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Dhampirs and Moroi had a strange arrangement. Dhampirs had originally been born from Moroi mixing with humans. Unfortunately, dhampirs couldn’t reproduce with each other—or with humans. It was a weird genetic thing. Mules were the same way, I’d been told, though that wasn’t a comparison I really liked hearing. Dhampirs and full Moroi could have children together, and, through another genetic oddity, their kids came out as standard dhampirs, with half human genes, half vampire genes.
And with Vladimir always is Anna, the daughter of Fyodor. Their love is as chaste and pure as that of brother and sister, and many times has she defended him from Strigoi who would seek to destroy him and his holiness. Likewise, it is she who comforts him when the spirit becomes too much to bear, and Satan’s darkness tries to smother him and weaken his own health and body. This too she defends against, for they have been bound together ever since he saved her life as a child. It is a sign of God’s love that He has sent the blessed Vladimir a guardian such as her, one who is shadow-kissed and
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Bound together and always knows what is in his heart and mind. They had a bond, I realized. I would have bet everything I owned—which wasn’t much—on it. The revelation was astonishing. There were lots of vague stories and myths about how guardians and Moroi ‘used to have bonds.’ But this was the first I’d ever heard of anyone specific that it had happened to.
“Rose, if you know something, tell me. We’re on the same side. We both want to protect her. This is serious.” I spun around, taking my anger over the fox out on him. “Yeah, it is serious. It’s all serious. And you have me doing laps every day when I should be learning to fight and defend her! If you want to help her, then teach me something! Teach me how to fight. I already know how to run away.”
“Only because they say it is. You’re repeating the party line we’ve been fed our whole lives.” He stood up and paced the small space of the attic. “It wasn’t always that way, you know. We used to fight, right along with the guardians—centuries ago. Then people started getting scared and stopped. Figured it was safer to just hide. They forgot the attack spells.”
I guess there was “usually” and then there was being held in the grip of a really ripped, really tall, and really pissed-off Russian guy. “Yes, sir!”
“You see something you like?” I asked. “Get dressed.” The set of his mouth hardened, and whatever he’d just felt was gone.
“All right. I’ll teach you, but I need you strong. I know you hate the running, but it really is necessary. You have no idea what Strigoi are like. The school tries to prepare you, but until you’ve seen how strong they are and how fast . . . well, you can’t even imagine. So I can’t stop the running and the conditioning. If you want to learn more about fighting, we need to add more trainings. It’ll take up more of your time. You won’t have much left for your homework or anything else. You’ll be tired. A lot.”
“What is that? Is it a crow?” I asked. “Too big,” said Ms. Karp. “It’s a raven.” “Is it dead?” asked Lissa. I peered at it. “Yeah. Definitely dead. Don’t touch it.” “Probably attacked by another bird,” observed Ms. Karp. “They fight over territory and resources sometimes.” Lissa knelt down, compassion on her face. I wasn’t surprised, since she’d always had a thing for animals. She’d lectured me for days after I’d instigated the infamous hamster-and-hermit-crab fight. I’d viewed the fight as a testing of worthy opponents. She’d seen it as animal cruelty. Transfixed, she reached toward the
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“We heard you had returned. We are glad to have the Dragomirs back, even though only one remains. We deeply regret the loss of your parents and your brother; they were among the finest of the Moroi, their deaths a true tragedy.” I’d never really understood the royal “we” thing, but otherwise, everything sounded okay. “You have an interesting name,” she continued. “Many heroines in Russian fairy tales are named Vasilisa. Vasilisa the Brave, Vasilisa the Beautiful. They are different young women, all having the same name and the same excellent qualities: strength, intelligence, discipline, and
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“Yes,” Tatiana continued, “you are doubly named with power. Your names represent the finest qualities people have to offer and hearken back in time to deeds of greatness and valor.” She paused a moment. “But, as you have demonstrated, names do not make a person. Nor do they have any bearing on how that person turns out.”
She’d try to explain it to me, how she didn’t want to die—she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet—physical pain—was the only way to make the internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.
Stop her before they notice, before they notice and take her away too. Get her out of here.
“You’re shadow-kissed! You have to take care of her!” Ms. Karp had shouted those words at me, her hands clenching my shirt and jerking me toward her.
“If someone turned you into a Strigoi, what would you want?” he asked. I didn’t know how to answer that, so I said nothing. Never taking his eyes off me, he kept pushing. “What would you want if you knew you were going to be converted into a Strigoi against your will? If you knew you would lose all sense of your old morals and understanding of what’s right and wrong? If you knew you’d live the rest of your life—your immortal life—killing innocent people? What would you want?”
Staring at Dimitri, burdened by all those questions, I suddenly understood why he and I had this weird attraction, good looks aside. I’d never met anyone else who took being a guardian so seriously, who understand all the life-and-death consequences. Certainly no one my age did yet; Mason hadn’t been able to understand why I couldn’t relax and drink at the party. Dimitri had said I grasped my duty better than many older guardians, and I didn’t get why—especially when they would have seen so much more death and danger. But I knew in that moment that he was right, that I had some weird sense of
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“If I became Strigoi . . . I’d want someone to kill me.” “So would I,” he said quietly. I could tell that he’d had the same flash of realization I’d just had, that same sense of connection between us.
“Mikhail Tanner,”
The entire Strigoi thing shifted into new focus for me. Running into a Strigoi I knew during the heat of battle was one thing. Purposely hunting down someone . . . someone I’d loved. Well, I didn’t know if I could do that, even if it was technically the right thing.
It was the scariest moment of my life. Scarier than seeing her in Wade’s room. Scarier than seeing her heal that raven. Scarier than my capture by the guardians would be. Because just then, I didn’t know my best friend. I didn’t know what she was capable of. A year earlier, I would have laughed at anyone who said she’d want to go Strigoi. But a year earlier, I also would have laughed at anyone who said she’d want to cut her wrists or make someone “pay.” In that moment, I suddenly believed she might do the impossible. And I had to make sure she didn’t. Save her. Save her from herself.
“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.”
“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.”
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.”
I had calmed down when Lissa sat next to me because she’d taken the pain away. She’d healed me. . . . Just as she had the night of the accident.
It all made sense now. I shouldn’t have survived. Everyone had said so. Who knew what kind of injuries I’d actually suffered? Internal bleeding. Broken bones. It didn’t matter because Lissa had fixed it, just like she’d fixed everything else. That was why she’d been leaning over me when I woke up. It was also probably why she’d passed out when they took her to the hospital. She’d been exhausted for days afterward. And that was when her depression had begun. It had seemed like a normal reaction after losing her family, but now I wondered if there was more to it, if healing me had played a role.
This, I realized, was what real depression felt like. What madness felt like.
“Maybe not consciously. But everything else . . . the attraction—physical and mental—was already in you. And in him. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise. The spell didn’t really add anything new—it just removed inhibitions and strengthened the feelings you already had for each other.”
Shadow-kissed’?” There it was again, the same thing Ms. Karp had called me. “You’ve been kissed by shadows. You’ve crossed into Death, into the other side, and returned. Do you think something like that doesn’t leave a mark on the soul? You have a greater sense of life and the world—far greater than even I have—even if you don’t realize it. You should have stayed dead. Vasilisa brushed Death to bring you back and bound you to her forever. You were actually in its embrace, and some part of you will always remember that, always fight to cling to life and experience all it has. That’s why you’re
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The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows.”
I remembered Dimitri’s joke about the mall. No silver stake. Nothing to cut her head off with. No way to set her on fire. Running seemed like the best option after all, but she was blocking my way.
“No. If I let myself love you, I won’t throw myself in front of her. I’ll throw myself in front of you.”
The doctor prescribed her something—an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug, I couldn’t remember which—that made her feel better. I’d never really known anything about those kinds of pills. I thought they made people silly and happy. But it was a pill like any other, meant to fix something, and mostly it just kept her normal and feeling stable.
Ms. Karp hadn’t become Strigoi simply because she’d gone crazy. She’d become Strigoi to stay sane. Becoming Strigoi cut a person completely off from magic. In doing that, she couldn’t use it. She couldn’t feel it. She wouldn’t want it anymore. Staring at Lissa, I felt a knot of worry coil within me. What if she figured that out? Would she want to do it too? No, I quickly decided. Lissa would never do that. She was too strong a person, too moral.
“Shadow-kissed Anna,” I murmured. “His guardian.” The priest nodded. “She stayed with him. When he grew weak, she was the one who held him up. She urged him to stay strong and to never give in to his madness.”
One is that I sometimes act before I think. I’m getting better at avoiding this, but when something sets me off, I tend to punch first and then find out who I actually hit later. When it comes to those I care about being in danger . . . well, rules seem optional.
Poor, poor Badicas. So few left. One royal family nearly gone. Others to follow.
You can’t force love, I realized. It’s there or it isn’t. If it’s not there, you’ve got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.
Dimitri reached out and put his arm around me. He pulled me to him, and I rested my head on his chest. “Roza,” was all he said.
Dimitri might run off with Tasha, but I would still love him. I would probably always love him.
I rubbed my eyes, wondering desperately why I was trying to be the voice of reason here. Where was the girl who’d run away from school? Mason had been right. I had changed.
Everyone has light around them, except for you. You have shadows. You take them from Lissa.
She didn’t understand what it was like to be filled with a love so strong that it made your chest ache—a love you could only feel and not express. Keeping love buried was a lot like keeping anger pent up, I’d learned. It just ate you up inside until you wanted to scream or kick something.
Dimitri took a few steps forward and stood beside my chair. Having his solid presence nearby comforted me. I had a flash of déjà vu, back to when Lissa and I had returned to the Academy last autumn. Headmistress Kirova had nearly expelled me, and Dimitri had stood up for me then too.
Moroi might use terms like “royal” and even kneel sometimes, but there were no thrones or anything like that here. Tatiana sat in an ordinary armchair, dressed in a navy blue skirt and blazer, looking more like a corporate businesswoman than any sort of monarch.
“You will destroy that which is undead.”
“You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.” She pointed to the Wheel of Fortune card. “The wheel is turning, always turning.”
I knew, without understanding how I knew, that it was the entrance to the world of death, the world I had come back from.
They didn’t have to speak for me to know what they were saying: You shouldn’t have lived. You need to come back with us. . . .
“Okay, supposing that’s true, that being shadow-kissed lets you see ghosts, why is it happening now? Why didn’t it happen right after the car accident?” “I thought of that,” I said eagerly. “It was something else Victor said—that now that I was dealing in death, I was that much closer to the other side. What if causing someone else’s death strengthened my connection and now makes this possible? I just had my first real kill. Kills, even.”
I’m not leaving you alone on this, no matter what. You know I’d never abandon you.”
