"Lis', " I said hesitantly. She looked over at me, like she'd forgotten I was even there. Wordlessly, I brushed my hair away from my neck and tilted it toward her.
She stared for a moment, blank-faced; then understanding shone in her eyes.
Those fangs that lurked behind her pretty smile bit into my neck, and a small moan escaped my lips. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it, that sweet, wonderful pain followed by glorious wonder. BLis' settled over me.Dizzying.Joyful.Like being in a dream.
I don't entirely remember how long Lisa drank from me. Probably not that long. She would never even consider drinking the quantities that would kill a person and make her a Strigoi. She finished, andAlberta caught me as I started to sway.
Dizzily, I watched as Lisa leaned over Christian and rested her hands on him. In the distance, I heard the other guardians crashing through the forest.
No glowing or fireworks surrounded the healing. It all took place invisibly, occurring between Lisa and Christian. Even though the bite's endorphins had numbed my connection to her, I remembered Victor's healing and the wonderful colors and music she must be bringing forth.
A miracle unfolded before my eyes, andAlberta gasped. Christian's wounds closed. The blood dried up.
Color-as much as a Moroi ever had, at least-returned to his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered, and his eyes regained their life again. Focusing on Lisa, he smiled. It was like watching a Disney movie.
I must have keeled over after that, because I don't remember anything else.
Eventually, I woke up in the Academy's clinic, where they forced fluids and sugar into me for two days. Lisa stayed by my side almost the entire time, and slowly, the events of the kidnapping unfolded.
We had to tell Kirova and a fewchoice others about Lisa's powers, how she'd healed Victor and
Christian and, well, me. The news was shocking, but the administrators agreed to keep it secret from the rest of the school. No one even considered taking Lisa away like they had Ms. Karp.
Mostly all the other students knew was that Victor Dashkov had kidnapped Lisa Dragomir. They didn't know why. Some of his guardians had died when Dimitri's band attacked-a damned shame, when guardian numbers were so low already. Victor was now being held under 24/7 guard at the school, waiting for a royal regiment of guardians to carry him away. The Moroi rulers might be a mostly symbolic government within another country's larger government, but they had systems of justice, and I'd heard about Moroi prisons. Not any place I'd want to be.
As for Natalie…that was trickier. She was still a minor, but she'd conspired with her father. She'd brought in the dead animals and kept an eye on Lisa's behavior-even before we left. Being an earth user like Victor, she'd also been the one to rot the bench that broke my ankle. After she'd seen me hold Lisa back from the dove, she and Victor realized that they needed to injureme to get to her-it was their only chance to get her to heal again. Natalie had simply waited for a good opportunity. She wasn't locked up or anything yet, and the Academy didn't know what to do with her until a royal command came.
I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. She was so awkward and self-conscious. Anyone could have manipulated her, let alone her father, whom she loved and from whom she so desperately wanted attention. She would have done anything. Rumor said she'd stood screaming outside the detention center, begging them to let her see him. They'd refused and hauled her away.
Meanwhile, Lisa and I slipped back into our friendship like nothing had happened. In the rest of her world, a lot had happened. After all that excitement and drama, she seemed to gain a new sense of what mattered to her. She broke up with Aaron. I'm sure she did it very nicely, but it still had to be hard on him. She'd dropped him twice now. The fact that his last girlfriend had cheated on him probably wasn't helping his confidence any.
And without any more hesitation, Lisa started dating Christian, not caring about the consequences to her reputation.Seeing them out in public, holding hands, made me do a double take. He didn't seem able to believe it himself. The rest of our classmates were almost too stunned to even comprehend it yet. They could barely process acknowledging his existence, let alone him being with someone like her.
My own romantic state was less rosy than hers-if you could evencall it a romantic state. Dimitri hadn't visited me during my recovery, and our practices were indefinitely suspended. It wasn't until the fourth day after Lisa's kidnapping that I ran into him in the gym. We were alone.
I had come back for my gym bag and froze when I saw him, unable to speak. He started to walk past and then stopped.
«Rose…» he began after several uncomfortable moments. "You need to report what happened.With us."
I'd been waiting a long time to talk to him, but this wasn't the conversation I'd imagined.
"I can't do that. They'll fire you.Or worse."
"They should fire me. What I did was wrong."
"You couldn't help it. It was the spell…"
"It doesn't matter. It was wrong.And stupid."
Wrong?Stupid? I bit my lip, and tears threatened to fill my eyes. I quickly tried to regain my composure.
"Look, it's not a big deal."
"Itis a big deal! I took advantage of you."
«No,» I said evenly. "You didn't."
There must have been something telling in my voice because he met my eyes with a deep and serious intensity.
"Rose, I'm seven years older than you. In ten years, that won't mean so much, but for now, it's huge. I'm an adult. You're a child."
Ouch. I flinched. Easier if he'd just punched me.
"You didn't seem to think I was a child when you were all over me."
Now he flinched. "Just because your body…well, that doesn't make you an adult. We're in two very different places. I've been out in the world. I've been on my own. I've killed, Rose-people,not animals.
And you…you're just starting out. Your life is about homework and clothes and dances."
"That's all you think I care about?"
"No, of course not.Not entirely. But it's all part of your world. You're still growing up and figuring out who you are and what's important. You need to keep doing that. You need to be with boys your own age."
I didn't want boys my own age. But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything.
"Even if you choose not to tell, you need to understand thatit was a mistake. And it isn't ever going to happen again, " he added.
"Because you're too old for me?Because it isn't responsible?"
His face was perfectly blank. "No.Because I'm just not interested in you in that way."
I stared. The message-the rejection-came through loud and clear. Everything from that night,
everything I'd believed so beautiful and full of meaning, turned to dust before my eyes.
"It only happened because of the spell. Do you understand?"
Humiliated and angry, I refused to make a fool of myself by arguing or begging. I just shrugged. "Yeah. Understood.»
I spent the rest of the day sulking, ignoring both Lisa and Mason's attempts to draw me out of my room. It was ironic that I should want to stay inside. Kirova had been impressed enough by my performance with the rescue to end my house arrest. Before school the next day, I made my way to where Victor was being held. The Academy had honest-to-goodness cells, complete with bars, and two guardians stood watch in the hallway nearby. It took a little bit of finagling on my part to get them to let me inside to talk to him. Even Natalie wasn't allowed in. But one of the guardians had ridden with me in the SUV and watched me undergo Lisa's torture. I told him I needed to ask Victor about what he'd done to Lisa. It was a lie, but the guardians bought it and felt sorry for me. They allowed me five minutes to speak, backing up a discrete distance down the hall where they could see but not hear.