He cupped my chin with his hands, fixing me with his eyes. “You have helped her. Your job is done. You did it well. But this isn’t any place for you. She and I both need you to stay safe.”
Only the realization that arguing would delay the rescue kept me quiet. Swallowing back any protests, I nodded. He nodded back and joined the others. All of them slipped off into the woods, blending with the trees.
Sighing, I kicked the passenger seat back and lay down. I was so tired. Even though the sun poured through the windshield, it was night for me. I’d been up for most of it, and a lot had happened in that time. Between the adrenaline of my own role and sharing Lissa’s pain, I could have passed out just like she had.
Except that she was awake now.
Slowly, her perceptions dominated mine once more. She lay on a couch in the cabin. One of Victor’s henchmen must have carried her there after she’d fainted. Victor himself—alive and well now, thanks to his abuse of her—stood in the kitchen with the others as they all spoke in low voices about their plans. Only one stood near Lissa, keeping watch. He’d be easy to take down when Dimitri and the Badass Team burst inside.
Lissa studied the lone guardian and then glanced at a window beside the couch. Still dizzy from the healing, she managed to sit up. The guardian turned around, watching her warily. She met his eyes and smiled.
“You’re going to stay quiet no matter what I do,” she told him. “You aren’t going to call for help or tell anyone when I leave. Okay?”
The thrall of compulsion slid over him. He nodded in agreement.
Moving toward the window, she unlocked it and slid the glass up. As she did, a tumble of considerations played through her mind. She was weak. She didn’t know how far from the Academy—from anything, really—she was. She had no clue how far she could get before someone noticed.
But she also knew she might not get another chance at escape. She had no intention of spending the rest of her life in this cabin in the woods.
At any other time, I would have cheered on her boldness, but not this time. Not when all those guardians were about to save her. She needed to stay put. Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear my advice.
Lissa climbed out the window, and I swore out loud.
“What? What’d you see?” asked a voice behind me.
I jerked up from my reclining position in the car, banging my head on the ceiling. Glancing behind me, I found Christian peering up from the cargo space behind the farthest back-seats.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What’s it look like? I’m a stowaway.”
“Don’t you have a concussion or something?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter. What a great pair he and Lissa were. Neither afraid to take on crazy feats while seriously injured. Still, if Kirova had made me stay behind, I would have been right beside him in the back.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “Did you see something new?
Hastily, I told him. I also got out of the car as I spoke. He followed.
“She doesn’t know our guys are already coming for her. I’m going to go get her before she kills herself with exhaustion.”
“What about the guardians? The school’s, I mean. Are you going to tell them she’s gone?”
I shook my head. “They’re probably already busting down the cabin’s door. I’m going after her.” She was somewhere off to the right side of the cabin. I could head in that direction but wouldn’t be able to get very precise until I was much closer to her. Still, it didn’t matter. I had to find her. Seeing Christian’s face, I couldn’t resist giving him a dry smile. “And yeah, I know. You’re going with me.”
TWENTY-THREE
I’D NEVER HAD SO MUCH trouble staying out of Lissa’s head before, but then, we’d never been through anything like this together either. The strength of her thoughts and feelings kept trying to pull me in as I hurried through the forest.
Running through the brush and woods, Christian and I moved farther and farther from the cabin. Man, how I wished Lissa had stayed back there. I would have loved to see the raid through her eyes. But that was behind us now, and as I ran, Dimitri’s push on laps and stamina paid off. She wasn’t moving very quickly, and I could feel the distance closing between us, giving me a more precise idea of her location. Likewise, Christian couldn’t keep up with me. I started to slow for him but soon realized the foolishness of that.
So did he. “Go,” he gasped out, waving me on.
When I reached a point close enough to her that I thought she could hear me, I called out her name, hoping to get her to turn around. Instead, what answered me was a set of howls—a soft canine baying.
Psi-hounds. Of course. Victor had said he hunted with them; he could control those beasts. I suddenly understood why no one at school recalled sending psi-hounds after Lissa and me in Chicago. The Academy hadn’t arranged that; Victor had.
A minute later, I reached a clearing where Lissa cringed, back against a tree. From her looks and bond feelings, she should have fainted long ago. Only the barest scraps of willpower kept her hanging on. Wide-eyed and pale, she stared in horror at the four psi-hounds cornering her. Noticing the full sunlight, it occurred to me that she and Christian had another obstacle to contend with out here.
“Hey,” I yelled at the hounds, trying to draw them toward me. Victor must have sent them to trap her, but I hoped they’d sense and respond to another threat—especially a dhampir. Psi-hounds didn’t like us any better than other animals did.
Sure enough, they turned on me, teeth bared and drool coming out of their mouths. They resembled wolves, only with brown fur and eyes that glowed like orange fire. He’d probably ordered them not to harm her, but they had no such instructions regarding me.
Wolves. Just like in science class. What had Ms. Meissner said? A lot of confrontations were all about willpower? Bearing this mind, I tried to project an alpha attitude, but I don’t think they fell for it. Any one of them outweighed me. Oh yeah—they also outnumbered me. No, they didn’t have anything to be scared of.
Trying to pretend this was just a free-for-all match with Dimitri, I picked up a branch from the ground that had about the same heft and weight as a baseball bat. I’d just positioned it in my hands when two of the hounds jumped me. Claws and teeth bit into me, but I held my own surprisingly well as I tried to remember everything I’d learned in the last two months about fighting bigger and stronger opponents.
I didn’t like hurting them. They reminded me too much of dogs. But it was me or them, and survival instincts won out. One of them I managed to beat to the ground, dead or unconscious I didn’t know. The other was still on me, still coming on fast and furious. His companions looked ready to join him, but then a new competitor burst on the scene—sort of. Christian.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at him, shaking off my hound as its claws ripped into the bare skin of my leg, nearly toppling me over. I was still wearing the dress, though I’d shed the heels a while ago.
But Christian, like any lovesick guy, didn’t listen. He picked up a branch as well and swung it at one of the hounds. Flames burst from the wood. The hound backed up, still compelled to follow Victor’s orders, though also clearly afraid of the fire.
Its companion, the fourth hound, circled away from the torch and came up behind Christian. Smart little bastard. It sprang at Christian, hitting him back first. The branch flew from his hands, the fire immediately going out. Both hounds then leapt onto his fallen form. I finished my hound—again feeling sick over what I had to do to subdue it—and moved toward the other two, wondering if I had the strength to take on these last ones.
But I didn’t have to. Rescue appeared in the form of Alberta, emerging through some trees.
With a gun in hand, she shot the hounds without hesitation. Boring as hell perhaps—and completely useless against Strigoi—but against other things? Guns were tried and true. The hounds stopped moving and slumped next to Christian’s body.
All three of us made our way over to it—Lissa and I practically crawling. When I saw it, I had to look away. My stomach lurched, and it took a lot of effort not to throw up. He wasn’t dead yet, but I didn’t think he had much longer.
Lissa’s eyes, wide and distraught, drank him in. Tentatively, she reached out toward him and then dropped her hand.
“I can’t,” she managed in a small voice. “I don’t have the strength left.”
Alberta, leathery face both hard and compassionate, gently tugged her arm. “Come on, Princess. We need to get out of here. We’ll send help.”
Turning back to Christian, I forced myself to look at him and let myself feel how much Lissa cared about him.
“Liss,” I said hesitantly. She looked over at me, like she’d forgotten I was even there. Wordlessly, I brushed my hair away from my neck and tilted it toward her.
She stared for a moment, blank-faced; then understanding shone in her eyes.
Those fangs that lurked behind her pretty smile bit into my neck, and a small moan escaped my lips. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it, that sweet, wonderful pain followed by glorious wonder. Bliss settled over me. Dizzying. Joyful. Like being in a dream.
I don’t entirely remember how long Lissa drank from me. Probably not that long. She would never even consider drinking the quantities that would kill a person and make her a Strigoi. She finished, and Alberta caught me as I started to sway.
Dizzily, I watched as Lissa leaned over Christian and rested her hands on him. In the distance, I heard the other guardians crashing through the forest.
No glowing or fireworks surrounded the healing. It all took place invisibly, occurring between Lissa and Christian. Even though the bite’s endorphins had numbed my connection to her, I remembered Victor’s healing and the wonderful colors and music she must be bringing forth.
A miracle unfolded before my eyes, and Alberta gasped. Christian’s wounds closed. The blood dried up. Color—as much as a Moroi ever had, at least—returned to his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered, and his eyes regained their life again. Focusing on Lissa, he smiled. It was like watching a Disney movie.
I must have keeled over after that, because I don’t remember anything else.
Eventually, I woke up in the Academy’s clinic, where they forced fluids and sugar into me for two days. Lissa stayed by my side almost the entire time, and slowly, the events of the kidnapping unfolded.
We had to tell Kirova and a few choice others about Lissa’s powers, how she’d healed Victor and Christian and, well, me. The news was shocking, but the administrators agreed to keep it secret from the rest of the school. No one even considered taking Lissa away like they had Ms. Karp.
Mostly all the other students knew was that Victor Dashkov had kidnapped Lissa Dragomir. They didn’t know why. Some of his guardians had died when Dimitri’s band attacked—a damned shame, when guardian numbers were so low already. Victor was now being held under 24/7 guard at the school, waiting for a royal regiment of guardians to carry him away. The Moroi rulers might be a mostly symbolic government within another country’s larger government, but they had systems of justice, and I’d heard about Moroi prisons. Not any place I’d want to be.
As for Natalie . . . that was trickier. She was still a minor, but she’d conspired with her father. She’d brought in the dead animals and kept an eye on Lissa’s behavior—even before we left. Being an earth user like Victor, she’d also been the one to rot the bench that broke my ankle. After she’d seen me hold Lissa back from the dove, she and Victor realized that they needed to injure me to get to her—it was their only chance to get her to heal again. Natalie had simply waited for a good opportunity. She wasn’t locked up or anything yet, and the Academy didn’t know what to do with her until a royal command came.
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She was so awkward and self-conscious. Anyone could have manipulated her, let alone her father, whom she loved and from whom she so desperately wanted attention. She would have done anything. Rumor said she’d stood screaming outside the detention center, begging them to let her see him. They’d refused and hauled her away.
Meanwhile, Lissa and I slipped back into our friendship like nothing had happened. In the rest of her world, a lot had happened. After all that excitement and drama, she seemed to gain a new sense of what mattered to her. She broke up with Aaron. I’m sure she did it very nicely, but it still had to be hard on him. She’d dropped him twice now. The fact that his last girlfriend had cheated on him probably wasn’t helping his confidence any.
And without any more hesitation, Lissa started dating Christian, not caring about the consequences to her reputation. Seeing them out in public, holding hands, made me do a double take. He didn’t seem able to believe it himself. The rest of our classmates were almost too stunned to even comprehend it yet. They could barely process acknowledging his existence, let alone him being with someone like her.
My own romantic state was less rosy than hers—if you could even call it a romantic state. Dimitri hadn’t visited me during my recovery, and our practices were indefinitely suspended. It wasn’t until the fourth day after Lissa’s kidnapping that I ran into him in the gym. We were alone.
I had come back for my gym bag and froze when I saw him, unable to speak. He started to walk past and then stopped.
“Rose . . .” he began after several uncomfortable moments. “You need to report what happened. With us.”
I’d been waiting a long time to talk to him, but this wasn’t the conversation I’d imagined.
“I can’t do that. They’ll fire you. Or worse.”
“They should fire me. What I did was wrong.”
“You couldn’t help it. It was the spell. . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. It was wrong. And stupid.”
Wrong? Stupid? I bit my lip, and tears threatened to fill my eyes. I quickly tried to regain my composure. “Look, it’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal! I took advantage of you.”
“No,” I said evenly. “You didn’t.”
There must have been something telling in my voice because he met my eyes with a deep and serious intensity.
“Rose, I’m seven years older than you. In ten years, that won’t mean so much, but for now, it’s huge. I’m an adult. You’re a child.”
Ouch. I flinched. Easier if he’d just punched me.
“You didn’t seem to think I was a child when you were all over me.”
Now he flinched. “Just because your body . . . well, that doesn’t make you an adult. We’re in two very different places. I’ve been out in the world. I’ve been on my own. I’ve killed, Rose—people, not animals. And you . . . you’re just starting out. Your life is about homework and clothes and dances.”
“That’s all you think I care about?”
“No, of course not. Not entirely. But it’s all part of your world. You’re still growing up and figuring out who you are and what’s important. You need to keep doing that. You need to be with boys your own age.”
I didn’t want boys my own age. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything.
“Even if you choose not to tell, you need to understand that it was a mistake. And it isn’t ever going to happen again,” he added.
“Because you’re too old for me? Because it isn’t responsible?”
His face was perfectly blank. “No. Because I’m just not interested in you in that way.”
I stared. The message—the rejection—came through loud and clear. Everything from that night, everything I’d believed so beautiful and full of meaning, turned to dust before my eyes.
“It only happened because of the spell. Do you understand?”
Humiliated and angry, I refused to make a fool of myself by arguing or begging. I just shrugged. “Yeah. Understood.”
I spent the rest of the day sulking, ignoring both Lissa and Mason’s attempts to draw me out of my room.
It was ironic that I should want to stay inside. Kirova had been impressed enough by my performance with the rescue to end my house arrest.
Before school the next day, I made my way to where Victor was being held. The Academy had honest-to-goodness cells, complete with bars, and two guardians stood watch in the hallway nearby. It took a little bit of finagling on my part to get them to let me inside to talk to him. Even Natalie wasn’t allowed in. But one of the guardians had ridden with me in the SUV and watched me undergo Lissa’s torture. I told him I needed to ask Victor about what he’d done to Lissa. It was a lie, but the guardians bought it and felt sorry for me. They allowed me five minutes to speak, backing up a discrete distance down the hall where they could see but not hear.
Standing outside Victor’s cell, I couldn’t believe I’d once felt sorry for him. Seeing his new and healthy body enraged me. He sat cross-legged on a narrow bed, reading. When he heard me approach, he looked up.
“Why Rose, what a nice surprise. Your ingenuity never fails to impress me. I didn’t think they’d allow me any visitors.”
I crossed my arms, trying to put on a look of total guardian fierceness. “I want you to break the spell. Finish it off.”
“What do you mean?”
“The spell you did on me and Dimitri.”
“That spell is done. It burned itself out.”
I shook my head. “No. I keep thinking about him. I keep wanting to . . .”
He smiled knowingly when I didn’t finish. “My dear, that was already there, long before I set that up.”
“It wasn’t like this. Not this bad.”
“Maybe not consciously. But everything else . . . the attraction—physical and mental—was already in you. And in him. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise. The spell didn’t really add anything new—it just removed inhibitions and strengthened the feelings you already had for each other.”
“You’re lying. He said he didn’t feel that way about me.”
“He’s lying. I tell you, the spell wouldn’t have worked otherwise, and honestly, he should have known better. He had no right to let himself feel that way. You can be forgiven for a schoolgirl’s crush. But him? He should have demonstrated more control in hiding his feelings. Natalie saw it and told me. After just a few observations of my own, it was obvious to me too. It gave me the perfect chance to distract you both. I keyed the necklace’s charm for each of you, and you two did the rest.”
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