Pain cracked through the back of my head, and my vision went blurry and sparkly. Within seconds, my mother was leaning over me.
“Rose? Rose? Are you okay?” Her voice sounded hoarse and frantic. The world swam.
At some point after that, other people came, and I somehow wound up in the Academy’s med clinic. There, someone shone a light in my eyes and started asking me incredibly idiotic questions.
“What’s your name?”
“What?” I asked, squinting at the light.
“Your name.” I recognized Dr. Olendzki peering over me.
“You know my name.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“Rose. Rose Hathaway.”
“Do you know your birthday?”
“Of course I do. Why are you asking me such stupid things? Did you lose my records?”
Dr. Olendzki gave an exasperated sigh and walked off, taking the annoying light with her. “I think she’s fine,” I heard her tell someone. “I want to keep her here for the school day, just to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion. I certainly don’t want her anywhere near her guardian classes.”
I spent the day moving in and out of sleep because Dr. Olendzki kept waking me up to do her tests. She also gave me an ice pack and told me to keep it close to my face. When the Academy’s classes let out, she deemed me well enough to leave.
“I swear, Rose, I think you should have a frequent patient’s card.” There was a small smile on her face. “Short of those with chronic problems like allergies and asthma, I don’t think there’s any other student I’ve seen here so often in such a short period of time.”
“Thanks,” I said, not really sure I wanted the honor. “So, no concussion?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re going to have some pain, though. I’ll give you something for that before you go.” Her smile faded, and suddenly she looked nervous. “To be honest, Rose, I think most of the damage happened to, well, your face.”
I shot up from the bed. “What do you mean ‘most of the damage happened to my face’?”
She gestured to the mirror above the sink on the far side of the room. I ran over to it and looked at my reflection.
“Son of a bitch!”
Purplish red splotches covered the upper portion of the left side of my face, particularly near the eye. Desperately, I turned around to face her.
“This is going to go away soon, right? If I keep the ice on it?”
She shook her head again. “The ice can help . . . but I’m afraid you’re going to have a wicked black eye. It’ll probably be at its worst tomorrow but should clear up in a week or so. You’ll be back to normal before long.”
I left the clinic in a daze that had nothing to do with my head injury. Clear up in a week or so? How could Dr. Olendzki speak so lightly about this? Didn’t she realize what was happening? I was going to look like a mutant for Christmas and most of the ski trip. I had a black eye. A freaking black eye.
And my mother had given it to me.
SEVEN
I
ANGRILY PUSHED THROUGH THE DOUBLE doors that led into the Moroi dorm. Snow swirled in behind me, and a few people lingering on the main floor glanced up upon my entrance. Not surprisingly, several of them did double takes. Swallowing, I forced myself not to react. It would be okay. No need to freak out. Novices got injured all the time. It was actually rarer
not
to get injured. Admittedly, this was a more noticeable injury than most, but I could live with it until it healed, right? And it wasn’t like anyone would know how I’d received it.
“Hey Rose, is it true your own mother punched you?”
I froze. I’d know that taunting soprano voice anywhere. Turning slowly, I looked into the deep blue eyes of Mia Rinaldi. Curly blond hair framed a face that might have been cute if not for the malicious smirk on it.
A year younger than us, Mia’d taken on Lissa (and me by default) in a war to see who could tear apart the other’s life most quickly—a war, I should add, that
she
started. It had involved her stealing Lissa’s ex-boyfriend—despite the fact Lissa had decided in the end she didn’t want him—and the spreading of all sorts of rumors.
Admittedly, Mia’s hatred hadn’t been entirely unjustified. Lissa’s older brother, Andre—who had been killed in the same car accident that technically “killed” me—had used Mia pretty badly when she was a freshman. If she weren’t such a bitch now, I would have felt sorry for her. It had been wrong of him, and while I could understand her anger, I don’t know that it was fair of her to take that out on Lissa in the way she did.
Lissa and I had technically won the war in the end, but Mia had inexplicably bounced back. She didn’t run with the same elite that she once had, but she had rebuilt a small contingent of friends. Malicious or not, strong leaders always attract followers.
I’d found that about 90 percent of the time, the most effective response was to ignore her. But we had just crossed over to the other 10 percent, because it’s impossible to ignore someone announcing to the world that your mother just punched you—even if it was true. I stopped walking and turned around. Mia stood near a vending machine, knowing she’d drawn me out. I didn’t bother asking how she’d found out about my mother giving me the black eye. Things rarely stayed secret around here.
When she caught full sight of my face, her eyes widened in unabashed delight. “Wow. Talk about a face only a mother could love.”
Ha. Cute. From anyone else, I would have applauded the joke.
“Well, you’re the expert on face injury,” I said. “How’s your nose?”
Mia’s icy smile twitched a little, but she didn’t back down. I’d broken her nose about a month ago—at a school dance of all places—and while the nose had since healed, it now sat just the tiniest bit askew. Plastic surgery could probably fix it up, but from my understanding of her family’s finances, that wasn’t possible just now.
“It’s better,” she replied primly. “Fortunately, it was only broken by a psychopathic whore and not anyone actually related to me.”
I gave her my best psychopathic smile. “Too bad. Family members hit you by accident. Psychopathic whores tend to come back for more.”
Threatening physical violence against her was usually a pretty sound tactic, but we had too many people around right now for that to be a legitimate concern for her. And Mia knew it. Not that I was above attacking someone in this kind of setting—hell, I’d done it lots of times—but I
was
trying to work on my impulse control lately.
“Doesn’t look like much of an accident to me,” she said. “Don’t you guys have rules about face punches? I mean, that looks
really
far out of bounds.”
I opened my mouth to tell her off, but nothing came out. She had a point. My injury
was
far out of bounds; in that sort of combat, you aren’t supposed to hit above the neck. This was
way
above that forbidden line.
Mia saw my hesitation, and it was like Christmas morning had come a week early for her. Until that moment, I don’t think there’d ever been a time in our antagonistic relationship in which she’d rendered me speechless.
“Ladies,” came a stern, female voice. The Moroi attending the front desk leaned over it and fixed us with a sharp look. “This is a lobby, not a lounge. Either go upstairs or go outside.”
For a moment, breaking Mia’s nose again sounded like the best idea in the world—to hell with detention or suspension. After a deep breath, I decided retreat was my most dignified action now. I stalked off toward the stairs leading up to the girls’ dorm. Over my shoulder, I heard Mia call, “Don’t worry, Rose. It’ll go away. Besides, it’s not your
face
guys are interested in.”
Thirty seconds later, I beat on Lissa’s door so hard, it was a wonder my fist didn’t go through the wood. She opened it slowly and peered around.
“Is it just you out here? I thought there was an army at the—oh my God.” Her eyebrows shot up when she noticed the left side of my face. “What happened?”
“You haven’t heard already? You’re probably the only one in the school who hasn’t,” I grumbled. “Just let me in.”
Sprawling on her bed, I told her about the day’s events. She was properly appalled.
“I heard you’d been hurt, but I figured it was one of your normal things,” she said.
I stared up at the spackled ceiling, feeling miserable. “The worst part is, Mia was right. It wasn’t an accident.”
“What, you’re saying your mom did it on purpose?” When I didn’t answer, Lissa’s voice turned incredulous. “Come on, she wouldn’t do that. No way.”
“Why? Because she’s perfect Janine Hathaway, master of controlling her temper? The thing is, she’s also perfect Janine Hathaway, master of fighting and controlling her actions. One way or another, she slipped up.”
“Yeah, well,” said Lissa, “I think her stumbling and missing her punch is more likely than her doing it on purpose. She’d have to really lose her temper.”
“Well, she
was
talking to me. That’s enough to make anyone lose their temper. And I accused her of sleeping with my dad because he was the soundest evolutionary choice.”
“Rose,” groaned Lissa. “You kind of left out that part in your recap. Why’d you say that to her?”
“Because it’s probably true.”
“But you had to know it’d upset her. Why do you keep provoking her? Why can’t you just make peace with her?”
I sat upright. “Make peace with her?
She gave me a black eye.
Probably on purpose! How do I make peace with someone like that?”
Lissa just shook her head and walked over to the mirror to check her makeup. The feelings coming through our bond were ones of frustration and exasperation. Lingering in the back was a bit of anticipation, too. I had the patience to examine her carefully, now that I’d finished my venting. She had on a silky lavender shirt and a knee-length black skirt. Her long hair had the kind of smooth perfection only achieved by spending an hour of your life on it with a hair dryer and flat iron.
“You look nice. What’s up?”
Her feelings shifted slightly, her irritation with me dimming a little. “I’m meeting Christian soon.”
For a few minutes there, it had felt like the old days with Lissa and me. Just us, hanging out and talking. Her mention of Christian, as well as the realization that she’d have to leave me soon for
him
, stirred up dark feelings in my chest . . . feelings I had to reluctantly admit were jealousy. Naturally, I didn’t let on to that.
“Wow. What’d he do to deserve that? Rescue orphans from a burning building? If so, you might want to make sure he didn’t set the building on fire in the first place.” Christian’s element was fire. It was fitting since it was the most destructive one.
Laughing, she turned from the mirror and noticed me gently touching my swollen face with my fingers. Her smile turned kind. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
“Whatever. I can tell when you’re lying, you know. And Dr. Olendzki says it’ll be even worse tomorrow.” I lay back down on the bed. “There probably isn’t enough concealer in the world to cover this, is there? Tasha and I’ll have to invest in some
Phantom of the Opera
-style masks.”
She sighed and sat on the bed near me. “Too bad I can’t just heal it.”
I smiled. “That would be nice.”
The compulsion and charisma brought on by spirit were great, but really, healing was her coolest ability. The range of things she could achieve was staggering.
Lissa was also thinking about what spirit could do. “I wish there were some other way to control the spirit . . . in a way that still let me use the magic. . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. I understood her burning desire to do great things and help people. It radiated off of her. Hell, I would also have liked to have this eye cleared up in an instant rather than days. “I wish there were too.”
She sighed again. “And there’s more to me than just wishing I could heal and do other stuff with spirit. I also, well, just miss the magic. It’s still there; it’s just blocked off by the pills. It’s burning inside of me. It wants me, and I want it. But there’s a wall between us. You just can’t imagine it.”
“I can, actually.”
It was true. Along with having a general sense for her feelings, I could sometimes also “slip into her.” It was hard to explain and ever harder to endure. When that happened, I could literally see through her eyes and
feel
what she experienced. During those times, I
was
her. Many times, I’d been in her head while she longed for the magic, and I’d felt the burning need she spoke of. She often woke up at night, yearning for the power she could no longer reach.
“Oh yeah,” she said ruefully. “I forget about that sometimes. ”
A sense of bitterness filled her. It wasn’t directed at me so much as it was the no-win nature of her situation. Anger sparked inside of her. She didn’t like feeling helpless any more than I did. The anger and frustration intensified into something darker and uglier, something I didn’t like.
“Hey,” I said, touching her arm. “You okay?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. “I just hate it.”
The intensity of her feelings reminded me of our conversation, the one we’d had just before I went to the Badica house. “You still feel like the pills might be weakening?”
“I don’t know. A little.”
“Is it getting worse?”
She shook her head. “No. I still can’t use the magic. I feel
closer
to it . . . but it’s still blocked off.”
“But you still . . . your moods . . .”fit
“Yeah . . . they’re acting up. But don’t worry,” she said, seeing my face. “I’m not seeing things or trying to hurt myself.”
“Good.” I was glad to hear it but still worried. Even if she still couldn’t touch the magic, I didn’t like the idea of her mental state slipping again. Desperately, I hoped the situation would just stabilize on its own. “I’m here,” I told her softly, holding her gaze. “If anything happens that’s weird . . . you tell me, okay?”