The next time I woke up, it was my mother beside me.
“Rose, we’re going to check the caves. You can’t go into them, but you can come to the school’s borders with us if you want.”
It was the best I could get. If it meant I could find out what had happened to Dimitri a moment sooner than if I stayed here, I’d do it. Lissa came with me, and we trailed behind the assembled guardian party. I was still hurt by her refusal to heal Dimitri, but a part of me secretly thought she wouldn’t be able to hold back once she saw him.
The guardians had assembled a large group to check the caves, just in case. We were pretty sure the Strigoi were gone, however. They’d lost their advantage and had to know that if we came back for the dead, it would be with renewed numbers. Any of them that had survived would be gone.
The guardians crossed over the wards, and the rest of us who had followed along waited by the border. Hardly anyone spoke. It would probably be three hours before they came back, counting travel time. Trying to ignore the dark, leaden feeling inside of me, I sat on the ground and rested my head against Lissa’s shoulder, wishing the minutes would fly by. A Moroi fire user created a bonfire, and we all warmed ourselves by it.
The minutes didn’t fly, but they did eventually pass. Someone shouted that the guardians were coming back. I leapt up and ran to look. What I saw drove me to a halt.
Stretchers. Stretchers carrying the bodies of those who had been killed. Dead guardians, their faces pale and eyes unseeing. One of the watching Moroi went and threw up in a bush. Lissa started crying. One by one, the dead filed past us. I stared, feeling cold and empty, wondering if I’d see their ghosts the next time I went outside the wards.
Finally, the whole group had gone by. Five bodies, but it had felt like five hundred. And there was one body I hadn’t seen. One I’d been dreading. I ran up to my mother. She was helping carry a stretcher. She wouldn’t look at me and undoubtedly knew what I’d come to ask.
“Where’s Dimitri?” I demanded. “Is he . . .” It was too much to hope for, too much to ask. “Is he alive?” Oh God. What if my prayers had been answered? What if he was back there injured, waiting for them to send a doctor?
My mother didn’t answer right away. I barely recognized her voice when she did.
“He wasn’t there, Rose.”
I stumbled over the uneven ground and had to hurry up to catch her again. “Wait, what’s that mean? Maybe he’s injured and left to get help. . . .”
She still wouldn’t look at me. “Molly wasn’t there either.”
Molly was the Moroi who had been snacked on. She was my age, tall and beautiful. I’d seen her body in the cave, drained of blood. She had definitely been dead. There was no way she’d been injured and staggered out. Molly and Dimitri. Both their bodies gone.
“No,” I gasped out. “You don’t think . . .”
A tear leaked out of my mother’s eye. I’d never seen anything like that from her. “I don’t know what to think, Rose. If he survived, it’s possible . . . it’s possible they took him for later.”
The thought of Dimitri as a “snack” was too horrible for words—but it wasn’t as horrible as the alternative. We both knew it.
“But they wouldn’t have taken Molly for later. She’d been dead a while.”
My mother nodded. “I’m sorry, Rose. We can’t know for sure. It’s likely they’re both just dead, and the Strigoi dragged their bodies off.”
She was lying. It was the first time in my entire life that my mother had ever told me a lie to protect me. She wasn’t the comforting kind, wasn’t the kind who would make up pretty stories in order to make someone feel better. She always told the harsh truth.
Not this time.
I stopped walking, and the group continued filing past me. Lissa caught up, worried and confused.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned and ran backwards, back toward the wards. She ran after me, calling my name. No one else noticed us because honestly, who in the world was stupid enough to cross the wards after everything that had happened?
I was, although in daylight, I had nothing to fear. I ran past the place Jesse’s group had attacked her, stepping across the invisible lines that marked the boundaries of the Academy’s grounds. Lissa hesitated a moment and then joined me. She was breathless from running after me.
“Rose, what are you—”
“Mason!” I cried. “Mason, I need you.”
It took him a little while to materialize. This time, he not only seemed ultra-pale, he also appeared to be flickering, like a light about to go out. He stood there, watching me, and although his expression was the same as always, I had the weirdest feeling that he knew what I was going to ask. Lissa, beside me, kept glancing back and forth between me and the spot I was speaking to.
“Mason, is Dimitri dead?”
Mason shook his head.
“Is he alive?”
Mason shook his head.
Neither alive nor dead. The world swam around me, sparkles of color dancing before my eyes. The lack of food had made me dizzy, and I was on the verge of fainting. I had to stay in control here. I had to ask the next question. Out of all the victims . . . out of all the victims they could have chosen, surely they wouldn’t have picked him.
The next words stuck in my throat, and I sank to my knees as I spoke them.
“Is he . . . is Dimitri a Strigoi?”
Mason hesitated only a moment, like he was afraid to answer me, and then—he nodded.
My heart shattered. My world shattered.
You will lose what you value most. . . .
It hadn’t been me that Rhonda was talking about. It hadn’t even been Dimitri’s life.
What you value most.
It had been his soul.
TWENTY-NINE
N
EARLY A WEEK LATER, I showed up at Adrian’s door.
We hadn’t had classes since the attack, but our normal curfew hours were still in effect, and it was almost bedtime. Adrian’s face registered complete and total shock when he saw me. It was the first time I’d ever sought him out, rather than vice versa.
“Little dhampir,” he said, stepping aside. “Come in.”
I did, and was nearly overwhelmed by the smell of alcohol as I passed him. The Academy’s guest housing was nice, but he clearly hadn’t done much to keep his suite clean. I had a feeling he’d probably been drinking nonstop since the attack. The TV was on, and a small table by the couch held a half-empty bottle of vodka. I picked it up and read the label. It was in Russian.
“Bad time?” I asked, setting it back down.
“Never a bad time for you,” he told me gallantly. His face looked haggard. He was still as good-looking as ever, but there were dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t been sleeping well. He waved me toward an armchair and sat down on the couch. “Haven’t seen much of you.”
I leaned back. “I haven’t wanted to be seen,” I admitted.
I’d hardly spoken to anyone since the attack. I’d spent a lot of time by myself or with Lissa. I took comfort from being around her, but we hadn’t said much. She understood that I needed to process things and had simply been there for me, not pushing me on things I didn’t want to talk about—even though there were a dozen things she wanted to ask.
The Academy’s dead had been honored in one group memorial service, although their families had made arrangements for each person’s respective funeral. I’d gone to the larger service. The chapel had been packed, with standing room only. Father Andrew had read the names of the dead, listing Dimitri and Molly among them. No one was talking about what had really happened to them. There was too much other grief anyway. We were drowning in it. No one even knew how the Academy would pick up the pieces and start running again.
“You look worse than I do,” I told Adrian. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
He brought the bottle to his lips and took a long drink. “Nah, you always look good. As for me . . . well, it’s hard to explain. The auras are getting to me. There’s so much sorrow around here. You can’t even begin to understand. It radiates from everyone on a spiritual level. It’s overwhelming. It makes your dark aura downright cheerful.”
“Is that why you’re drinking?”
“Yup. It’s shut my aura-vision right off, thankfully, so I can’t give you a report today.” He offered me the bottle, and I shook my head. He shrugged and took another drink. “So what can I do for you, Rose? I have a feeling you aren’t here to check on me.”
He was right, and I only felt a little bad about what I was here for. I’d done a lot of thinking this last week. Processing my grief for Mason had been hard. In fact, I hadn’t even really quite resolved it when the ghost business had started. Now I had to mourn all over again. After all, more than Dimitri had been lost. Teachers had died, guardians and Moroi alike. None of my close friends had died, but people I knew from classes had. They’d been students at the Academy as long as I had, and it was weird to think I’d never see them again. That was a lot of loss to deal with, a lot of people to say goodbye to.
But . . . Dimitri. He was a different case. After all, how did you say goodbye to someone who wasn’t exactly gone? That was the problem.
“I need money,” I told Adrian, not bothering with pretense.
He arched an eyebrow. “Unexpected. From you, at least. I get that kind of request a lot from others. Pray tell, what would I be funding?”
I glanced away from him, focusing on the television. It was a commercial for some kind of deodorant.
“I’m leaving the Academy,” I said finally.
“Also unexpected. You’re only a few months out from graduation.”
I met his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I have things to do now.”
“I never figured you’d be one of the dropout guardians. You going to join the blood whores?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“Don’t act so offended. That’s not an unreasonable assumption. If you’re not going to be a guardian, what else are you going to do?”
“I told you. I have things I have to take care of.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Things that are going to get you into trouble?”
I shrugged. He laughed.
“Stupid question, huh? Everything you do gets you in trouble.” He propped his elbow up on the couch’s arm and rested his chin in his hand. “Why’d you come to me for money?”
“Because you have it.”
This also made him laugh. “And why do you think I’ll give it to you?”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him, forcing as much womanly charm as I could into my expression. His smile went away, and his green eyes narrowed in frustration. He jerked his gaze away.
“Damn it, Rose. Don’t do that. Not now. You’re playing on how I feel about you. That’s not fair.” He gulped more vodka.
He was right. I’d come to him because I thought I could use his crush to get what I wanted. It was low, but I had no choice. Getting up, I moved over and sat beside him. I held his hand.
“Please, Adrian,” I said. “Please help me. You’re the only one I can go to.”
“That’s not fair,” he repeated, slurring his words a little. “You’re using those come-hither eyes on me, but it’s not me you want. It’s never been me. It’s always been Belikov, and God only knows what you’ll do now that he’s gone.”
He was right about that too. “Will you help me?” I asked, still playing up the charisma. “You’re the only one I could talk to . . . the only one who really understands me. . . .”
“Are you coming back?” he countered.
“Eventually.”
Tipping his head back, he exhaled a heavy breath. His hair, which I’d always thought looked stylishly messy, simply looked messy today. “Maybe it’s for the best if you leave. Maybe you’ll get over him faster if you go away for a while. Wouldn’t hurt to be away from Lissa’s aura either. It might slow yours from darkening—stop this rage you always seem to be in. You need to be happier. And stop seeing ghosts.”
My seduction faltered for a moment. “Lissa isn’t why I’m seeing ghosts. Well, she is, but not in the way you think. I see the ghosts because I’m shadow-kissed. I’m tied to the world of the dead, and the more I kill, the stronger that connection becomes. It’s why I see the dead and why I feel weird when Strigoi are near. I can sense them now. They’re tied to that world too.”
He frowned. “You’re saying the auras mean nothing? That you aren’t taking away the effects of spirit?”
“No. That’s happening too. That’s why this has all been so confusing. I thought there was just one thing going on, but there’ve been two. I see the ghosts because of being shadow-kissed. I’m getting . . . upset and angry . . . bad, even . . . because I’m taking away Lissa’s dark side. That’s why my aura’s darkening, why I’m getting so enraged lately. Right now, it just sort of plays out as a really bad temper. . . .” I frowned, thinking of the night Dimitri had stopped me from going after Jesse. “But I don’t know what it’ll turn into next.”
Adrian sighed. “Why is everything so complicated with you?”
“Will you help me? Please, Adrian?” I ran my fingers along his hand. “Please help me.”
Low, low. This was so low of me, but it didn’t matter. Only Dimitri did.
Finally, Adrian looked back at me. For the first time ever, he looked vulnerable. “When you come back, will you give me a fair shot?”
I hid my surprise. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like I said. You’ve never wanted me, never even considered me. The flowers, the flirting . . . it rolled right off you. You were so gone for him, and nobody noticed. If you go do your thing, will you take me seriously? Will you give me a chance when you return?”
I stared. I definitely hadn’t expected this. My initial instinct was to say no, that I could never love anybody again, that my heart had been shattered along with that piece of my soul that Dimitri held. But Adrian was looking at me so earnestly, and there was none of his joking nature. He meant what he said, and I realized all the affection for me he’d always teased about hadn’t been a joke either. Lissa had been right about his feelings.