She flinched but nodded.
“I need you to do the same thing. Go up to that guy and tell him to hide us in his trunk.”
Shock and fear poured out of her. She didn’t understand, and she was scared. Extremely scared. She’d been scared for weeks now, ever since the healing and the moods and Wade. She was fragile and on the edge of something neither of us understood. But through all of that, she trusted me. She believed I would keep her safe.
“Okay,” she said. She took a few steps toward him, then looked back at me. “Why? Why are we doing this?”
I thought about Lissa’s anger, her desire to do
anything
to get back at Wade. And I thought about Ms. Karp—pretty, unstable Ms. Karp—going Strigoi. “I’m taking care of you,” I said. “You don’t need to know anything else.”
At the mall in Missoula, standing between racks of designer clothes, Lissa asked again, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t need to know,” I repeated.
She headed toward the dressing room, still whispering with me. “You’re worried I’m going to lose it. Are you worried I’ll go Strigoi too?”
“No. No way. That was all her. You’d never do that.”
“Even if I was crazy?”
“No,” I said, trying to make a joke. “You’d just shave your head and live with thirty cats.”
Lissa’s feelings grew darker, but she didn’t say anything else. Stopping just outside the dressing room, she pulled a black dress off the rack. She brightened a little.
“This is the dress you were born for. I don’t care how practical you are now.”
Made of silky black material, the dress was strapless and sleek, falling about to the knees. Although it had a slight flair at the hemline, the rest looked like it would definitely manage some serious clinging action. Super sexy. Maybe even challenge-the-school-dress-code sexy.
“That is my dress,” I admitted. I kept staring at it, wanting it so badly that it ached in my chest. This was the kind of dress that changed the world. The kind of dress that started religions.
Lissa pulled out my size. “Try it on.”
I shook my head and started to put it back. “I can’t. It would compromise you. One dress isn’t worth your grisly death.”
“Then we’ll just get it without you trying it on.” She bought the dress.
The afternoon continued, and I found myself growing tired. Always watching and being on guard suddenly became a lot less fun. When we hit our last stop, a jewelry store, I felt kind of glad.
“Here you go,” said Lissa, pointing at one of the cases. “The necklace made to go with your dress.”
I looked. A thin gold chain with a gold-and-diamond rose pendant. Emphasis on the diamond part.
“I hate rose stuff.”
Lissa had always loved getting me rose things—just to see my reaction, I think. When she saw the necklace’s price, her smile fell away.
“Oh, look at that. Even you have limits,” I teased. “Your crazy spending is stopped at last.”
We waited for Victor and Natalie to finish up. He was apparently buying her something, and she looked like she might grow wings and fly away with happiness. I was glad. She’d been dying for his attention. Hopefully he was buying her something extra-expensive to make up for it.
We rode home in tired silence, our sleep schedules all messed up by the daylight trip. Sitting next to Dimitri, I leaned back against the seat and yawned, very aware that our arms were touching. That feeling of closeness and connection burned between us.
“So, I can’t ever try on clothes again?” I asked quietly, not wanting to wake up the others. Victor and the guardians were awake, but the girls had fallen asleep.
“When you aren’t on duty, you can. You can do it during your time off.”
“I don’t ever want time off. I want to always take care of Lissa.” I yawned again. “Did you see that dress?”
“I saw the dress.”
“Did you like it?”
He didn’t answer. I took that as a yes.
“Am I going to endanger my reputation if I wear it to the dance?”
When he spoke, I could barely hear him. “You’ll endanger the school.”
I smiled and fell asleep.
When I woke up, my head rested against his shoulder. That long coat of his—the duster—covered me like a blanket. The van had stopped; we were back at school. I pulled the duster off and climbed out after him, suddenly feeling wide awake and happy. Too bad my freedom was about to end.
“Back to prison,” I sighed, walking beside Lissa toward the commons. “Maybe if you fake a heart attack, I can make a break for it.”
“Without your clothes?” She handed me a bag, and I swung it around happily. “I can’t wait to see the dress.”
“Me either. If they let me go. Kirova’s still deciding if I’ve been good enough.”
“Show her those boring shirts you bought. She’ll go into a coma. I’m about ready to.”
I laughed and hopped up onto one of the wooden benches, pacing her as I walked along it. I jumped back down when I reached the end. “They aren’t
that
boring.”
“I don’t know what to think of this new, responsible Rose.”
I hopped up onto another bench. “I’m not that responsible.”
“Hey,” called Spiridon. He and the rest of the group trailed behind us. “You’re still on duty. No fun allowed up there.”
“No fun here,” I called back, hearing the laughter in his voice. “I swear—shit.”
I was up on a third bench, near the end of it. My muscles tensed, ready to jump back down. Only when I tried to, my foot didn’t go with me. The wood, at one moment seemingly hard and solid, gave way beneath me, almost as though made of paper. It disintegrated. My foot went through, my ankle getting caught in the hole while the rest of my body tried to go in another direction. The bench held me, swinging my body to the ground while still seizing my foot. My ankle bent in an unnatural direction. I crashed down. I heard a cracking sound that wasn’t the wood. The worst pain of my life shot through my body.
And then I blacked out.
EIGHTEEN
I
WOKE UP STARING AT the boring white ceiling of the clinic. A filtered light—soothing to Moroi patients—shone down on me. I felt strange, kind of disoriented, but I didn’t hurt.
“Rose.”
The voice was like silk on my skin. Gentle. Rich. Turning my head, I met Dimitri’s dark eyes. He sat in a chair beside the bed I lay on, his shoulder-length brown hair hanging forward and framing his face.
“Hey,” I said, my voice coming out as a croak.
“How do you feel?”
“Weird. Kind of groggy.”
“Dr. Olendzki gave you something for the pain—you seemed pretty bad when we brought you in.”
“I don’t remember that. . . . How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.”
“Must have been strong. Must still be strong.” Some of the details came back. The bench. My ankle getting caught. I couldn’t remember much after that. Feeling hot and cold and then hot again. Tentatively, I tried moving the toes on my healthy foot. “I don’t hurt at all.”
He shook his head. “No. Because you weren’t seriously injured.”
The sound of my ankle cracking came back to me. “Are you sure? I remember . . . the way it bent. No. Something must be broken.” I manage to sit up, so I could look at my ankle. “Or at least sprained.”
He moved forward to stop me. “Be careful. Your ankle might be fine, but you’re probably still a little out of it.”
I carefully shifted to the edge of the bed and looked down. My jeans were rolled up. The ankle looked a little red, but I had no bruises or serious marks.
“God, I got lucky. If I’d hurt it, it would have put me out of practice for a while.”
Smiling, he returned to his chair. “I know. You kept telling me that while I was carrying you. You were very upset.”
“You . . . you carried me here?”
“After we broke the bench apart and freed your foot.”
Man. I’d missed out on a lot. The only thing better than imagining Dimitri carrying me in his arms was imagining him shirtless while carrying me in his arms.
Then the reality of the situation hit me.
“I was taken down by a bench,” I groaned.
“What?”
“I survived the whole day guarding Lissa, and you guys said I did a good job. Then, I get back here and meet my downfall in the form of a bench.” Ugh. “Do you know how embarrassing it is? And all those guys saw, too.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “No one knew the bench was rotted. It looked fine.”
“Still. I should have just stuck to the sidewalk like a normal person. The other novices are going to give me shit when I get back.”
His lips held back a smile. “Maybe presents will cheer you up.”
I sat up straighter. “Presents?”
The smile escaped, and he handed me a small box with a piece of paper.
“This is from Prince Victor.”
Surprised that Victor would have given me anything, I read the note. It was just a few lines, hastily scrawled in pen.
Rose—
I’m very happy to see you didn’t suffer any serious injuries from your fall. Truly, it is a miracle. You lead a charmed life, and Vasilisa is lucky to have you.
“That’s nice of him,” I said, opening the box. Then I saw what was inside. “Whoa. Very nice.”
It was the rose necklace, the one Lissa had wanted to get me but couldn’t afford. I held it up, looping its chain over my hand so the glittering, diamond-covered rose hung free.
“This is pretty extreme for a get-well present,” I noted, recalling the price.
“He actually bought it in honor of you doing so well on your first day as an official guardian. He saw you and Lissa looking at it.”
“Wow.” It was all I could say. “I don’t think I did
that
good of a job.”
“I do.”
Grinning, I placed the necklace back in the box and set it on a nearby table. “You did say ‘presents,’ right? Like more than one?”
He laughed outright, and the sound wrapped around me like a caress. God, I loved the sound of his laugh. “This is from me.”
He handed me a small, plain bag. Puzzled and excited, I opened it up. Lip gloss, the kind I liked. I’d complained to him a number of times how I was running out, but I’d never thought he was paying attention.
“How’d you manage to buy this? I saw you the whole time at the mall.”
“Guardian secrets.”
“What’s this for? For my first day?”
“No,” he said simply. “Because I thought it would make you happy.”
Without even thinking about it, I leaned forward and hugged him. “Thank you.”
Judging from his stiff posture, I’d clearly caught him by surprise. And yeah . . . I’d actually caught myself by surprise, too. But he relaxed a few moments later, and when he reached around and rested his hands on my lower back, I thought I was going to die.
“I’m glad you’re better,” he said. His mouth sounded like it was almost in my hair, just above my ear. “When I saw you fall ...”
“You thought, ‘Wow, she’s a loser.’”
“That’s not what I thought.”
He pulled back slightly, so he could see me better, but we didn’t say anything. His eyes were so dark and deep that I wanted to dive right in. Staring at them made me feel warm all over, like they had flames inside. Slowly, carefully, those long fingers of his reached out and traced the edge of my cheekbone, moving up the side of my face. At the first touch of his skin on mine, I shivered. He wound a lock of my hair around one finger, just like he had in the gym.
Swallowing, I dragged my eyes up from his lips. I’d been contemplating what it’d be like to kiss him. The thought both excited and scared me, which was stupid. I’d kissed a lot of guys and never thought much about it. No reason another one—even an older one—should be that big of a deal. Yet the thought of him closing the distance and bringing his lips to mine made the world start spinning.
A soft knock sounded at the door, and I hastily leaned back. Dr. Olendzki stuck her head in. “I thought I heard you talking. How do you feel?”
She walked over and made me lie back down. Touching and bending my ankle, she assessed it for damage and finally shook her head when finished.
“You’re lucky. With all the noise you made coming in here, I thought your foot had been amputated. Must have just been shock.” She stepped back. “I’d feel better if you sat out from your normal trainings tomorrow, but otherwise, you’re good to go.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t remember my hysteria—and was actually kind of embarrassed that I’d thrown such a fit—but I had been right about the problems this would have caused me if I’d broken or sprained it. I couldn’t afford to lose any time here; I needed to take my trials and graduate in the spring.
Dr. Olendzki gave me the okay to go and then left the room. Dimitri walked over to another chair and brought me my shoes and coat. Looking at him, I felt a warm flush sweep me as I recalled what had happened before the doctor had entered.
He watched as I slipped one of the shoes on. “You have a guardian angel.”
“I don’t believe in angels,” I told him. “I believe in what I can do for myself.”
“Well then, you have an amazing body.” I glanced up at him with a questioning look. “For healing, I mean. I heard about the accident. . . .”
He didn’t specify which accident it was, but it could be only one. Talking about it normally bothered me, but with him, I felt I could say anything.
“Everyone said I shouldn’t have survived,” I explained. “Because of where I sat and the way the car hit the tree. Lissa was really the only one in a secure spot. She and I walked away with only a few scratches.”
“And you don’t believe in angels or miracles.”
“Nope. I—”
Truly, it is a miracle. You lead a charmed life. . . .
And just like that, a million thoughts came slamming into my head. Maybe . . . maybe I had a guardian angel after all. . . .