"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."
I was sulking and hated to be that way—especially since he was saving me from getting in trouble—but I couldn't help it. Victor Dashkov was a criminal—a villain, even. He was power-hungry and greedy and didn't care who he stepped on to get his way. If he were loose again…well, there was no telling what might happen to Lissa or any other Moroi. It enraged me to think that I could do something to help put him away but that no one would let me do it.
I'd taken a few steps forward when Dimitri called out from behind me. "Rose?" I glanced back. "I'm sorry," he said. He paused, and his expression of regret turned wary. "And you'd better bring the keys back tomorrow."
I turned away and kept going. It was probably unfair, but some childish part of me believed Dimitri could do anything. If he'd really wanted to get Lissa and me to the trial, I was certain he could have.
When I was almost to the side door, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. My mood plummeted. Great. Dimitri had given me keys to sneak back in, and now someone else had busted me. That was typical of my luck. Half-expecting a teacher to demand to know what I was doing, I turned and prepared an excuse.
But it wasn't a teacher.
"No," I said softly. This had to be a trick. "No."
For half an instant, I wondered if I'd ever really woken up. Maybe I was actually still in bed, asleep and dreaming.
Because surely, surely that was the only explanation for what I was now seeing in front of me on the Academy's lawn, lurking in the shadow of an ancient, gnarled oak.
It was Mason.
CHAPTER 2
Or, well, it looked like Mason.
He—or it or whatever—was hard to see. I had to keep squinting and blinking to get him in focus. His form was insubstantial—almost translucent—and kept fading in and out of my field of vision.
But yes, from what I could see, he definitely looked like Mason. His features were washed out, making his fair skin look whiter than I recalled. His reddish hair now appeared as a faint, watery orange. I could barely even see his freckles. He was wearing exactly what I'd last seen him in: jeans and a yellow fleece jacket. The edge of a green sweater peeped out from underneath the coat's hem. Those colors, too, were all softened. He looked like a photograph that someone had left out in the sun, causing it to fade. A very, very faint glow seemed to outline his features.
The part that struck me the most—aside from the fact that he was supposed to be dead—was the look on his face. It was sad—so, so sad. Looking into his eyes, I felt my heart break. All the memories of what had taken place just a few weeks ago came rushing back to me. I saw it all again: his body falling, the cruel look on the Strigoi faces…. A lump formed in my throat. I stood there frozen, stunned and unable to move.
He studied me too, his expression never changing. Sad. Grim. Serious. He opened his mouth, like he might speak, and then closed it. Several more heavy moments hung between us, and then he lifted his hand and extended it toward me. Something in that motion snapped me out of my daze. No, this could not be happening. I wasn't seeing this. Mason was dead. I'd seen him die. I'd held his body.
His fingers moved slightly, like he was beckoning, and I panicked. Backing up a few steps, I put distance between us and waited to see what would happen. He didn't follow. He simply stood there, hand still in the air. My heart lurched, and I turned and ran. When I'd almost reached the door, I stopped and glanced back, letting my ragged breathing calm down. The clearing he'd stood in was completely empty.
I made it up to my room and slammed the door behind me, hands shaking. I sank onto my bed and replayed what had just happened.
What the hell? That had not been real. No way. Impossible. Mason was dead, and everyone knows the dead don't come back. Well, yeah, I had come back…but that was a different situation.
Clearly, I'd imagined this. That was it. It had to be. I was overtired and still reeling from Lissa and Christian, not to mention that Victor Dashkov news. Probably the cold had frozen part of my brain too. Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I decided there had to be a hundred explanations for what had just happened.
Yet, no matt
er how often I told myself that, I couldn't fall back asleep. I lay in my bed, covers pulled to my chin as I tried to banish that haunting image from my mind. I couldn't. All I could see were those sad, sad eyes, those eyes that seemed to say, Rose, why did you let this happen to me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about him. Since Mason's funeral, I'd been working so hard to go on and act like I was strong. But the truth was, I was nowhere near being over his death. I tortured myself day after day with what if? questions. What if I'd been faster and stronger during the Strigoi fight? What if I hadn't told him where the Strigoi were in the first place? And what if I'd simply been able to return his love? Any of those could have kept him alive, but none of them had happened. And it was all my fault.
"I imagined it," I whispered out loud into the darkness of my room. I had to have imagined it. Mason already haunted my dreams. I didn't need to see him when I was awake too. "It wasn't him."
It couldn't have been him, because the only way it could have been was…Well, that was something I didn't want to think about. Because while I believed in vampires and magic and psychic powers, I most certainly did not believe in ghosts.
I apparently didn't believe in sleep, either, because I didn't get much of it that night. I tossed and turned, unable to quiet my racing mind. I eventually did drift off, but it seemed like my alarm went off so soon after that I could have hardly slept for more than a few minutes.
Among humans, the light of day tends to chase off nightmares and fear. I had no such daylight; I awoke to increasing darkness. But just being out with real and living people had nearly the same effect, and as I went to breakfast and my morning practice, I found that what I'd seen last night—or what I thought I'd seen last night—was growing fainter and fainter in my memory.
The weirdness of that encounter was also being replaced by something else: excitement. This was it. The big day. The start of our field experience.
For the next six weeks, I wouldn't have any classes. I'd get to spend my days hanging out with Lissa, and the most I'd have to do was write a daily field report that was only about a half-page long. Easy. And, yeah, of course I'd be on guard duty, but I wasn't concerned. That was second nature to me. She and I had lived among humans for two years, and I'd protected her the whole time. Before that, when I'd been a freshman, I'd seen the kinds of tests the adult guardians planned for novices during this phase. The ordeals were tricky, absolutely. A novice had to be on watch and not slack—and be ready to defend and attack if necessary. None of that worried me, though. Lissa and I had been away from the school our sophomore and junior years, and I'd fallen behind then. Thanks to my extra practices with Dimitri, I'd quickly caught up and was now one of the best in my class.
"Hey, Rose."
Eddie Castile caught up to me as I walked into the gym where our field experience orientation would kick off. For a brief moment, looking at Eddie, my heart sank. Suddenly, it was like I was out in the quad again with Mason, staring at his sorrowful face.
Eddie—along with Lissa's boyfriend, Christian, and a Moroi named Mia—had been with our group when we'd been captured by Strigoi. Eddie hadn't died, obviously, but he'd come very close to it. The Strigoi who'd held us had used him as food, feeding from him throughout our capture in an effort to tease the Moroi and scare the dhampirs. It had worked; I'd been terrified. Poor Eddie had been unconscious for most of the ordeal, thanks to blood loss and the endorphins that came from a vampire's bite. He'd been Mason's best friend and nearly as funny and lighthearted.
But since we'd escaped, Eddie had changed, just like I had. He was still quick to smile and laugh, but there was a grimness to him now, a dark and serious look in his eyes that was always on guard for the worst to happen. That was understandable, of course. He pretty much had seen the worst happen. Just like with Mason's death, I held myself responsible for this transformation in Eddie and for what he'd suffered at the hands of the Strigoi. That may not have been fair to me, but I couldn't help it. I felt like I owed him now, like I needed to protect him or make things up to him somehow.
And that was kind of funny, because I think Eddie was trying to protect me. He wasn't stalking me or anything, but I'd noticed him keeping an eye on me. I think after what had happened, he felt he owed it to Mason to watch over his girlfriend. I never bothered to tell Eddie that I hadn't been Mason's girlfriend, not in the real sense of the word, just as I never rebuked Eddie for his big brother behavior. I could certainly take care of myself. But whenever I heard him warning other guys away from me, pointing out that I wasn't ready to date anyone yet, I saw no point in interfering. It was all true. I wasn't ready to date.
Eddie gave me a lopsided smile that added a little boy type of cuteness to his long face. "Are you excited?"
"Hell, yeah," I said. Our classmates were filling in bleachers on one side of the gym, and we found a clear spot near the middle. "It's going to be like a vacation. Me and Lissa, together for six weeks." As frustrating as our bond was sometimes, it nonetheless made me her ideal guardian. I always knew where she was and what was happening to her. Once we graduated and were out in the world, I'd be assigned to her officially.
He turned thoughtful. "Yeah, I guess you don't have to worry as much. You know your assignment when you graduate. The rest of us aren't so lucky."
"You got your sights set on someone royal?" I teased.
"Well, it doesn't matter. Most guardians are assigned to royals lately anyway."
That was true. Dhampirs—half-vampires like me—were in short supply, and royals usually got first pick of guardians.There was a time in the past when more Moroi, royal and non-royal alike, would have gotten guardians, and novices like us would have competed fiercely to get assigned to someone important. Now it was almost a given that every guardian would work for a royal family. There weren't enough of us to go around, and less influential families were on their own.
"Still," I said, "I guess it's a question of which royal you get, right? I mean, some are total snobs, but lots of them are cool. Get someone really rich and powerful, and you could be living at the Royal Court or traveling to exotic places." That last part appealed to me a lot, and I often had fantasies of Lissa and me traveling the world.
"Yup," agreed Eddie. He nodded toward a few guys in the front row. "You wouldn't believe the way those three have been sucking up to some of the Ivashkovs and Szelskys. It won't affect their assignments here, of course, but you can tell they're already trying to set things up after graduation."
"Well, the field experience can affect that. How we're rated on this will go into our records."
Eddie nodded again and started to say something when a loud, clear feminine voice cut through the murmur of our conversation. We both looked up. While we'd been talking, our instructors had gathered in front of the bleachers and now stood facing us in an impressive line. Dimitri was among them, dark and imposing and irresistible. Alberta was trying to call us to attention. The crowd fell silent.
"All right," she began. Alberta was in her fifties, wiry andtough. Seeing her reminded me of the conversation she and Dimitri had had last night, but I filed that away for later. Victor Dashkov was not going to ruin this moment. "You all know why you're here." We'd become so quiet, so tense and excited, that her voice now rang through the gym. "This is the most important day of your education before you take your final trials. Today you will find out which Moroi you've been placed with. Last week, you were given a booklet with the full details of how the next six weeks will play out. I trust you've all read it by now." I had, actually. I'd probably never read anything so thoroughly in my life. "Just to recap, Guardian Alto will highlight the main rules of this exercise."
She handed a clipboard to Guardian Stan Alto. He was one of my least favorite instructors, but after Mason's death, some of the tension between us had lightened. We understood each other better now.
"Here we go," said Stan gruffly. "You'll be on duty six days a week. This is actually a treat for you g
uys. In the real world, you're usually working every day. You will accompany your Moroi everywhere—to class, to their dorms, to their feedings. Everything. It's up to you to figure out how you fit into their lives. Some Moroi interact with their guardians just like friends; some Moroi prefer you to be more of an invisible ghost who doesn't talk to them." Did he have to use the word ghost? "Every situation is different, and you two will have to find a way to work it out to best ensure their safety.
"Attacks may come at any time, anywhere, and we'll be dressed in all black when it happens. You should always be on your guard. Remember, even though you'll obviously know it's us doing the attacking and not real Strigoi, you should respond as though your lives are in terrible, immediate danger. Don't be afraid of hurting us. Some of you, I'm sure, won't have any qualms about getting us back for past grievances." Students in the crowd giggled at this. "But some of you may feel like you have to hold back, for fear of getting in trouble. Don't. You'll get in more trouble if you do hold back. Don't worry. We can take it."
He flipped to the next page of his clipboard. "You will be on duty twenty-four hours a day for your six-day cycles, but you may sleep during daylight when your Moroi does. Just be aware that although Strigoi attacks are rare in daylight, they aren't impossible indoors, and you will not necessarily be 'safe' during these times."
Stan read over a few more technicalities, and I found myself tuning them out. I knew this stuff. We all did. Glancing around, I could see I wasn't alone in my impatience. Excitement and apprehension crackled in the crowd. Hands were clenched. Eyes were wide. We all wanted our assignments. We all wanted this to begin.
When Stan finished, he handed the clipboard to Alberta. "Okay," she said. "I'm going to call out your names one by one and announce who you're paired with. At that time, come down here to the floor, and Guardian Chase will give you a packet containing information about your Moroi's schedule, past, etcetera."
We all straightened up as she leafed through her papers. Students whispered. Beside me, Eddie exhaled heavily. "Oh man. I hope I get someone good," he muttered. "I don't want to be miserable for the next six weeks."
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