“I’ve got to go,” I told Mason.
I half walked, half ran over to Lissa’s side, catching only the tail end of Mia’s tirade. She was yelling at Lissa full force now and leaning into her face. From what I could tell, word must have reached her about Jesse and Ralf selling her out.
“—you and your slutty friend! I’m going to tell everyone what a psycho you are and how they had to lock you in the clinic because you’re so crazy. They’re putting you on medication. That’s why you and Rose left before anyone else could find out you cut—”
Whoa, not good. Just like at our first meeting in the cafeteria, I grabbed her and jerked her away.
“Hey,” I said. “Slutty friend here. Remember what I said about standing too close to her?”
Mia snarled, baring her fangs. As I’d noted before, I couldn’t feel too sorry for her anymore. She was dangerous. She had stooped low to get back at me. Now, somehow, she knew about Lissa and the cutting. Really knew, too; she wasn’t just guessing. The information she had now sounded both like what the guardians on the scene had reported, as well as what I’d told them about Lissa’s history. Maybe some confidential doctor’s stuff too. Mia’d snagged the records somehow.
Lissa realized it too, and the look on her face—scared and fragile, no more princess—made my decision for me. It didn’t matter that Kirova had spoken the other day about giving me my freedom, that I’d been having a good time, and that I could have let my worries go and partied tonight. I was going to ruin everything, right here and right now.
I’m really not good with impulse control.
I punched Mia as hard as I could—harder, I think, than I’d even hit Jesse. I heard a crunch as my fist impacted her nose, and blood spurted out. Someone screamed. Mia shrieked and flew backwards into some squealing girls who didn’t want to get blood on their dresses. I swooped in after her, getting in one more good punch before somebody peeled me off her.
I didn’t fight restraint as I had when they’d taken me from Mr. Nagy’s classroom. I’d expected this as soon as I’d swung at her. Stopping all signs of resistance, I let two guardians lead me out of the dance while Ms. Kirova tried to bring some semblance of order. I didn’t care what they did to me. Not anymore. Punish or expel. Whatever. I could handle—
Ahead of us, through the ebbing and flowing waves of students passing through the double doors, I saw a figure in pink dart out. Lissa. My own out-of-control emotions had overridden hers, but there they were, flooding back into me. Devastation. Despair. Everyone knew her secret now. She’d face more than just idle speculation. Pieces would fall together. She couldn’t handle that.
Knowing I wasn’t going anywhere, I frantically searched for some way to help her. A dark figure caught my eye. “Christian!” I yelled. He’d been staring at Lissa’s retreating figure but glanced up at the sound of his name.
One of my escorts shushed me and took my arm. “Be quiet.”
I ignored her. “Go after her,” I called to Christian. “Hurry.”
He just sat there, and I suppressed a groan.
“Go, you idiot!”
My guardians snapped at me to be quiet again, but something inside of Christian woke up. Springing up from his lounging position, he tore off in the direction Lissa had traveled.
No one wanted to deal with me that night. There’d be hell to pay tomorrow—I heard talk of suspension or possibly even expulsion—but Kirova had her hands full with a bleeding Mia and a hysterical student body. The guardians escorted me to my room under the watchful eye of the dorm matron who informed me she’d check on me every hour to make sure I stayed in my room. A couple guardians would also hang out around the dorm’s entrances. Apparently I was now a high-security risk. I’d probably just ruined Eddie’s party; he’d never sneak a group up to his room now.
Heedless of my dress, I flounced onto the floor of my room, crossing my legs underneath me. I reached out to Lissa. She was calmer now. The events from the dance still hurt her terribly, but Christian was soothing her somehow, although whether it was through simple words or physical mojo, I couldn’t say. I didn’t care. So long as she felt better and wouldn’t do anything stupid. I returned to myself.
Yes, things were going to get messy now. Mia and Jesse’s respective accusations were going to set the school on fire. I probably would get thrown out and have to go live with a bunch of skanky dhampir women. At least Lissa might realize Aaron was boring and that she wanted to be with Christian. But even if that was the right thing, it still meant—
Christian. Christian.
Christian was hurt.
I snapped back into Lissa’s body, suddenly sucked in by the terror pounding through her. She was surrounded, surrounded by men and women who had come out of nowhere, bursting up into the attic of the chapel where she and Christian had gone to talk. Christian leapt up, fire flaring from his fingers. One of the invaders hit him on the head with something hard, making his body slump to the ground.
I desperately hoped he was okay, but I couldn’t waste any more energy worrying about him. All my fear was for Lissa now. I couldn’t let the same thing happen to her. I couldn’t let them hurt her. I needed to save her, to get her out of there. But I didn’t know how. She was too far away, and I couldn’t even escape her head at the moment, let alone run over there or get help.
The attackers approached her, calling her Princess and telling her not to worry, and that they were guardians. And they did seem like guardians. Definitely dhampirs. Moving in precise, efficient ways. But I didn’t recognize them as any of the guardians from school. Neither did Lissa. Guardians wouldn’t have attacked Christian. And guardians certainly wouldn’t be binding and gagging her—
Something forced me out of her head, and I frowned, staring around my room. I needed to go back to her and find out what had happened. Usually the connection just faded or I closed it off, but this—this was like something had actually removed me and pulled me. Pulled me back here.
But that made no sense. What could pull me back from . . . wait.
My mind blanked.
I couldn’t remember what I’d just been thinking about. It was gone. Like static in my brain. Where had I been? With Lissa? What about Lissa?
Standing up, I wrapped my arms around myself, confused, trying to figure out what was going on. Lissa. Something with Lissa.
Dimitri, a voice inside my head suddenly said. Go to Dimitri.
Yes. Dimitri. My body and spirit burned for him all of a sudden, and I wanted to be with him more than I ever had before. I couldn’t stay away from him. He’d know what to do. And he’d told me before I should come to him if something was wrong with Lissa. Too bad I couldn’t remember what that was. Still. I knew he’d take care of everything.
Getting up to the staff wing of the dorm wasn’t hard, since they wanted to keep me inside tonight. I didn’t know where his room was, but it didn’t matter. Something was pulling me to him, urging me closer. An instinct pushed me toward one of the doors, and I beat the living daylights out of it.
After a few moments, he opened it, brown eyes widening when he saw me.
“Rose?”
“Let me in. It’s Lissa.”
He immediately stepped aside for me. I’d apparently caught him in bed, because the covers were peeled back on one side and only a small tableside lamp shone in the darkness. Plus, he wore only cotton pajama bottoms; his chest—which I’d never seen before, and wow, did it look great—was bare. The ends of his dark hair curled near his chin and appeared damp, like he’d taken a shower not so long ago.
“What’s wrong?”
The sound of his voice thrilled me, and I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t stop staring at him. The force that had pulled me up here pulled me to him. I wanted him to touch me so badly, so badly I could barely stand it. He was so amazing. So unbelievably gorgeous. I knew somewhere something was wrong, but it didn’t seem important. Not when I was with him.
With almost a foot separating us, there w
as no way I could easily kiss his lips without his help. So instead, I aimed for his chest, wanting to taste that warm, smooth skin.
“Rose!” he exclaimed, stepping back. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?”
I moved toward him again, needing to touch him and kiss him and do so many other things.
“Are you drunk?” he asked, holding his hand out in a warding gesture.
“Don’t I wish.” I tried to dodge around him, then paused, momentarily uncertain. “I thought you wanted to—don’t you think I’m pretty?” In all the time we’d known each other, in all the time this attraction had built, he’d never told me I was pretty. He’d hinted at it, but that wasn’t the same. And despite all the assurances I had from other guys that I was hotness incarnate, I needed to hear it from the one guy I actually wanted.
“Rose, I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to go back to your room.”
When I moved toward him again, he reached out and gripped my wrists. With that touch, an electric current shot through both of us, and I saw him forget whatever he’d just been worrying about. Something seized him too, something that made him suddenly want me as much I wanted him.
Releasing my wrists, he moved his hands up my arms, sliding slowly along my skin. Holding me in his dark, hungry gaze, he pulled me to him, pressing me right up to his body. One of his hands moved up the back of my neck, twining his fingers in my hair and tipping my face up to his. He brought his lips down, barely brushing them against mine.
Swallowing, I asked again, “Do you think I’m pretty?”
He regarded me with utter seriousness, like he always did. “I think you’re beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
“You are so beautiful, it hurts me sometimes.”
His lips moved to mine, gentle at first, and then hard and hungry. His kiss consumed me. His hands on my arms slid down, down my hips, down to the edge of my dress. He gathered up the fabric in his hands and began pushing it up my legs. I melted into that touch, into his kiss and the way it burned against my mouth. His hands kept sliding up and up, until he’d pulled the dress over my head and tossed it on the floor.
“You . . . you got rid of that dress fast,” I pointed out between heavy breaths. “I thought you liked it.”
“I do like it,” he said. His breathing was as heavy as mine. “I love it.”
And then he took me to the bed.
TWENTY-ONE
I’D NEVER BEEN COMPLETELY NAKED around a guy before. It scared the hell out of me—even though it excited me, too. Lying on the covers, we clung to each other and kept kissing—and kissing and kissing and kissing. His hands and lips took possession of my body, and every touch was like fire on my skin.
After yearning for him for so long, I could barely believe this was happening. And while the physical stuff felt great, I also just liked being close to him. I liked the way he looked at me, like I was the sexiest, most wonderful thing in the world. I liked the way he would say my name in Russian, murmured like a prayer: Roza, Roza . . .
And somewhere, somewhere in all of this, was that same urging voice that had driven me up to his room, a voice that didn’t sound like my own but that I was powerless to ignore. Stay with him, stay with him. Don’t think about anything else except him. Keep touching him. Forget about everything else.
I listened—not that I really needed any extra convincing.
The burning in his eyes told me he wanted to do a lot more than we were, but he took things slow, maybe because he knew I was nervous. His pajama pants stayed on. At one point, I shifted so that I hovered over him, my hair hanging around him. He tilted his head slightly, and I just barely caught sight of the back of his neck. I brushed my fingertips over the six tiny marks tattooed there.
“Did you really kill six Strigoi?” He nodded. “Wow.”
He brought my own neck down to his mouth and kissed me. His teeth gently grazed my skin, different from a vampire but every bit as thrilling. “Don’t worry. You’ll have a lot more than me someday.”
“Do you feel guilty about it?”
“Hmm?”
“Killing them. You said in the van that it was the right thing to do, but it still bothers you. It’s why you go to church, isn’t it? I see you there, but you aren’t really into the services.”
He smiled, surprised and amused I’d guessed another secret about him. “How do you know these things? I’m not guilty exactly . . . just sad sometimes. All of them used to be human or dhampir or Moroi. It’s a waste, that’s all, but as I said before, it’s something I have to do. Something we all have to do. Sometimes it bothers me, and the chapel is a good place to think about those kinds of things. Sometimes I find peace there, but not often. I find more peace with you.”
He rolled me off of him and moved on top of me again. The kissing picked up once more, harder this time. More urgent. Oh God, I thought. I’m finally going to do it. This is it. I can feel it.
He must have seen the decision in my eyes. Smiling, he slid his hands behind my neck and unfastened Victor’s necklace. He set it on the bedside table. As soon as the chain left his fingers, I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. I blinked in surprise.
Dimitri must have felt the same way. “What happened?” he asked.
“I—I don’t know.” I felt like I was trying to wake up, like I’d been asleep for two days. I needed to remember something.
Lissa. Something with Lissa.
My head felt funny. Not pain or dizziness, but . . . the voice, I realized. The voice urging me toward Dimitri was gone. That wasn’t to say I didn’t want him anymore because hey, seeing him there in those sexy pajama bottoms, with that brown hair spilling over the side of face was pretty fine. But I no longer had that outside influence pushing me to him. Weird.
He frowned, no longer turned on. After several moments of thought, he reached over and picked up the necklace. The instant his fingers touched it, I saw desire sweep over him again. He slid his other hand onto my hip, and suddenly, that burning lust slammed back into me. My stomach went queasy while my skin started to prickle and grow warm again. My breathing became heavy. His lips moved toward mine again.
Some inner part of me fought through.
“Lissa,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut. “I have to tell you something about Lissa. But I can’t . . . remember . . . I feel so strange. . . .”
“I know.” Still holding onto me, he rested his cheek against my forehead. “There’s something . . . something here. . . .” He pulled his face away, and I opened my eyes. “This necklace. That’s the one Prince Victor gave you?”
I nodded and could see the sluggish thought process trying to wake up behind his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he removed his hand from my hip and pushed himself away.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed. “Come back. . . .”
He looked like he wanted to—very badly—but instead he climbed out of the bed. He and the necklace moved away from me. I felt like he’d ripped part of me away, but at the same time, I had that startling sensation of waking up, like I could think clearly once more without my body making all the decisions.
On the other hand, Dimitri still wore a look of animal passion on him, and it seemed to take a great deal of effort for him to walk across the room. He reached the window and managed to open it one-handed. Cold air blasted in, and I rubbed my hands over my arms for warmth.
“What are you going to—?” The answer hit me, and I sprang out of bed, just as the necklace flew out the window. “No! Do you know how much that must have—?”
The necklace disappeared, and I no longer felt like I was waking up. I was awake. Painfully, startlingly so.
I took in my surroundings. Dimitri’s room. Me naked. The rumpled bed.
But all that was nothing compared to what hit me next.
“Lissa!” I gasped out. It all came back, the memories and the emotions. And, in fact, her held-back emotions suddenly poured into me—at stagge
ring levels. More terror. Intense terror. Those feelings wanted to suck me back into her body, but I couldn’t let them. Not quite yet. I fought against her, needing to stay here. With the words coming out in a rush, I told Dimitri everything that had happened.
He was in motion before I finished, putting on clothes and looking every bit like a badass god. Ordering me to get dressed, he tossed me a sweatshirt with Cyrillic writing on it to wear over the skimpy dress.
I had a hard time following him downstairs; he made no effort to slow for me this time. Calls were made when we got there. Orders shouted. Before long, I ended up in the guardians’ main office with him. Kirova and other teachers were there. Most of the campus’s guardians. Everyone seemed to speak at once. All the while, I felt Lissa’s fear, felt her moving farther and farther away.
I yelled at them to hurry up and do something, but no one except Dimitri would believe my story about her abduction until someone retrieved Christian from the chapel and then verified Lissa really wasn’t on campus.
Christian staggered in, supported by two guardians. Dr. Olendzki appeared shortly thereafter, checking him out and wiping blood away from the back of his head.
Finally, I thought, something would happen.
“How many Strigoi were there?” one of the guardians asked me.
“How in the world did they get in?” muttered someone else.
I stared. “Wh—? There weren’t any Strigoi.”
Several sets of eyes stared at me. “Who else would have taken her?” asked Ms. Kirova primly. “You must have seen it wrong through the . . . vision.”
“No. I’m positive. It was . . . they were . . . guardians.”
“She’s right,” mumbled Christian, still under the doctor’s ministrations. He winced as she did something to the back of his head. “Guardians.”
“That’s impossible,” someone said.
“They weren’t school guardians.” I rubbed my forehead, fighting hard to keep from leaving the conversation and going back to Lissa. My irritation grew. “Will you guys get moving? She’s getting farther away!”
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