it all. But now . . . I don’t know. There’s something about it that feels real . . . even though I know that isn’t actually evidence. But you heard what Father Andrew said—about ghosts sticking around after they die young or violently.”
Dimitri actually bit his lip. He’d been about to tell me not to take the priest literally. Instead he asked, “So you think Mason’s back for revenge?”
“I thought that at first, but now I’m not so sure. He’s never tried to hurt me. He just seems like he wants something. And then . . . all those other ghosts seemed to want something too—even the ones I didn’t know. Why?”
Dimitri gave me a sage look. “You have a theory.”
“I do. I was thinking about what Victor said. He mentioned that because I’m shadow-kissed—because I died—I have a connection to the world of the dead. That I’ll never entirely leave it behind me.”
His expression hardened. “I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what Victor Dashkov tells you.”
“But he knows things! You know he does, no matter how big an ******* he is.”
“Okay, supposing that’s true, that being shadow-kissed lets you see ghosts, why is it happening now? Why didn’t it happen right after the car accident?”
“I thought of that,” I said eagerly. “It was something else Victor said—that now that I was dealing in death, I was that much closer to the other side. What if causing someone else’s death strengthened my connection and now makes this possible? I just had my first real kill. Kills, even.”
“Why is it so haphazard?” asked Dimitri. “Why does it occur when it does? Why the airplane? Why not at Court?”
My enthusiasm dimmed a little. “What are you, a lawyer?” I snapped. “You question everything I’m saying. I thought you were going to have an open mind.”
“I am. But you need to too. Think about it. Why this pattern of sightings?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I sagged in defeat. “You still think I’m crazy.”
He reached out and cupped my chin, tipping my face up to look at his. “No. Never. Not one of these theories makes me think you’re crazy. But I’ve always believed the simplest explanation makes sense. Dr. Olendzki’s does. The ghost one has holes. But, if you can find out more . . . then we may have something to work with.”
“We?” I asked.
“Of course. I’m not leaving you alone on this, no matter what. You know I’d never abandon you.”
There was something very sweet and noble about his words, and I felt the need to return them, though mostly I ended up sounding idiotic. “And I won’t ever abandon you, you know. I mean it . . . not that this stuff ever happens to you, of course, but if you start seeing ghosts or anything, I’ll help you through it.”
He gave a small, soft laugh. “Thanks.”
Our hands found each other’s, fingers lacing together. We stood like that for almost a full minute, neither of us saying anything. The only place we touched was our hands. The breeze picked up again, and although the temperature was probably only in the forties, it felt like spring to me. I expected flowers to burst into bloom around us. As though sharing the same thought, we released our hands at the same time.

12.

“Rose, is everything okay?” He started to stand, and I motioned him down as I slid into the spot beside him. The faint smell of incense lingered in the air.
“Yeah . . . well, kind of. No breakdowns, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just had a question. Or, well, a theory.”
I explained the conversation with Alice and what I’d deduced from it. He listened patiently, expression thoughtful.
“I know Alice. I’m not sure she’s credible,” he said when I finished. It was similar to what he’d said about Victor.
“I know. I thought the same thing. But a lot of it makes sense.”
“Not quite. As you pointed out, why are your visions so irregular here? That doesn’t go along with the ward theory. You should feel like you did on the plane.”
“What if the wards are just weak?” I asked.
He shook his head. “That’s impossible. Wards take months to wear down. New ones are put in place here every two weeks.”
“That often?” I asked, unable to hide my disappointment. I’d known maintenance was frequent but not that frequent. Alice’s theory had almost provided a sound explanation, one that didn’t involve me being insane.
“Maybe they’re getting staked,” I suggested. “By humans or something—like we saw before.”
“Guardians walk the grounds a few times a day. If there was a stake in the borders of campus, we’d notice.”
I sighed.
Dimitri moved his hand over mine, and I flinched. He didn’t remove it, though, and as he did so frequently, guessed my thoughts. “You thought if she was right, it would explain everything.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to be crazy.”
“You aren’t crazy.”
“But you don’t believe I’m really seeing ghosts.”
He glanced away, his eyes staring at the flickering of candles on the altar. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to keep an open mind. And being stressed isn’t the same as being crazy.”
“I know,” I admitted, still very conscious of how warm his hand was. I shouldn’t have been thinking about things like that in a church. “But . . . well . . . there’s something else. . . .”
I told him then about Anna possibly “catching” Vladimir’s insanity. I also explained Adrian’s aura observations. He turned his gaze back on me, expression speculative.
“Have you told anyone else about this? Lissa? Your counselor?”
“No,” I said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “I was afraid of what they’d think.”
He squeezed my hand. “You have to stop this. You aren’t afraid of throwing yourself in the path of danger, but you’re terrified of letting anyone in.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him. “I guess.”
“Then why’d you tell me?”
I smiled. “Because you told me I should trust people. I trust you.”
“You don’t trust Lissa?”
My smile faltered. “I trust her, absolutely. But I don’t want to tell her things that’ll make her worry. I guess it’s a way of protecting her, just like keeping Strigoi away.”
“She’s stronger than you think,” he said. “And she would go out of her way to help you.”
“So what? You want me to confide in her and not you?”
“No, I want you to confide in both of us. I think it’d be good for you. Does what happened to Anna bother you?”
“No.” I looked away again. “It scares me.”
I think the admission stunned both of us. I certainly hadn’t expected to say it. We both froze for a moment, and then Dimitri wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. A sob built up in me as I rested my cheek against the leather of his coat and heard the steady beating of his heart.
“I don’t want to be like that,” I told him. “I want to be like everyone else. I want my mind to be . . . normal. Normal by Rose standards, I mean. I don’t want to lose control. I don’t want to be like Anna and kill myself. I love being alive. I’d die to save my friends, but I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope we all live long, happy lives. Like Lissa said—one big happy family. There’s so much I want to do, but I’m so scared . . . scared that I’ll be like her. . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop it. . . .”
He held me tighter. “It’s not going to happen,” he murmured. “You’re wild and impulsive, but at the end of the day, you’re one of the strongest people I know. Even if you are the same as Anna—and I don’t think you are—you two won’t share the same fate.”
It was funny. I’d often told Lissa the same thing about her and Vladimir. She’d always had a hard time believing it, and now I understood. Giving advice was a lot harder than following it.
“You’re also missing something,” he continued, running a hand over my hair. “If you are in danger from Lissa’s magic, then at least you understand why. She can stop using her magic, and that’ll be the end of it.”
I pulled away slightly so I could look at him. Hastily, I ran my hand over my eyes in case any tears had escaped.
“But can I ask her to do that?” I said. “I’ve felt how it makes her feel. I don’t know if I can take that away from her.”
He regarded me with surprise. “Even at the cost of your own life?”
“Vladimir did great things—so could she. Besides, they come first, right?”
“Not always.”
I stared. I’d had they come first drilled into me since I was a child. It was what all guardians believed. Only the dhampirs who’d run away from their duty didn’t subscribe to that. What he said was almost like treason.
“Sometimes, Rose, you have to know when to put yourself first.”
I shook my head. “Not with Lissa.” I might as well have been with Deirdre or Ambrose again. Why was everyone suddenly challenging something that I’d held as absolute truth my entire life?
“She’s your friend. She’ll understand.” To make his point, he reached forward and tugged at the chotki peeking out underneath my sleeve, his fingertips brushing my wrist.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I pointed to the cross. “If anything, this proves it. I’m bound to her, to protect the Dragomirs, at all costs.”
“I know, but . . .” He didn’t finish, and honestly, what could he have said? This was becoming an old argument, one without a solution.
“I need to get back,” I said abruptly. “It’s past curfew.”
A wry smile crossed Dimitri’s face. “And you need me to get you back or you’ll get in trouble.”
“Well, yeah, I was kind of hoping. . . .”

13.

Facing my opponent, I saw: Dimitri.
It was unexpected. Some little voice in the back of my head said I couldn’t fight Dimitri. The rest of me reminded that voice that I’d been doing it for the last six months, and besides, he wasn’t Dimitri right now. He was my enemy.
I sprang toward him with the stake, hoping to catch him by surprise. But Dimitri was hard to catch by surprise. And he was fast. Oh, so fast. It was like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He halted my attack with a glancing blow to the side of the head. I knew it would hurt later, but my adrenaline was running too strong for me to pay attention to it now.
Distantly, I realized some other people had come to watch us. Dimitri and I were celebrities in different ways around here, and our mentoring relationship added to the drama. This was prime-time entertainment.
My eyes were only on Dimitri, though. As we tested each other, attacking and blocking, I tried to remember everything he’d taught me. I also tried to remember everything I knew about him. I’d practiced with him for months. I knew him, knew his moves, just as he knew mine. I could anticipate him the same way. Once I started using that knowledge, the fight grew tricky. We were too well matched, both of us too fast. My heart thumped in my chest, and sweat coated my skin.
Then Dimitri finally got through. He moved in for an attack, coming at me with the full force of his body. I blocked the worst of it, but he was so strong that I was the one who stumbled from the impact. He didn’t waste the opportunity and dragged me to the ground, trying to pin me. Being trapped like that by a Strigoi would likely result in the neck being bitten or broken. I couldn’t let that happen.
So, although he held most of me to the ground, I managed to shove my elbow up and nail him in the face. He flinched, and that was all I needed. I rolled him over and held him down. He fought to push me off, and I pushed right back while also trying to maneuver my stake. He was so strong, though. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to hold him. Then, just as I thought I’d lose my hold, I got a good grip on the stake. And like that, the stake came down over his heart. It was done.
Behind me, people were clapping, but all I noticed was Dimitri. Our gazes were locked. I was still straddling him, my hands pressed against his chest. Both of us were sweaty and breathing heavily. His eyes looked at me with pride—and a hell of a lot more. He was so close, and my whole body yearned for him, again thinking he was a piece of me I needed in order to be complete. The air between us seemed warm and heady, and I would have given anything in that moment to lie down with him and have his arms wrap around me. His expression showed me that he was thinking the same thing. The fight was finished, but remnants of the adrenaline and animal intensity remained.

14.

“Rose! Snap out of this!” He was yelling now too. “You don’t mean any of it. You’ve been stressed and under a lot of pressure—it’s making a terrible event that much worse.”
“Stop it!” I shouted back at him. “You’re doing it—just like you always do. You’re always so reasonable, no matter how awful things are. What happened to you wanting to kill Victor in prison, huh? Why was that okay, but not this?”
“Because that was an exaggeration. You know it was. But this . . . this is something different. There’s something wrong with you right now.”
“No, there’s something right with me.” I was sizing him up, hoping my words distracted him. If I was fast enough, maybe—just maybe—I could get past him. “I’m the only one who wants to do anything around here, and if that’s wrong, I’m sorry. You keep wanting me to be some impossible, good person, but I’m not! I’m not a saint like you.”
“Neither of us is a saint,” he said dryly. “Believe me, I don’t—”
I made my move, leaping out and shoving him away. It got him off me, but I didn’t get far. I’d barely gotten two feet from the bed when he seized me again and pinned me down, this time using the full weight of his body to keep me immobilized. Somehow, I knew I should have realized it was an impossible escape plan, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Let me go!” I yelled for the hundredth time tonight, trying to free my hands.
“No,” he said, voice hard and almost desperate. “Not until you break out of this. This isn’t you!”
There were hot tears in my eyes. “It is! Let me go!”
“It’s not. It isn’t you! It isn’t you.” There was agony in his voice.
“You’re wrong! It is—”
My words suddenly dropped off. It isn’t you. It was the same thing I’d said to Lissa when I watched, terrified, as she used her magic to torture Jesse. I’d stood there, unable to believe what she was doing. She hadn’t realized she’d lost control and was on the verge of becoming a monster. And now, looking into Dimtiri’s eyes, seeing his panic and love, I realized it was happening to me. I was the same as she’d been, so caught up, so blinded by irrational emotions that I didn’t even recognize my own actions. It was like I was being controlled by something else.
I tried to fight it off, to shake off the feelings burning through me. They were too strong. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them go. They would take me over completely, just as they’d done to Anna and Ms. Karp.
“Rose,” said Dimitri. It was only my name, but it was so powerful, filled with so much. Dimitri had such absolute faith me, faith in my own strength and goodness. And he had strength too, a strength I could see he wasn’t afraid to lend me if I needed it. Deirdre might have been onto something about me resenting Lissa, but she was completely off about Dimitri. What we had was love. We were like two halves of a whole, always ready to support the other. Neither of us was perfect, but that didn’t matter. With him, I could defeat this rage that filled me. He believed I was stronger than it. And I was.
Slowly, slowly, I felt that darkness fade away. I stopped fighting him. My body trembled, but it was no longer with fury. It was fear. Dimitri immediately recognized the change and released his hold.
“Oh my God,” I said, voice shaking.
His hand touched the side of my face, fingers light on my cheek. “Rose,” he breathed. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed back more tears. “I . . . I think so. For now.”
“It’s over,” he said. He was still touching me, this time brushing the hair from my face. “It’s over. Everything’s all right.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not. You . . . you don’t understand. It’s true—everything I was worried about. About Anna? About me taking away spirit’s craziness? It’s happening, Dimitri. Lissa lost it out there with Jesse. She was out of control, but I stopped her because I sucked away her anger and put it into myself. And it’s—it’s horrible. It’s like I’m, I don’t know, a puppet. I can’t control myself.”
“You’re strong,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“No,” I said. I could hear my voice cracking as I struggled to sit up. “It will happen again. I’m going to be like Anna. I’m going to get worse and worse. This time it was bloodlust and hate. I wanted to destroy them. I needed to destroy them. Next time? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll just be craziness, like Ms. Karp. Maybe I’m already crazy, and that’s why I’m seeing Mason. Maybe it’ll be depression like Lissa used to get. I’ll keep falling and falling into that pit, and then I’ll be like Anna and kill—”
“No,” Dimitri interrupted gently. He moved his face toward mine, our foreheads nearly touching. “It won’t happen to you. You’re too strong. You’ll fight it, just like you did this time.”
“I only did because you were here.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. “I can’t do it by myself,” I whispered.
“You can,” he said. There was a tremulous note in his voice. “You’re strong—you’re so, so strong. It’s why I love you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “You shouldn’t. I’m going to become something terrible. I might already be something terrible.” I thought back to past behaviors, the way I’d been snapping at everyone. The way I’d tried to scare Ryan and Camille.
Dimitri pulled away so that he could look me in the eyes. He cupped my face in his hands. “You aren’t. You won’t,” he said. “I won’t let you. No matter what, I won’t let you.”

15.

Emotion filled my body again, but now it wasn’t hate or rage or anything like that. It was warm and wonderful and made my heart ache—in a good way. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and our lips met. The kiss was pure love, sweet and blissful, with no despair or darkness. Steadily, though, the intensity of our kissing increased. It was still filled with love but became much more—something hungry and powerful. The electricity that had crackled between us when I’d fought and held him down earlier returned, wrapping around us now.
It reminded me of the night we’d been under Victor’s lust spell, both of us driven by inner forces we couldn’t control. It was like we were starving or drowning, and only the other person could save us. I clung to him, one arm around his neck while my other hand gripped his back so hard that my nails practically dug in. He laid me back down on the bed. His hands wrapped around my waist, and then one of them slid down the back of my thigh and pulled it up so that it nearly wrapped around him.
At the same time, we both pulled back briefly, still oh so close. Everything in the world rested on that moment.
“We can’t . . .” he told me.
“I know,” I agreed.
Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time, I knew there would be no turning back. There were no walls this time. Our bodies wrapped together as he tried to get my coat off, then his shirt, then my shirt. . . . It really was a lot like when we’d fought out on the quad earlier—that same passion and heat. I think at the end of the day, the instincts that power fighting and sex aren’t so different. They all come from an animal side of us.
Yet, as more and more clothes came off, it went beyond just animal passion. It was sweet and wonderful at the same time. When I looked into his eyes, I could see without a doubt that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, that I was his salvation, the same way that he was mine. I’d never expected my first time to be in a cabin in the woods, but I realized the place didn’t matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn’t matter if you were with someone you didn’t love.
And oh, I loved him. I loved him so much that it hurt. All of our clothes finally ended up in a pile on the floor, but the feel of his skin on mine was more than enough to keep me warm. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and his began, and I decided then that was how I always wanted it to be. I didn’t want us to ever be apart.
I wish I had the words to describe sex, but nothing I can say would really capture how amazing it was. I felt nervous, excited, and about a gazillion other things. Dimitri seemed so wise and skilled and infinitely patient—just like with our combat trainings. Following his lead seemed like a natural thing, but he was also more than willing to let me take control too. We were equals at last, and every touch held power, even the slightest brushing of his fingertips.
When it was over, I lay back against him. My body hurt . . . yet at the same time, it felt amazing, blissful and content. I wished I’d been doing this a long time ago, but I also knew it wouldn’t have been right until exactly this moment.
I rested my head on Dimitri’s chest, taking comfort in his warmth. He kissed my forehead and ran his fingers through my hair.
“I love you, Roza.” He kissed me again. “I’ll always be here for you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
The words were wonderful and dangerous. He shouldn’t have said anything like that to me. He shouldn’t have been promising he’d protect me, not when he was supposed to dedicate his life to protecting Moroi like Lissa. I couldn’t be first in his heart, just like he couldn’t be first in mine. That was why I shouldn’t have said what I said next—but I did anyway.
“And I won’t let anything happen to you,” I promised. “I love you.” He kissed me again, swallowing off any other words I might have added.
We lay together for a while after that, wrapped in each other’s arms, not saying much. I could have stayed that way forever, but finally, we knew we had to go. The others would eventually come looking for us to get my report, and if they found us like that, things would almost certainly get ugly.
So we got dressed, which wasn’t easy since we kept stopping to kiss. Finally, reluctantly, we left the cabin. We held hands, knowing we could only do so for a few brief moments. Once we were closer to the heart of campus, we’d have to go back to business as usual. But for now, everything in the world was golden and wonderful. Every step I took was filled with joy, and the air around us seemed to hum.

16.

“We gotta find another one,” I said.
“There are no others,” a familiar voice said.
I turned and looked into Dimitri’s face. He was alive. All the fear for him I’d held back burst through me. I wanted to throw myself at him and hold him as close to me as possible. He was alive—battered and bloody, yes—but alive.
His gaze held mine for just a moment, reminding me of what had happened in the cabin. It felt like a hundred years ago, but in that brief glance, I saw love and concern—and relief. He’d been worried about me too. Then Dimitri turned and gestured to the eastern sky. I followed the motion. The horizon was pink and purple. It was nearly sunrise.
“They’re either dead or have run away,” he told me. He glanced between Christian and me. “What you two did—”
“Was stupid?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Half of those are yours.”

17.

“Let’s get back inside,” Dimitri said.
We turned around, and as we walked toward the heart of the secondary campus, I saw it. The cabin. Neither of us slowed down or obviously looked at it, but I knew he was just as acutely aware of it as I was. He proved it when he spoke a moment later.
“Rose, about what happened—”
I groaned. “I knew it. I knew this was going to happen.”
He glanced over at me, startled. “That what was going to happen?”
“This. The part where you give me the huge lecture about how what we did was wrong and how we shouldn’t have done it and how it’s never going to happen again.” Until the words left my mouth, I didn’t realize how much I’d feared he would say that.
He still looked shocked. “Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s how you are,” I told him. I think I sounded a little hysterical. “You always want to do the right thing. And when you do the wrong thing, you then have to fix it and do the right thing. And I know you’re going to say that what we did shouldn’t have happened and that you wish—”
The rest of what I might have said was smothered as Dimitri wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in the shadow of a tree. Our lips met, and as we kissed, I forgot all about my worries and fears that he’d say what we’d done was a mistake. I even—as impossible as it seems—forgot about the death and destruction of the Strigoi. Just for a moment.
When we finally broke apart, he still kept me close to him. “I don’t think what we did was wrong,” he said softly. “I’m glad we did it. If we could go back in time, I’d do it again.”
A swirling feeling burned within my chest. “Really? What made you change your mind?”
“Because you’re hard to resist,” he said, clearly amused at my surprise. “And . . . do you remember what Rhonda said?”
There was another shock, hearing her brought up. But then I recalled his face when he’d listened to her and what he’d said about his grandmother. I tried to remember Rhonda’s exact words.
“Something about how you’re going to lose something. . . .” I apparently didn’t remember it so well.
“‘You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.’”
Naturally, he knew it word for word. I’d scoffed at the words at the time, but now I tried to decipher them. At first, I felt a surge of joy: I was what he valued most. Then I gave him a startled look. “Wait. You think I’m going to die? That’s why you slept with me?”
“No, no, of course not. I did what I did because . . . believe me, it wasn’t because of that. Regardless of the specifics—or if it’s even true—she was right about how easily things can change. We try to do what’s right, or rather, what others say is right. But sometimes, when that goes against who we are . . . you have to choose. Even before the Strigoi attack, as I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you—so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It’s not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that’s something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision . . . there was nothing to hold us back.” He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. “Well, to hold me back. I’m speaking for myself. I don’t mean to act like I know exactly why you did it.”
“I did it because I love you,” I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was.
He laughed. “You can sum up in one sentence what it takes me a whole speech to get out.”
“Because it’s that simple. I love you, and I don’t want to keep pretending like I don’t.”
“I don’t either.” His hand dropped from my face and found my hand. Fingers entwined, we began walking again. “I don’t want any more lies.”
“Then what’ll happen now? With us, I mean. Once all of this is done . . . with the Strigoi . . .”
“Well, as much as I hate to reinforce your fears, you were right about one thing. We can’t be together again—for the rest of the school year, that is. We’re going to have to keep our distance.”
I felt a little disappointed by this, but I knew with certainty he was right. We might finally have reached the point where we weren’t going to deny our relationship anymore, but we could hardly flaunt it while I was still his student.
Our feet splashed through slush. A few scattered birds sang in the trees, undoubtedly surprised to see so much activity in daylight around here. Dimitri stared off into the sky ahead, face thoughtful. “After you graduate and are out with Lissa . . .” He didn’t finish. It took me a moment, but I realized what he was about to say. My heart nearly stopped.
“You’re going to ask to be reassigned, aren’t you? You won’t be her guardian.”
“It’s the only way we can be together.”
“But we won’t actually be together,” I pointed out.
“Us staying with her gives us the same problem—me worrying more about you than her. She needs two guardians perfectly dedicated to her. If I can get assigned somewhere at Court, we’ll be near each other all the time. And in a secure place like that, there’s more flexibility with a guardian’s schedule.”
A whiny, selfish part of me wanted to immediately jump in with how much that sucked, but really, it didn’t. There was no option we had that was ideal. Each one came with hard choices. I knew it was hard for him to give up Lissa. He cared about her and wanted to keep her safe with a passion that almost rivaled my own. But he cared about me more, and he had to make that sacrifice if he still wanted to honor his sense of duty.
“Well,” I said, realizing something, “we might actually see more of each other if we’re guarding different people. We can get time off together. If we were both with Lissa, we’d be swapping shifts and always be apart.”

18.

Dimitri and I didn’t say anything else for a while. Like always, we didn’t have to. I knew he was feeling the same happy buzz I was, despite that stoic exterior. We were almost out of the forest, back in sight of the others, when he spoke again.
“You’ll be eighteen soon, but even so . . .” He sighed. “When this comes out, a lot of people aren’t going to be happy.”
“Yeah, well, they can deal.” Rumors and gossip I could handle.
“I also have a feeling your mother’s going to have a very ugly conversation with me.”
“You’re about to face down Strigoi, and my mother’s the one you’re scared of?”
I could see a smile playing at his lips. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. Where do you think you got it from?”
I laughed. “It’s a wonder you bother with me then.”
“You’re worth it, believe me.”
He kissed me again, using the last of the forest’s shadows for cover. In a normal world, this would have been a happy, romantic walk the morning after sex. We wouldn’t be preparing for battle and worrying about our loved ones. We’d be laughing and teasing each other while secretly planning our next romantic getaway.
We didn’t live in a normal world, of course, but in this kiss, it was easy to imagine we did.
He and I reluctantly broke apart and left the woods, heading back toward the guardians’ building. Dark times were ahead of us, but with his kiss still burning on my lips, I felt like I could do anything.

1.

“Are you sleepwalking?” a voice asked behind me.
I spun around, startled. Dimitri stood there watching me, looking both amused and curious. It would figure that while I was raging over the problems in my unfair love life, the source of those problems would be the one to find me. I hadn’t heard him approach at all. So much for my ninja skills. And honestly, would it have killed me to pick up a brush before I went outside? Hastily, I ran a hand through my long hair, knowing it was a little too late. It probably looked like an animal had died on top of my head.
“I was testing dorm security,” I said. “It sucks.”
A hint of a smile played over his lips. The cold was really starting to seep into me now, and I couldn’t help but notice how warm his long leather coat looked. I wouldn’t have minded wrapping up in it.
As though reading my mind, he said, “You must be freezing. Do you want my coat?”
I shook my head, deciding not to mention that I couldn’t feel my feet. “I’m fine. What are you doing out here? Are you testing security too?”
“I am security. This is my watch.” Shifts of school guardians always patrolled the grounds while everyone else slept. Strigoi, the undead vampires who stalked living Moroi vampires like Lissa, didn’t come out in sunlight, but students breaking rules—say, like, sneaking out of their dorms—were a problem night and day.
“Well, good work,” I said. “I’m glad I was able to help test your awesome skills. I should be going now.”
“Rose—” Dimitri’s hand caught my arm, and despite all the wind and chill and slush, a flash of heat shot through me. He released me with a start, as though he too had been burned. “What are you really doing out here?”
He was using the stop fooling around voice, so I gave him as truthful an answer as I could. “I had a bad dream. I wanted some air.”
“And so you just rushed out. Breaking the rules didn’t even cross your mind—and neither did putting on a coat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“Rose, Rose.” This time it was his exasperated voice. “You never change. Always jumping in without thinking.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve changed a lot.”
The amusement on his face suddenly faded, his expression growing troubled. He studied me for several moments. Sometimes I felt as though those eyes could see right into my soul. “You’re right. You have changed.”
He didn’t seem very happy about the admission. He was probably thinking about what had happened almost three weeks ago, when some friends and I had gotten ourselves captured by Strigoi. It was only through sheer luck that we’d managed to escape—and not all of us had gotten out. Mason, a good friend and a guy who’d been crazy about me, had been killed, and part of me would never forgive myself for it, even though I’d killed his murderers.
It had given me a darker outlook on life. Well, it had given everyone here at St. Vladimir’s Academy a darker outlook, but me especially. Others had begun to notice the difference in me. I didn’t like to see Dimitri concerned, though, so I played off his observation with a joke.
“Well, don’t worry. My birthday’s coming up. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’ll be an adult, right? I’m sure I’ll wake up that morning and be all mature and stuff.”
As I’d hoped, his frown softened into a small smile. “Yes, I’m sure. What is it, about a month?”
“Thirty-one days,” I announced primly.
“Not that you’re counting.”
I shrugged, and he laughed.
“I suppose you’ve made a birthday list too. Ten pages? Single-spaced? Ranked by order of priority?” The smile was still on his face. It was one of the relaxed, genuinely amused ones that were so rare to him.
I started to make another joke, but the image of Lissa and Christian flared into my mind again. That sad and empty feeling in my stomach returned. Anything I might have wanted—new clothes, an iPod, whatever—suddenly seemed trivial. What did material things like that mean compared to the one thing I wanted most of all? God, I really had changed.
“No,” I said in a small voice. “No list.”
He tilted his head to better look at me, making some of his shoulder-length hair blow into his face. His hair was brown, like mine, but not nearly as dark. Mine looked black at times. He brushed the unruly strands aside, only to have them immediately blow back into his face. “I can’t believe you don’t want anything. It’s going to be a boring birthday.”
Freedom, I thought. That was the only gift I longed for. Freedom to make my own choices. Freedom to love who I wanted.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said instead.
“What do you—” He stopped. He understood. He always did. It was part of why we connected like we did, in spite of the seven-year gap in our ages. We’d fallen for each other last fall when he’d been my combat instructor. As things heated up between us, we’d found we had more things to worry about than just age. We were both going to be protecting Lissa when she graduated, and we couldn’t let our feelings for each other distract us when she was our priority.

In a not-so-obvious attempt to change the subject, he said, “You can deny it all you want, but I know you’re freezing. Let’s go inside. I’ll take you in through the back.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little surprised. Dimitri was rarely one to avoid uncomfortable subjects. In fact, he was notorious for pushing me into conversations about topics I didn’t want to deal with. But talking about our dysfunctional, star-crossed relationship? That was a place he apparently didn’t want to go today. Yeah. Things were definitely changing.
“I think you’re the one who’s cold,” I teased, as we walked around the side of the dorm where novice guardians lived. “Shouldn’t you be all tough and stuff, since you’re from Siberia?”
“I don’t think Siberia’s exactly what you imagine.”
“I imagine it as an arctic wasteland,” I said truthfully.
“Then it’s definitely not what you imagine.”
“Do you miss it?” I asked, glancing back to where he walked behind me. It was something I’d never considered before. In my mind, everyone would want to live in the U.S. Or, well, they at least wouldn’t want to live in Siberia.
“All the time,” he said, his voice a little wistful. “Sometimes I wish—”
“Belikov!”
A voice was carried on the wind from behind us. Dimitri muttered something, and then shoved me further around the corner I’d just rounded. “Stay out of sight.”

2. - Eliminated in ROUND ONE

“Rose—”
“Dashkov?” I exclaimed, trying to keep my voice low so Alberta wouldn’t hear. “As in Victor Dashkov?”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Yes. Victor Dashkov.”
“And you guys were talking about . . . Do you mean . . .” I was so startled, so dumbstruck, that I could barely get my thoughts together. This was unbelievable. “I thought he was locked up! Are you saying he hasn’t been on trial yet?”
Yes. This was definitely unbelievable. Victor Dashkov. The guy who’d stalked Lissa and tortured her mind and body in order to control her powers. Every Moroi could use magic in one of the four elements: earth, air, water, or fire. Lissa, however, worked an almost unheard of fifth element called spirit. She could heal anything—including the dead. It was the reason I was now psychically linked to her—“shadow-kissed,” some called it. She’d brought me back from the car accident that had killed her parents and brother, binding us together in a way that allowed me to feel her thoughts and experiences.
Victor had learned long before any of us that she could heal, and he’d wanted to lock her away and use her as his own personal Fountain of Youth. He also hadn’t hesitated to kill anyone who got in his way—or, in the case of Dimitri and me, use more creative ways to stop his opponents. I’d made a lot of enemies in seventeen years, but I was pretty sure there was no one I hated as much as Victor Dashkov—at least among the living.
Dimitri had a look on his face I knew well. It was the one he got when he thought I might punch someone. “He’s been locked up—but no, no trial yet. Legal proceedings sometimes take a long time.”
“But there’s going to be a trial now? And you’re going?” I spoke through clenched teeth, trying to be calm. I suspected I still had the I’m going to punch someone look on my face.
“Next week. They need me and some of the other guardians to testify about what happened to you and Lissa that night.” His expression changed at the mention of what had occurred four months ago, and again, I recognized the look. It was the fierce, protective one he got when those he cared about were in danger.
“Call me crazy for asking this, but, um, are Lissa and I going with you?” I had already guessed the answer, and I didn’t like it.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Look, doesn’t it seem reasonable that if you’re going to talk about what happened to us, then you should have us there?”
Dimitri, fully in strict-instructor mode now, shook his head. “The queen and some of the other guardians thought it’d be best if you didn’t go. There’s enough evidence between the rest of us, and besides, criminal or not, he is—or was—one of the most powerful royals in the world. Those who know about this trial want to keep it quiet.”
“So, what, you thought if you brought us, we’d tell everyone?” I exclaimed. “Come on, comrade. You really think we’d do that? The only thing we want is to see Victor locked up. Forever. Maybe longer. And if there’s a chance he might walk free, you have to let us go.”
After Victor had been caught, he’d been taken to prison, and I’d thought that was where the story had ended. I’d figured they’d locked him up to rot. It had never occurred to me—though it should have—that he’d need a trial first. At the time, his crimes had seemed so obvious. But, although the Moroi government was secret and separate from the human one, it operated in a lot of the same ways. Due process and all that.
“It’s not my decision to make,” Dimitri said.
“But you have influence. You could speak up for us, especially if . . .” Some of my anger dimmed just a little, replaced by a sudden and startling fear. I almost couldn’t say the next words. “Especially if there really is a chance he might get off. Is there? Is there really a chance the queen could let him go?”
“I don’t know. There’s no telling what she or some of the other high-up royals will do sometimes.” He suddenly looked tired. He reached into his pocket and tossed over a set of keys. “Look, I know you’re upset, but we can’t talk about it now. I have to go meet Alberta, and you need to get inside. The square key will let you in the far side door. You know the one.”
I did. “Yeah. Thanks.”

3.

“You want some hot chocolate?” he asked.
I hadn’t expected that. “Sure.”
He dumped four packets of instant hot chocolate into two Styrofoam cups and then added in hot water.
“Doubling it is the secret,” he said when the cups were full.
He handed me mine, along with a wooden stirrer, and then walked toward a side door. Presuming I was supposed to follow him, I scurried to catch up without spilling my hot chocolate.
“Where are we—oh.”
I stepped through the doorway and found myself in a little glass-enclosed porch filled with small patio tables. I’d had no idea this porch was adjacent to the meeting room, but then, this was the building the guardians conducted all campus business out of. Novices were rarely allowed. I also hadn’t realized the building was built around a small courtyard, which was what this porch looked out to. In the summer, I imagined one could open the windows and be surrounded in greenery and warm air. Now, encased in glass and frost, I felt like I was in some kind of an ice palace.
Dimitri swept his hand over a chair, brushing off dust. I did the same and sat down opposite him. Apparently this room didn’t see a lot of use in the winter. Because it was enclosed, the room was warmer than outdoors, but it wasn’t heated otherwise. The air felt chilly, and I warmed my hands on my cup. Silence fell between Dimitri and me. The only noise came from me blowing on my hot chocolate. He drank his right away. He’d been killing Strigoi for years. What was a little scalding water here and there?
As we sat, and the quiet grew, I studied him over the edge of my cup. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew he knew I was watching. Like every other time I looked at him, I was always struck by his looks first. The soft dark hair that he often tucked behind his ears without realizing it, hair that never quite wanted to stay in its tie at the back of his neck. His eyes were brown too, somehow gentle and fierce at the same time. His lips had that same contradictory quality, I realized. When he was fighting or dealing with something grim, those lips would flatten and turn hard. But in lighter times . . . when he laughed or kissed . . . well, then they’d become soft and wonderful.
Today, more than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people, I felt a need to be the center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake to be a guardian, seeing as that job required so much silence. But with Dimitri, I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn’t have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other’s presence—smoldering sexual tension aside—that we lost all sense of self-consciousness. I exhaled and drank my cocoa.
“What happened out there?” he asked at last, meeting my gaze. “You didn’t crack under the pressure.”
His voice was curious, not accusatory. He wasn’t treating me as a student right now, I realized. He was regarding me as an equal. He simply wanted to know what was going on with me. There was no discipline or lecturing here.
And that just made it all the worse when I had to lie to him.
“Of course it was,” I told him, looking down into my cup. “Unless you believe I really did let Stan ‘attack’ Christian.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that. I never did. I knew you’d be unhappy when you found out about the assignments, but I never once doubted that you’d do what you’d have to for this. I knew you wouldn’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your duty.”
I looked up again and met his eyes, so full of faith and absolute confidence in me. “I didn’t. I was mad. . . . Still am a little. But once I said I’d do it, I meant it. And after spending some time with him . . . well, I don’t hate him. I actually think he’s good for Lissa, and he cares about her, so I can’t get upset about that. He and I just clash sometimes, that’s all . . . but we did really well together against the Strigoi. I remembered that while I was with him today, and arguing against this assignment just seemed stupid. So I decided to do the best job I could.”
I hadn’t meant to talk so much, but it felt good to let out what was inside of me, and the look on Dimitri’s face would have gotten me to say anything. Almost anything.
“What happened then?” he asked. “With Stan?”
I averted my eyes and played with my cup again. I hated keeping things from him, but I couldn’t tell him about this. In the human world, vampires and dhampirs were creatures of myth and legend—bedtime stories to scare children. Humans didn’t know we were real and walking the earth. But just because we were real didn’t mean that every other story-time paranormal creature was. We knew that and had our own myths and bedtime stories about things we didn’t believe in. Werewolves. Bogeymen. Ghosts.
Ghosts played no real role in our culture, short of being fodder for pranks and campfire tales. Ghosts inevitably came up on Halloween, and some legends endured over the years. But in real life? No ghosts. If you came back after death, it was because you were a Strigoi.
At least, that’s what I’d always been taught. I honestly didn’t know enough now to say what was going on. Me imagining Mason seemed more likely than him being a true ghost, but man, that meant I might seriously be heading into crazy territory. All this time I’d worried about Lissa losing it. Who had known it might be me?
Dimitri was still watching me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know what happened out there. My intentions were good . . . I just . . . I just messed up.”
“Rose. You’re a terrible liar.”
I glanced up. “No, I’m not. I’ve told a lot of good lies in my life. People have believed them.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m sure. But it doesn’t work with me. For one thing, you won’t look me in the eye. As for the other . . . I don’t know. I can just tell.”
Damn. He could tell. He just knew me that well. I stood up and moved to the door, keeping my back to him. Normally, I treasured every minute with him, but I couldn’t stick around today. I hated lying, but I didn’t want to tell the truth either. I had to leave.
“Look, I appreciate you being worried about me . . . but really, it’s okay. I just messed up. I’m embarrassed about it—and sorry I put your awesome training to shame—but I’ll rebound. Next time, Stan’s ass is mine.”
I hadn’t even heard him get up, but suddenly, Dimitri was right behind me. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I froze in front of the door leading out. He didn’t touch me anywhere else. He didn’t try to pull me closer. But, oh, that one hand on my shoulder held all the power in the world.
“Rose,” he said, and I knew he was no longer smiling. “I don’t know why you’re lying, but I know you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. And if there’s something wrong—something you’re afraid to tell the others—”
I spun around rapidly, somehow managing to pivot in place in such a way that his hand never moved yet ended up on my other shoulder.
“I’m not afraid,” I cried. “I do have my reasons, and believe me, what happened with Stan was nothing. Really. All of this is just something stupid that got blown out of proportion. Don’t feel sorry for me or feel like you have to do anything. What happened sucks, but I’ll just roll with it and take the black mark. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of me.” It took all of my strength just then not to shake. How had this day gotten so bizarre and out of control?
Dimitri didn’t say anything. He just looked down at me, and the expression on his face was one I’d never seen before. I couldn’t interpret it. Was he mad? Disapproving? I just couldn’t tell. The fingers on my shoulder tightened slightly and then relaxed.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he said at last. He sounded almost wistful, which made no sense. He was the one who’d been telling me for so long that I needed to be strong. I wanted to throw myself into his arms just then, but I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t help a smile. “You say that . . . but tell me the truth. Do you go running to others when you have problems?”
“That’s the not the same—”
“Answer the question, comrade.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“And don’t avoid the question either.”
“No,” he said. “I try to deal with my problems on my own.”
I slipped away from his hand. “See?”
“But you have a lot of people in your life you can trust, people who care about you. That changes things.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have people who care about you?”
He frowned, obviously rethinking his words. “Well, I’ve always had good people in my life . . . and there have been people who cared about me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I could trust them or tell them everything.”
I was often so distracted by the weirdness of our relationship that I rarely thought about Dimitri as someone with a life away from me. He was respected by everyone on campus. Teachers and students alike knew him as one of the deadliest guardians here. Whenever we ran into guardians from outside the school, they always seemed to know and respect him too. But I couldn’t recall ever having seen him in any sort of social setting. He didn’t appear to have any close friends among the other guardians—just coworkers he liked. The friendliest I’d ever seen him get with someone had been when Christian’s aunt, Tasha Ozera, visited. They’d known each other for a long time, but even that hadn’t been enough for Dimitri to pursue once her visit was over.
Dimitri was alone an awful lot, I realized, content to hole up with his cowboy novels when not working. I felt alone a lot, but in truth, I was almost always surrounded by people. With him being my teacher, I tended to view things as one-sided: He was the one always giving me something, be it advice or instruction. But I gave him something too, something harder to define—a connection with another person.
“Do you trust me?” I asked him.
The hesitation was brief. “Yes.”
“Then trust me now, and don’t worry about me just this once.”
I stepped away, out of the reach of his arm, and he didn’t say anything more or try to stop me. Cutting through the room that I’d had the hearing in, I headed for the building’s main exit, tossing the remnants of my hot chocolate in a garbage can as I walked past.

4.

When the service ended that Sunday, however, I had to stick around the chapel, because that was where my community service was going to happen. When the place had cleared out, I was surprised to see one other person had lingered with me: Dimitri.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Thought you might need some help. I hear the priest wants to do a lot of housecleaning.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the one being punished here. And this is your day off too. We—well, everyone else—spent the whole week battling it out, but you guys were the ones picking the fights the whole time.” In fact, I noticed now that Dimitri had a couple bruises too—though not nearly as many as Stan had. It had been a long week for everyone, and it was only the first of six.
“What else would I do today?”
“I could think of a hundred other things,” I noted dryly. “There’s probably a John Wayne movie on somewhere that you haven’t seen.”
He shook his head. “No, there isn’t. I’ve seen them all. Look—the priest is waiting for us.”
I turned around. Sure enough. Father Andrew stood at the front, watching us expectantly. He’d taken off the rich robes he’d worn during service and now stood in simple slacks and a button down shirt. He looked like he was ready to work too, and I wondered whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest.
As Dimitri and I approached to get our assignments, I pondered what could have actually made Dimitri stay here in the first place. Surely he hadn’t really wanted to work on his day off. I wasn’t used to puzzles with him. His intentions were usually straightforward, and I had to assume there was a simple explanation now. It just wasn’t clear yet.
“Thank you both for volunteering to help me.” Father Andrew smiled at us. I tried not to scoff at the “volunteering” reference. He was a Moroi in his late forties, with thinning gray hair. Even without much faith in religion, I still liked and respected him. “We aren’t doing anything particularly complex today,” he continued. “It’s a bit boring, really. We’ll have to do the regular cleaning, of course, and then I’d like to sort the boxes of old supplies I have sitting up in the attic.”
“We’re happy to do whatever you need,” Dimitri said solemnly. I repressed a sigh and tried not to think of all the other things I could be doing.
We set to it.
I was put on mop duty, and Dimitri took over dusting and polishing the wooden pews. He appeared thoughtful and intent as he cleaned, looking like he actually took pride in his work. I was still trying to figure out why he was here at all. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to have him. His presence made me feel better, and of course I always loved watching him.
I thought maybe he was there to get more information out of me about what had happened that day with Stan, Christian, and Brandon. Or maybe he wanted to chastise me about the other day with Stan, where I’d been accused of jumping into battle for selfish reasons. These seemed like likely explanations, yet he never said a word. Even when the priest stepped out of the sanctuary to go to his office, Dimitri continued working quietly. I would have figured if he’d had anything to say, he would have done it then.
When we finished the cleaning, Father Andrew had us haul box after box of stuff down from the attic and into a storeroom at the back of the chapel. Lissa and Christian frequently used that attic as a secret getaway, and I wondered if having it cleaner would be a pro or a con for their romantic interludes. Maybe they would abandon it, and I could start getting some sleep.
With all of the stuff downstairs, the three of us settled on the floor and began sorting it all out. Father Andrew gave us instructions on what to save and what to throw out, and it was a relief to be off my feet for a change this week. He made small talk as we worked, asking me about classes and other things. It wasn’t so bad.
And as we worked, a thought came to me. I’d done a good job convincing myself that Mason had been a delusion brought on by lack of sleep, but getting assurance from an authority figure that ghosts weren’t real would go a long way toward making me feel better.
“Hey,” I said to Father Andrew. “Do you believe in ghosts? I mean, is there any mention of them in—” I gestured around us. “—in this stuff?”
The question clearly surprised him, but he didn’t appear to take offense at me calling his vocation and life’s work “this stuff.” Or at the fact that I was obviously ignorant about it all, despite seventeen years of sitting through services. A bemused expression crossed his face, and he paused in his work.
“Well . . . it depends on how you define ‘ghost,’ I suppose.”
I tapped a theology book with my finger. “The whole point of this is that when you die, you go to heaven or hell. That makes ghosts just stories, right? They’re not in the Bible or anything.”
“Again,” he said, “it depends on your definition. Our faith has always held that after death, the spirit separates from the body and may indeed linger in this world.”
“What?” A dusty bowl I was holding dropped out of my hand. Fortunately, it was wood and didn’t break. I quickly retrieved it. That was not the answer I’d been expecting. “For how long? Forever?”
“No, no, of course not. That flies in the face of the resurrection and salvation, which form the cornerstone of our beliefs. But it’s believed the soul can stay on earth for three to forty days after death. It eventually receives a ‘temporary’ judgment that sends it on from this world to heaven or hell—although no one will truly experience either until the actual Judgment Day, when the soul and body are reunited to live out eternity as one.”
The salvation stuff was lost on me. The “three to forty days” was what caught my attention. I completely forgot about my sorting. “Yeah, but is it true or not? Are spirits really walking the earth for forty days after death?”
“Ah, Rose. Those who have to ask if faith is true are opening up a discussion they may not be ready for.”
I had a feeling he was right. I sighed and turned back to the box in front of me.
“But,” he said kindly, “if it helps you, some of these ideas parallel folk beliefs from Eastern Europe about ghosts that existed before the spread of Christianity. Those traditions have long upheld the idea of spirits staying around for a short time after death—particularly if the person in question died young or violently.”
I froze. Whatever progress I’d made in convincing myself Mason had been brought on by stress instantly vanished. Young or violently.
“Why?” I asked in a small voice. “Why would they stay? Is it . . . is it for revenge?”
“I’m sure there are some who believe that, just as some believe it’s because the soul has trouble finding peace after something so unsettling.”
“What do you believe?” I asked.
He smiled. “I believe the soul separates from the body, just as our fathers teach us, but I doubt the soul’s time on earth is anything the living can perceive. It’s not like in the movies, with ghosts haunting buildings or coming to visit those they knew. I envision these spirits as more of an energy existing around us, something beyond our perception as they wait to move on and find peace. Ultimately, what matters is what happens beyond this earth when we attain the eternal life our savior bought for us with his great sacrifice. That’s what’s important.”
I wondered if Father Andrew would be so quick to say that if he’d seen what I’d seen. Young or violently. Both had applied to Mason, and he had died less than forty days ago. That sad, sad face came back to me, and I wondered what it had meant. Revenge? Or could he truly not find peace?
And how did Father Andrew’s theology about heaven and hell fit with someone like me, who had died and come back to life? Victor Dashkov had said I’d gone to the world of the dead and returned when Lissa had healed me. What world of the dead? Was that heaven or hell? Or was it another way of referring to this in-between state on earth that Father Andrew was talking about?
I didn’t say anything after that, because the idea of a revenge-seeking Mason was so startling. Father Andrew sensed the change in me, but he obviously didn’t know what had brought it about. He tried to coax me out.
“I just got some new books in from a friend in another parish. Interesting stories about St. Vladimir.” He tilted his head. “Are you still interested in him? And Anna?”
Theoretically, I was. Until we’d met Adrian, we’d only known of two other spirit users. One was our former teacher, Ms. Karp, who’d gone completely nuts from spirit and become a Strigoi to stop the madness. The other person was St. Vladimir, the school’s namesake. He’d lived centuries ago and had brought his guardian, Anna, back from the dead, just as Lissa had me. It had made Anna shadow-kissed and created a bond between them too.
Normally, Lissa and I tried to get our hands on everything we could about Anna and Vlad, in order to learn more about ourselves. But, as incredible as it was for me to admit, I had bigger problems right now than the ever-present and ever-puzzling psychic link between Lissa and me. It had just been trumped by a ghost who could possibly be pissed off over my role in his untimely death.
“Yeah,” I said evasively, not making eye contact. “I’m interested . . . but I don’t think I can get to it anytime soon. I’m kind of busy with all this . . . you know, field experience stuff.”
I fell silent again. He took the hint and let me work on without further interruption. Dimitri never said a word throughout any of this. When we finally finished sorting, Father Andrew told us we had one more task before our work was done. He pointed to some boxes that we’d organized and repacked.
“I need you to carry these over to the elementary campus,” he said. “Leave them off at the Moroi dorm there. Ms. Davis has been teaching Sunday school for some of the kindergartners and might be able to use those.”
It would take at least two trips between Dimitri and me, and the elementary campus was a fair distance away. Still, that put me one step closer to freedom.
“Why are you interested in ghosts?” Dimitri asked me on our first trip.
“Just making conversation,” I said.
“I can’t see your face right now, but I have a feeling you’re lying again.”
“Jeez, everyone thinks the worst of me lately. Stan accused me of glory-seeking.”
“I heard about that,” said Dimitri, as we rounded a corner. The buildings of the elementary campus loomed up in front of us. “That might have been a little unfair of him.”
“A little, huh?” Hearing him admit that thrilled me, but it didn’t change my anger against Stan. That dark, grouchy feeling that had plagued me lately sprang to life. “Well, thanks, but I’m starting to lose faith in this field experience. Sometimes in the whole Academy.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know. The school just seems so caught up in rules and policies that don’t have anything to do with real life. I saw what was out there, comrade. I went right to the monster’s lair. In some ways . . . I don’t know if this really prepares us.”
I expected him to argue, but to my surprise he said, “Sometimes I agree.”
I nearly stumbled as we stepped inside one of the two Moroi dorms on the elementary campus. The lobby looked a lot like the ones on the secondary campus. “Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, a small smile on his face. “I mean, I don’t agree that novices should be put out in the world when they’re ten or anything, but sometimes I’ve thought the field experience should actually be in the field. I probably learned more in my first year as a guardian than I did in all my years of training. Well . . . maybe not all. But it’s a different situation, absolutely.”

5.

Dimitri, understanding my need to rush in and take action, seemed surprised by my unusual behavior. “You’re right—she should be there, but again, it’s nothing I can do anything about. You keep thinking I can control this, but I can’t.”
“But did you do everything you could?” I thought back to Adrian’s words in the dream, about how Dimitri could have done more. “You have a lot of influence. There must be something. Anything.”
“Not as much influence as you think. I’ve got a high position here at the Academy, but in the rest of the guardian world, I’m still pretty young. And yes, I did actually speak up for you.”
“Maybe you should have spoken up louder.”
I could sense him shutting down. He’d discuss most things reasonably but wouldn’t encourage me when I was just being a bitch. So, I tried to be more reasonable.
“Victor knows about us,” I said. “He could say something.”
“Victor has bigger things to worry about with this trial than us.”
“Yeah, but you know him. He doesn’t exactly act like a normal person would. If he feels like he’s lost all hope of getting off, he might decide to bust us just for the sake of revenge.”
I’d never been able to confess my relationship with Dimitri to Lissa, yet our worst enemy knew about it. It was weirder even than Adrian knowing. Victor had figured it out by watching us and gathering data. I guess when you’re a scheming villain, you get good at that stuff. He’d never made the knowledge public, though. Instead, he’d used it against us with the lust charm he’d made from earth magic. A charm like that wouldn’t work if there wasn’t already attraction in place. The charm just cranked things up. Dimitri and I had been all over each other and had been only a heartbeat away from having sex. It had been a pretty smart way for Victor to distract us without using violence. If anyone had tried to attack us, we could have put up a good fight. But turn us loose on each other? We had trouble fighting that.
Dimitri was silent for several moments. I knew he knew I had a point. “Then we’ll have to deal with that as best we can,” he said at last. “But if Victor’s going to tell, he’s going to do it whether or not you testify.”
I refused to say anything else until we got to the church. When we did, Father Andrew told us that after going over some more things, he’d decided he really only needed one more box brought over to Ms. Davis.
“I’ll do it,” I told Dimitri crisply, once the priest was out of earshot. “You don’t have to come.”
“Rose, please don’t make a big deal about this.”
“It is a big deal!” I hissed. “And you don’t seem to get it.”
“I do get it. Do you really think I want to see Victor loose? Do you think I want us all at risk again?” It was the first time in a long time I’d seen his control on the verge of snapping. “But I told you, I’ve done all I can do. I’m not like you—I can’t keep making a scene when things don’t go my way.”
“I do not.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
He was right. Some part of me knew I’d crossed a line . . . but just like with everything else recently, I couldn’t stop talking.
“Why did you even help me today?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Is that so strange?” he asked. He almost looked hurt.
“Yes. I mean, are you are you trying to spy on me? Figure out why I messed up? Make sure I don’t get into any trouble?”
He studied me, brushing hair out of his eyes. “Why does there have to be some ulterior motive?”
I wanted to blurt out a hundred different things. Like, if there wasn’t a motive, then that meant he just wanted to spend time with me. And that made no sense, because we both knew we were only supposed to have a teacher-student relationship. He of all people should know that. He was the one who’d told me.
“Because everyone has motives.”
“Yes. But not always the motives you think.” He pushed open the door. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him go, my feelings a tangle of confusion and anger. If the situation hadn’t been so strange, I would have almost said it was like we’d just gone on a date.

6. - Eliminated in ROUND TWO

“I’m sorry,” I gulped out. “I’m so sorry.”
He turned toward me, his face schooled to that perfect picture of neutrality that he was so good at. “Sorry for what?”
“For all the horrible things I said yesterday. You did it—you really did it. You got them to let us go.”
Despite my nervousness about seeing Victor, I was filled with elation. Dimitri had come through. I’d known all along that he really cared about me—this just proved it. If there hadn’t been so many people around, I would have hugged him.
Dimitri’s face didn’t change. “It wasn’t me, Rose. I had nothing to do with it.”

7.

He was surprised to see me at his door—and a little wary. The last time this had happened, I’d been under the influence of Victor’s lust charm and had behaved . . . aggressively.
“I have to talk to you,” I said.
He let me come in, and I immediately handed over the note.
“V. D.—”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dimitri. He handed the note back. “Victor Dashkov.”
“What are we going to do? I mean, we talked about this, but now he really is saying he’s going to sell us out.”
Dimitri didn’t answer, and I could tell he was assessing every angle of this, just like he would a fight. Finally, he pulled out his cell phone, which was a lot cooler than having to rely on the room’s phone. “Give me a moment.”
I started to sit on his bed, decided that was dangerous, and instead sat on the couch. I didn’t know who he was calling, but the conversation took place in Russian.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he finished.
“I’ll let you know soon. For now, we have to wait.”
“Great. My favorite thing to do.”
He dragged an armchair up and sat opposite me. It seemed too small for someone as tall as him, but, as always, he managed to make it work and appear graceful in the process.
Beside me was one of the Western novels he always carried around. I picked it up, again thinking about how alone he was. Even now, at the Court, he’d chosen to stay in his room. “Why do you read these?”
“Some people read books for fun,” he observed.
“Hey, watch the dig. And I do read books. I read them to solve mysteries that threaten my best friend’s life and sanity. I don’t think reading this cowboy stuff is really saving the world like I do.”
He took it from me and flipped it over, face thoughtful and not as intense as usual. “Like any book, it’s an escape. And there’s something . . . mmm. I don’t know. Something appealing about the Old West. No rules. Everyone just lives by their own code. You don’t have to be tied down by others’ ideas of right and wrong in order to bring justice.”
“Wait,” I laughed. “I thought I was the one who wanted to break rules.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to. Just that I can see the appeal.”
“You can’t fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.”
“No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”
I grinned, and suddenly, it was a lot like when we cleaned the church—before the fight, at least. Easy. Comfortable. In fact, it was a lot like the old days when we’d first begun training together, way back before everything had gotten so complicated. Well, okay . . . things had always been complicated, but for a while, they’d been less complicated. It made me sad. I wished we could relive those early days. There’d been no Victor Dashkov, no blood on my hands.
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said all of a sudden.
“For what? Reading cheesy novels?”
“For not being able to get you here. I feel like I let you down.” I glimpsed a shadow of worry on his face, like he was concerned he might have caused some irreparable damage.
The apology totally caught me off guard. For a moment, I wondered if he was jealous of Adrian’s influence in the same way Christian had been. Then I realized it was completely different. I’d been giving Dimitri a hard time because I’d been convinced he could do anything. Somewhere—deep inside—he felt the same, at least where I was concerned. He didn’t want to deny me anything. My earlier bad mood had long since vanished, and I suddenly just felt drained. And stupid.
“You didn’t,” I told him. “I acted like a total brat. You’ve never let me down before. You didn’t let me down with this.”
The grateful look he gave me made me feel as if I had wings. If another moment had passed, I suspected he would have said something so sweet that I would have flown away. Instead, his phone rang.
Another conversation in Russian took place, and then he stood up. “All right, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To see Victor Dashkov.”

8.

“Why are we doing this?” I whispered as we walked down the hall toward Victor’s cell. I’d really, really hoped for stone walls and torches, but the place looked very modern and efficient, with marble floors and stark white walls. At least there were no windows. “You think we can talk him out of it?”
Dimitri shook his head. “If Victor wanted to take revenge on us, he’d just do it without any warning. He doesn’t do things without a reason. The fact that he told you first means he wants something, and now we’re going to find out what it is.”

9.

“And Victor’s not going to say anything about us,” said Dimitri, tugging my arm. “He’s achieved his goal. He brought you here because he wanted to know about Lissa.”
“He didn’t find out much,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” said Victor. He grinned at Dimitri. “And what makes you so certain I won’t enlighten the world about your romantic indiscretions?”
“Because it won’t save you from prison. And if you ruin Rose, you’ll destroy whatever weak chance you had of Lissa helping you with your warped fantasy.” Victor flinched just a little; Dimitri was right. Dimitri stepped forward, pressing close to the bars as I had earlier. I’d thought I had a scary voice, but when he spoke his next words, I realized I wasn’t even close. “And it’ll all be pointless anyway, because you won’t stay alive long enough in prison to stage your grand plans. You aren’t the only one with connections.”
My breath caught a little. Dimitri brought so many things to my life: love, comfort, and instruction. I got so used to him sometimes that I forgot just how dangerous he could be. As he stood there, tall and threatening while he glared down at Victor, I felt a chill run down my spine. I remembered how when I had first come to the Academy, people had said Dimitri was a god. In this moment, he looked it.
If Victor was frightened by Dimitri’s threat, he didn’t show it. His jade green eyes glanced between the two of us. “You two are a match made in heaven. Or somewhere.”
“See you in court,” I said.
Dimitri and I left. On our way out, he said a few words in Russian to the guardian on duty. From their manners, my guess was Dimitri was offering thanks.
We ventured outdoors, walking across a wide, beautiful parklike space to get back to our rooms. The sleet had stopped, and it had left everything—buildings and trees alike—coated in ice. It was like the world was made of glass. Glancing at Dimitri, I saw him staring straight ahead. It was hard to tell while walking, but I could have sworn he was shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“As okay as I can be.”
“Do you think he’ll tell everyone about us?”
“No.”
We walked in silence for a bit. I finally asked the question I’d been dying to know.
“Did you mean it . . . that if Victor did tell . . . that you’d . . .” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words have him killed.
“I don’t have much influence in the upper levels of Moroi royalty, but I have plenty among the guardians who handle the dirty work in our world.”
“You didn’t answer the question. If you’d really do it.”
“I’d do a lot of things to protect you, Roza.”
My heart pounded. He only used “Roza” when he was feeling particularly affectionate toward me.
“It wouldn’t exactly be protecting me. It’d be after the fact—cold-blooded. You don’t do that kind of thing,” I told him. “Revenge is more my thing. I’ll have to kill him.”
I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t think it was funny. “Don’t talk like that. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Victor’s not going to say anything.”

10.

“My grandmother was like Rhonda,” he explained. “That is, she practiced the same kind of arts. Personality-wise, they’re very different.”
“Your grandmother was a . . . v-whatever?”
“It’s called something else in Russian, but yes, same meaning. She used to read cards and give advice too. It was how she made her living.”
I bit off any comments about frauds. “Was she right? In her predictions?”
“Sometimes. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got this look on your face that says you think I’m delusional, but you’re too nice to say anything.”
“Delusional’s kind of harsh. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never expected you to buy into this stuff.”
“Well, I grew up with it, so it doesn’t seem that strange to me. And like I said, I’m not sure I buy into it 100 percent.”
Adrian had joined the group by the plane and was protesting loudly about us not being able to board yet.
“I never thought of you as having a grandmother, either,” I told Dimitri. “I mean, obviously, you’d have to. But still . . . it’s just weird to think about growing up with one.” Contact with my own mother was rare enough, and I’d never even met any of my other family members. “Was it weird having a witch grandma? Scary? Was she always, like, threatening to cast spells if you were bad?”
“Most of the time she just threatened to send me to my room.”
“That doesn’t sound so scary to me.”
“That’s because you haven’t met her.”
I noted the wording. “Is she still alive?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll take more than old age to kill her off. She’s tough. She was actually a guardian for a while.”
“Really?” Much like with Ambrose, my fixed ideas about dhampirs, guardians, and blood whores were getting muddled. “So she gave it up to become a—uh, to stay with her kids?”
“She has very strong ideas about family—ideas that probably sound kind of sexist to you. She believes all dhampirs should train and put in time as guardians, but that the women should eventually return home to raise their children together.”
“But not the men?”
“No,” he said wryly. “She thinks men still need to stay out there and kill Strigoi.”
“Wow.” I remembered Dimitri telling me a little about his family. His father had popped back every so often, but that was about it for the men in his life. All of his siblings were sisters. And honestly, the idea didn’t sound so sexist. I had the same ideas about men going off to fight, which was why meeting Ambrose had been so weird. “You were the one who had to go. The women in your family kicked you out.”
“Hardly,” he laughed. “My mother would take me back in a second if I wanted to come home.” He was smiling like it was a joke, but I saw something in his eyes that looked a lot like homesickness.

11.

Dimitri came to an abrupt stop and turned so that he stood right in front of me, blocking my path. I skidded to a halt, nearly running into him. He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to him than I would have expected him to do in public. His fingers bit deep into me, but they didn’t hurt.
“Rose,” he said, the pain in his voice making my heart stop, “this shouldn’t have been the first time I heard about this! Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know what it was like? Do you know it was like for me to see you like that and not know what was happening? Do you know how scared I was?”
I was stunned, both from his outburst and our proximity. I swallowed, unable to speak at first. There was so much on his face, so many emotions. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen that much of him on display. It was wonderful and frightening at the same time. I then said the stupidest thing possible.
“You’re not scared of anything.”
“I’m scared of lots of things. I was scared for you.” He released me, and I stepped back. There was still passion and worry written all over him. “I’m not perfect. I’m not invulnerable.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I always saw Dimitri as larger than life. All-knowing. Invincible. It was hard for me to believe that he could worry about me so much.
“And this has been going on for a long time too,” he added. “It was going on with Stan, when you were talking to Father Andrew about ghosts—you were dealing with it this whole time! Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you tell Lissa . . . or . . . me?”
I stared into those dark, dark eyes, those eyes I loved. “Would you have believed me?”
He frowned. “Believed what?”
“That I’m seeing ghosts.”
“Well . . . they aren’t ghosts, Rose. You only think they are because—”
“That’s why,” I interrupted. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you or anybody. Nobody would believe me, not without thinking I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said. “But I think you’ve been through a lot.” Adrian had said almost the exact same thing when I asked him how I could tell if I was crazy or not.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I started walking again.
Without even taking another step, he reached out and grabbed me once more. He pulled me back to him, so that we now stood even closer than before. I glanced uneasily around again, wondering if someone might see us, but the campus was deserted. It was early, not quite sunset, so early that most people probably weren’t even up for the school day yet. We wouldn’t see activity around here for at least another hour. Still, I was surprised to see Dimitri was still risking it.
“Tell me then,” he said. “Tell me how it’s more than that.”
“You won’t believe me,” I said. “Don’t you get it? No one will. Even you . . . of all people.” Something in that thought made my voice catch. Dimitri understood so much about me. I wanted—needed—him to understand this too.
“I’ll . . . try. But I still don’t think you really understand what’s happening to you.”
“I do,” I said firmly. “That’s what no one realizes. Look, you have to decide once and for all if you really do trust me. If you think I’m a child, too naive to get what’s going on with her fragile mind, then you should just keep walking. But if you trust me enough to remember that I’ve seen things and know things that kind of surpass those of others my age . . . well, then you should also realize that I might know a little about what I’m talking about.”
A lukewarm breeze, damp with the scent of melted snow, swirled around us. “I do trust you, Roza. But . . . I don’t believe in ghosts.”
The earnestness was there. He did want to reach out to me, to understand . . . but even as he did, it warred with beliefs he wasn’t ready to change yet. It was ironic, considering tarot cards apparently spooked him.
“Will you try to?” I asked. “Or at the very least try not to write this off to some psychosis?”
“Yes. That I can do.”
So I told him about my first couple of Mason sightings and how I’d been afraid to explain the Stan incident to anyone. I talked about the shapes I’d seen on the plane and described in more detail what I’d seen on the ground.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of, um, specific for a random stress reaction?” I asked when I finished.
“I don’t know that you can really expect ‘stress reactions’ to be random or specific. They’re unpredictable by nature.” He had that thoughtful expression I knew so well, the one that told me he was turning over all sorts of things in his head. I could also tell that he still wasn’t buying this as a real ghost story but that he was trying very hard to keep an open mind. He affirmed as much a moment later: “Why are you so certain these aren’t just things you’re imagining?”
“Well, at first I thought I was imagining it all. But now . . . I don’t know. There’s something about it that feels real . . . even though I know that isn’t actually evidence. But you heard what Father Andrew said—about ghosts sticking around after they die young or violently.”
Dimitri actually bit his lip. He’d been about to tell me not to take the priest literally. Instead he asked, “So you think Mason’s back for revenge?”
“I thought that at first, but now I’m not so sure. He’s never tried to hurt me. He just seems like he wants something. And then . . . all those other ghosts seemed to want something too—even the ones I didn’t know. Why?”
Dimitri gave me a sage look. “You have a theory.”
“I do. I was thinking about what Victor said. He mentioned that because I’m shadow-kissed—because I died—I have a connection to the world of the dead. That I’ll never entirely leave it behind me.”
His expression hardened. “I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what Victor Dashkov tells you.”
“But he knows things! You know he does, no matter how big an ******* he is.”
“Okay, supposing that’s true, that being shadow-kissed lets you see ghosts, why is it happening now? Why didn’t it happen right after the car accident?”
“I thought of that,” I said eagerly. “It was something else Victor said—that now that I was dealing in death, I was that much closer to the other side. What if causing someone else’s death strengthened my connection and now makes this possible? I just had my first real kill. Kills, even.”
“Why is it so haphazard?” asked Dimitri. “Why does it occur when it does? Why the airplane? Why not at Court?”
My enthusiasm dimmed a little. “What are you, a lawyer?” I snapped. “You question everything I’m saying. I thought you were going to have an open mind.”
“I am. But you need to too. Think about it. Why this pattern of sightings?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I sagged in defeat. “You still think I’m crazy.”
He reached out and cupped my chin, tipping my face up to look at his. “No. Never. Not one of these theories makes me think you’re crazy. But I’ve always believed the simplest explanation makes sense. Dr. Olendzki’s does. The ghost one has holes. But, if you can find out more . . . then we may have something to work with.”
“We?” I asked.
“Of course. I’m not leaving you alone on this, no matter what. You know I’d never abandon you.”
There was something very sweet and noble about his words, and I felt the need to return them, though mostly I ended up sounding idiotic. “And I won’t ever abandon you, you know. I mean it . . . not that this stuff ever happens to you, of course, but if you start seeing ghosts or anything, I’ll help you through it.”
He gave a small, soft laugh. “Thanks.”
Our hands found each other’s, fingers lacing together. We stood like that for almost a full minute, neither of us saying anything. The only place we touched was our hands. The breeze picked up again, and although the temperature was probably only in the forties, it felt like spring to me. I expected flowers to burst into bloom around us. As though sharing the same thought, we released our hands at the same time.

12.

“Rose, is everything okay?” He started to stand, and I motioned him down as I slid into the spot beside him. The faint smell of incense lingered in the air.
“Yeah . . . well, kind of. No breakdowns, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just had a question. Or, well, a theory.”
I explained the conversation with Alice and what I’d deduced from it. He listened patiently, expression thoughtful.
“I know Alice. I’m not sure she’s credible,” he said when I finished. It was similar to what he’d said about Victor.
“I know. I thought the same thing. But a lot of it makes sense.”
“Not quite. As you pointed out, why are your visions so irregular here? That doesn’t go along with the ward theory. You should feel like you did on the plane.”
“What if the wards are just weak?” I asked.
He shook his head. “That’s impossible. Wards take months to wear down. New ones are put in place here every two weeks.”
“That often?” I asked, unable to hide my disappointment. I’d known maintenance was frequent but not that frequent. Alice’s theory had almost provided a sound explanation, one that didn’t involve me being insane.
“Maybe they’re getting staked,” I suggested. “By humans or something—like we saw before.”
“Guardians walk the grounds a few times a day. If there was a stake in the borders of campus, we’d notice.”
I sighed.
Dimitri moved his hand over mine, and I flinched. He didn’t remove it, though, and as he did so frequently, guessed my thoughts. “You thought if she was right, it would explain everything.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to be crazy.”
“You aren’t crazy.”
“But you don’t believe I’m really seeing ghosts.”
He glanced away, his eyes staring at the flickering of candles on the altar. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to keep an open mind. And being stressed isn’t the same as being crazy.”
“I know,” I admitted, still very conscious of how warm his hand was. I shouldn’t have been thinking about things like that in a church. “But . . . well . . . there’s something else. . . .”
I told him then about Anna possibly “catching” Vladimir’s insanity. I also explained Adrian’s aura observations. He turned his gaze back on me, expression speculative.
“Have you told anyone else about this? Lissa? Your counselor?”
“No,” I said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “I was afraid of what they’d think.”
He squeezed my hand. “You have to stop this. You aren’t afraid of throwing yourself in the path of danger, but you’re terrified of letting anyone in.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him. “I guess.”
“Then why’d you tell me?”
I smiled. “Because you told me I should trust people. I trust you.”
“You don’t trust Lissa?”
My smile faltered. “I trust her, absolutely. But I don’t want to tell her things that’ll make her worry. I guess it’s a way of protecting her, just like keeping Strigoi away.”
“She’s stronger than you think,” he said. “And she would go out of her way to help you.”
“So what? You want me to confide in her and not you?”
“No, I want you to confide in both of us. I think it’d be good for you. Does what happened to Anna bother you?”
“No.” I looked away again. “It scares me.”
I think the admission stunned both of us. I certainly hadn’t expected to say it. We both froze for a moment, and then Dimitri wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. A sob built up in me as I rested my cheek against the leather of his coat and heard the steady beating of his heart.
“I don’t want to be like that,” I told him. “I want to be like everyone else. I want my mind to be . . . normal. Normal by Rose standards, I mean. I don’t want to lose control. I don’t want to be like Anna and kill myself. I love being alive. I’d die to save my friends, but I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope we all live long, happy lives. Like Lissa said—one big happy family. There’s so much I want to do, but I’m so scared . . . scared that I’ll be like her. . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop it. . . .”
He held me tighter. “It’s not going to happen,” he murmured. “You’re wild and impulsive, but at the end of the day, you’re one of the strongest people I know. Even if you are the same as Anna—and I don’t think you are—you two won’t share the same fate.”
It was funny. I’d often told Lissa the same thing about her and Vladimir. She’d always had a hard time believing it, and now I understood. Giving advice was a lot harder than following it.
“You’re also missing something,” he continued, running a hand over my hair. “If you are in danger from Lissa’s magic, then at least you understand why. She can stop using her magic, and that’ll be the end of it.”
I pulled away slightly so I could look at him. Hastily, I ran my hand over my eyes in case any tears had escaped.
“But can I ask her to do that?” I said. “I’ve felt how it makes her feel. I don’t know if I can take that away from her.”
He regarded me with surprise. “Even at the cost of your own life?”
“Vladimir did great things—so could she. Besides, they come first, right?”
“Not always.”
I stared. I’d had they come first drilled into me since I was a child. It was what all guardians believed. Only the dhampirs who’d run away from their duty didn’t subscribe to that. What he said was almost like treason.
“Sometimes, Rose, you have to know when to put yourself first.”
I shook my head. “Not with Lissa.” I might as well have been with Deirdre or Ambrose again. Why was everyone suddenly challenging something that I’d held as absolute truth my entire life?
“She’s your friend. She’ll understand.” To make his point, he reached forward and tugged at the chotki peeking out underneath my sleeve, his fingertips brushing my wrist.
“It’s more than that,” I said. I pointed to the cross. “If anything, this proves it. I’m bound to her, to protect the Dragomirs, at all costs.”
“I know, but . . .” He didn’t finish, and honestly, what could he have said? This was becoming an old argument, one without a solution.
“I need to get back,” I said abruptly. “It’s past curfew.”
A wry smile crossed Dimitri’s face. “And you need me to get you back or you’ll get in trouble.”
“Well, yeah, I was kind of hoping. . . .”

13.

Facing my opponent, I saw: Dimitri.
It was unexpected. Some little voice in the back of my head said I couldn’t fight Dimitri. The rest of me reminded that voice that I’d been doing it for the last six months, and besides, he wasn’t Dimitri right now. He was my enemy.
I sprang toward him with the stake, hoping to catch him by surprise. But Dimitri was hard to catch by surprise. And he was fast. Oh, so fast. It was like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He halted my attack with a glancing blow to the side of the head. I knew it would hurt later, but my adrenaline was running too strong for me to pay attention to it now.
Distantly, I realized some other people had come to watch us. Dimitri and I were celebrities in different ways around here, and our mentoring relationship added to the drama. This was prime-time entertainment.
My eyes were only on Dimitri, though. As we tested each other, attacking and blocking, I tried to remember everything he’d taught me. I also tried to remember everything I knew about him. I’d practiced with him for months. I knew him, knew his moves, just as he knew mine. I could anticipate him the same way. Once I started using that knowledge, the fight grew tricky. We were too well matched, both of us too fast. My heart thumped in my chest, and sweat coated my skin.
Then Dimitri finally got through. He moved in for an attack, coming at me with the full force of his body. I blocked the worst of it, but he was so strong that I was the one who stumbled from the impact. He didn’t waste the opportunity and dragged me to the ground, trying to pin me. Being trapped like that by a Strigoi would likely result in the neck being bitten or broken. I couldn’t let that happen.
So, although he held most of me to the ground, I managed to shove my elbow up and nail him in the face. He flinched, and that was all I needed. I rolled him over and held him down. He fought to push me off, and I pushed right back while also trying to maneuver my stake. He was so strong, though. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to hold him. Then, just as I thought I’d lose my hold, I got a good grip on the stake. And like that, the stake came down over his heart. It was done.
Behind me, people were clapping, but all I noticed was Dimitri. Our gazes were locked. I was still straddling him, my hands pressed against his chest. Both of us were sweaty and breathing heavily. His eyes looked at me with pride—and a hell of a lot more. He was so close, and my whole body yearned for him, again thinking he was a piece of me I needed in order to be complete. The air between us seemed warm and heady, and I would have given anything in that moment to lie down with him and have his arms wrap around me. His expression showed me that he was thinking the same thing. The fight was finished, but remnants of the adrenaline and animal intensity remained.

14.

“Rose! Snap out of this!” He was yelling now too. “You don’t mean any of it. You’ve been stressed and under a lot of pressure—it’s making a terrible event that much worse.”
“Stop it!” I shouted back at him. “You’re doing it—just like you always do. You’re always so reasonable, no matter how awful things are. What happened to you wanting to kill Victor in prison, huh? Why was that okay, but not this?”
“Because that was an exaggeration. You know it was. But this . . . this is something different. There’s something wrong with you right now.”
“No, there’s something right with me.” I was sizing him up, hoping my words distracted him. If I was fast enough, maybe—just maybe—I could get past him. “I’m the only one who wants to do anything around here, and if that’s wrong, I’m sorry. You keep wanting me to be some impossible, good person, but I’m not! I’m not a saint like you.”
“Neither of us is a saint,” he said dryly. “Believe me, I don’t—”
I made my move, leaping out and shoving him away. It got him off me, but I didn’t get far. I’d barely gotten two feet from the bed when he seized me again and pinned me down, this time using the full weight of his body to keep me immobilized. Somehow, I knew I should have realized it was an impossible escape plan, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Let me go!” I yelled for the hundredth time tonight, trying to free my hands.
“No,” he said, voice hard and almost desperate. “Not until you break out of this. This isn’t you!”
There were hot tears in my eyes. “It is! Let me go!”
“It’s not. It isn’t you! It isn’t you.” There was agony in his voice.
“You’re wrong! It is—”
My words suddenly dropped off. It isn’t you. It was the same thing I’d said to Lissa when I watched, terrified, as she used her magic to torture Jesse. I’d stood there, unable to believe what she was doing. She hadn’t realized she’d lost control and was on the verge of becoming a monster. And now, looking into Dimtiri’s eyes, seeing his panic and love, I realized it was happening to me. I was the same as she’d been, so caught up, so blinded by irrational emotions that I didn’t even recognize my own actions. It was like I was being controlled by something else.
I tried to fight it off, to shake off the feelings burning through me. They were too strong. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them go. They would take me over completely, just as they’d done to Anna and Ms. Karp.
“Rose,” said Dimitri. It was only my name, but it was so powerful, filled with so much. Dimitri had such absolute faith me, faith in my own strength and goodness. And he had strength too, a strength I could see he wasn’t afraid to lend me if I needed it. Deirdre might have been onto something about me resenting Lissa, but she was completely off about Dimitri. What we had was love. We were like two halves of a whole, always ready to support the other. Neither of us was perfect, but that didn’t matter. With him, I could defeat this rage that filled me. He believed I was stronger than it. And I was.
Slowly, slowly, I felt that darkness fade away. I stopped fighting him. My body trembled, but it was no longer with fury. It was fear. Dimitri immediately recognized the change and released his hold.
“Oh my God,” I said, voice shaking.
His hand touched the side of my face, fingers light on my cheek. “Rose,” he breathed. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed back more tears. “I . . . I think so. For now.”
“It’s over,” he said. He was still touching me, this time brushing the hair from my face. “It’s over. Everything’s all right.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not. You . . . you don’t understand. It’s true—everything I was worried about. About Anna? About me taking away spirit’s craziness? It’s happening, Dimitri. Lissa lost it out there with Jesse. She was out of control, but I stopped her because I sucked away her anger and put it into myself. And it’s—it’s horrible. It’s like I’m, I don’t know, a puppet. I can’t control myself.”
“You’re strong,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“No,” I said. I could hear my voice cracking as I struggled to sit up. “It will happen again. I’m going to be like Anna. I’m going to get worse and worse. This time it was bloodlust and hate. I wanted to destroy them. I needed to destroy them. Next time? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll just be craziness, like Ms. Karp. Maybe I’m already crazy, and that’s why I’m seeing Mason. Maybe it’ll be depression like Lissa used to get. I’ll keep falling and falling into that pit, and then I’ll be like Anna and kill—”
“No,” Dimitri interrupted gently. He moved his face toward mine, our foreheads nearly touching. “It won’t happen to you. You’re too strong. You’ll fight it, just like you did this time.”
“I only did because you were here.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. “I can’t do it by myself,” I whispered.
“You can,” he said. There was a tremulous note in his voice. “You’re strong—you’re so, so strong. It’s why I love you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “You shouldn’t. I’m going to become something terrible. I might already be something terrible.” I thought back to past behaviors, the way I’d been snapping at everyone. The way I’d tried to scare Ryan and Camille.
Dimitri pulled away so that he could look me in the eyes. He cupped my face in his hands. “You aren’t. You won’t,” he said. “I won’t let you. No matter what, I won’t let you.”

15.

Emotion filled my body again, but now it wasn’t hate or rage or anything like that. It was warm and wonderful and made my heart ache—in a good way. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and our lips met. The kiss was pure love, sweet and blissful, with no despair or darkness. Steadily, though, the intensity of our kissing increased. It was still filled with love but became much more—something hungry and powerful. The electricity that had crackled between us when I’d fought and held him down earlier returned, wrapping around us now.
It reminded me of the night we’d been under Victor’s lust spell, both of us driven by inner forces we couldn’t control. It was like we were starving or drowning, and only the other person could save us. I clung to him, one arm around his neck while my other hand gripped his back so hard that my nails practically dug in. He laid me back down on the bed. His hands wrapped around my waist, and then one of them slid down the back of my thigh and pulled it up so that it nearly wrapped around him.
At the same time, we both pulled back briefly, still oh so close. Everything in the world rested on that moment.
“We can’t . . .” he told me.
“I know,” I agreed.
Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time, I knew there would be no turning back. There were no walls this time. Our bodies wrapped together as he tried to get my coat off, then his shirt, then my shirt. . . . It really was a lot like when we’d fought out on the quad earlier—that same passion and heat. I think at the end of the day, the instincts that power fighting and sex aren’t so different. They all come from an animal side of us.
Yet, as more and more clothes came off, it went beyond just animal passion. It was sweet and wonderful at the same time. When I looked into his eyes, I could see without a doubt that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, that I was his salvation, the same way that he was mine. I’d never expected my first time to be in a cabin in the woods, but I realized the place didn’t matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn’t matter if you were with someone you didn’t love.
And oh, I loved him. I loved him so much that it hurt. All of our clothes finally ended up in a pile on the floor, but the feel of his skin on mine was more than enough to keep me warm. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and his began, and I decided then that was how I always wanted it to be. I didn’t want us to ever be apart.
I wish I had the words to describe sex, but nothing I can say would really capture how amazing it was. I felt nervous, excited, and about a gazillion other things. Dimitri seemed so wise and skilled and infinitely patient—just like with our combat trainings. Following his lead seemed like a natural thing, but he was also more than willing to let me take control too. We were equals at last, and every touch held power, even the slightest brushing of his fingertips.
When it was over, I lay back against him. My body hurt . . . yet at the same time, it felt amazing, blissful and content. I wished I’d been doing this a long time ago, but I also knew it wouldn’t have been right until exactly this moment.
I rested my head on Dimitri’s chest, taking comfort in his warmth. He kissed my forehead and ran his fingers through my hair.
“I love you, Roza.” He kissed me again. “I’ll always be here for you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
The words were wonderful and dangerous. He shouldn’t have said anything like that to me. He shouldn’t have been promising he’d protect me, not when he was supposed to dedicate his life to protecting Moroi like Lissa. I couldn’t be first in his heart, just like he couldn’t be first in mine. That was why I shouldn’t have said what I said next—but I did anyway.
“And I won’t let anything happen to you,” I promised. “I love you.” He kissed me again, swallowing off any other words I might have added.
We lay together for a while after that, wrapped in each other’s arms, not saying much. I could have stayed that way forever, but finally, we knew we had to go. The others would eventually come looking for us to get my report, and if they found us like that, things would almost certainly get ugly.
So we got dressed, which wasn’t easy since we kept stopping to kiss. Finally, reluctantly, we left the cabin. We held hands, knowing we could only do so for a few brief moments. Once we were closer to the heart of campus, we’d have to go back to business as usual. But for now, everything in the world was golden and wonderful. Every step I took was filled with joy, and the air around us seemed to hum.

16.

“We gotta find another one,” I said.
“There are no others,” a familiar voice said.
I turned and looked into Dimitri’s face. He was alive. All the fear for him I’d held back burst through me. I wanted to throw myself at him and hold him as close to me as possible. He was alive—battered and bloody, yes—but alive.
His gaze held mine for just a moment, reminding me of what had happened in the cabin. It felt like a hundred years ago, but in that brief glance, I saw love and concern—and relief. He’d been worried about me too. Then Dimitri turned and gestured to the eastern sky. I followed the motion. The horizon was pink and purple. It was nearly sunrise.
“They’re either dead or have run away,” he told me. He glanced between Christian and me. “What you two did—”
“Was stupid?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Half of those are yours.”

17.

“Let’s get back inside,” Dimitri said.
We turned around, and as we walked toward the heart of the secondary campus, I saw it. The cabin. Neither of us slowed down or obviously looked at it, but I knew he was just as acutely aware of it as I was. He proved it when he spoke a moment later.
“Rose, about what happened—”
I groaned. “I knew it. I knew this was going to happen.”
He glanced over at me, startled. “That what was going to happen?”
“This. The part where you give me the huge lecture about how what we did was wrong and how we shouldn’t have done it and how it’s never going to happen again.” Until the words left my mouth, I didn’t realize how much I’d feared he would say that.
He still looked shocked. “Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s how you are,” I told him. I think I sounded a little hysterical. “You always want to do the right thing. And when you do the wrong thing, you then have to fix it and do the right thing. And I know you’re going to say that what we did shouldn’t have happened and that you wish—”
The rest of what I might have said was smothered as Dimitri wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in the shadow of a tree. Our lips met, and as we kissed, I forgot all about my worries and fears that he’d say what we’d done was a mistake. I even—as impossible as it seems—forgot about the death and destruction of the Strigoi. Just for a moment.
When we finally broke apart, he still kept me close to him. “I don’t think what we did was wrong,” he said softly. “I’m glad we did it. If we could go back in time, I’d do it again.”
A swirling feeling burned within my chest. “Really? What made you change your mind?”
“Because you’re hard to resist,” he said, clearly amused at my surprise. “And . . . do you remember what Rhonda said?”
There was another shock, hearing her brought up. But then I recalled his face when he’d listened to her and what he’d said about his grandmother. I tried to remember Rhonda’s exact words.
“Something about how you’re going to lose something. . . .” I apparently didn’t remember it so well.
“‘You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.’”
Naturally, he knew it word for word. I’d scoffed at the words at the time, but now I tried to decipher them. At first, I felt a surge of joy: I was what he valued most. Then I gave him a startled look. “Wait. You think I’m going to die? That’s why you slept with me?”
“No, no, of course not. I did what I did because . . . believe me, it wasn’t because of that. Regardless of the specifics—or if it’s even true—she was right about how easily things can change. We try to do what’s right, or rather, what others say is right. But sometimes, when that goes against who we are . . . you have to choose. Even before the Strigoi attack, as I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you—so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It’s not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that’s something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision . . . there was nothing to hold us back.” He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. “Well, to hold me back. I’m speaking for myself. I don’t mean to act like I know exactly why you did it.”
“I did it because I love you,” I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was.
He laughed. “You can sum up in one sentence what it takes me a whole speech to get out.”
“Because it’s that simple. I love you, and I don’t want to keep pretending like I don’t.”
“I don’t either.” His hand dropped from my face and found my hand. Fingers entwined, we began walking again. “I don’t want any more lies.”
“Then what’ll happen now? With us, I mean. Once all of this is done . . . with the Strigoi . . .”
“Well, as much as I hate to reinforce your fears, you were right about one thing. We can’t be together again—for the rest of the school year, that is. We’re going to have to keep our distance.”
I felt a little disappointed by this, but I knew with certainty he was right. We might finally have reached the point where we weren’t going to deny our relationship anymore, but we could hardly flaunt it while I was still his student.
Our feet splashed through slush. A few scattered birds sang in the trees, undoubtedly surprised to see so much activity in daylight around here. Dimitri stared off into the sky ahead, face thoughtful. “After you graduate and are out with Lissa . . .” He didn’t finish. It took me a moment, but I realized what he was about to say. My heart nearly stopped.
“You’re going to ask to be reassigned, aren’t you? You won’t be her guardian.”
“It’s the only way we can be together.”
“But we won’t actually be together,” I pointed out.
“Us staying with her gives us the same problem—me worrying more about you than her. She needs two guardians perfectly dedicated to her. If I can get assigned somewhere at Court, we’ll be near each other all the time. And in a secure place like that, there’s more flexibility with a guardian’s schedule.”
A whiny, selfish part of me wanted to immediately jump in with how much that sucked, but really, it didn’t. There was no option we had that was ideal. Each one came with hard choices. I knew it was hard for him to give up Lissa. He cared about her and wanted to keep her safe with a passion that almost rivaled my own. But he cared about me more, and he had to make that sacrifice if he still wanted to honor his sense of duty.
“Well,” I said, realizing something, “we might actually see more of each other if we’re guarding different people. We can get time off together. If we were both with Lissa, we’d be swapping shifts and always be apart.”

18.

Dimitri and I didn’t say anything else for a while. Like always, we didn’t have to. I knew he was feeling the same happy buzz I was, despite that stoic exterior. We were almost out of the forest, back in sight of the others, when he spoke again.
“You’ll be eighteen soon, but even so . . .” He sighed. “When this comes out, a lot of people aren’t going to be happy.”
“Yeah, well, they can deal.” Rumors and gossip I could handle.
“I also have a feeling your mother’s going to have a very ugly conversation with me.”
“You’re about to face down Strigoi, and my mother’s the one you’re scared of?”
I could see a smile playing at his lips. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. Where do you think you got it from?”
I laughed. “It’s a wonder you bother with me then.”
“You’re worth it, believe me.”
He kissed me again, using the last of the forest’s shadows for cover. In a normal world, this would have been a happy, romantic walk the morning after sex. We wouldn’t be preparing for battle and worrying about our loved ones. We’d be laughing and teasing each other while secretly planning our next romantic getaway.
We didn’t live in a normal world, of course, but in this kiss, it was easy to imagine we did.
He and I reluctantly broke apart and left the woods, heading back toward the guardians’ building. Dark times were ahead of us, but with his kiss still burning on my lips, I felt like I could do anything.