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My hands could touch each other but not Dimitri. With a bit of maneuvering, I used the fingers of my left hand to pry off Oksana’s ring. It slipped off and into the mud, just as Dimitri’s fangs touched my skin.
Dimitri had won.
“You’re not going to awaken me,” I said. “Rose, there’s no way you can—” “No.” I climbed up onto the railing of the bridge, swinging one leg over. I knew what had to happen now. He froze. “What are you doing?” “I told you. I’ll die before I become Strigoi. I won’t be like you or the others. I don’t want that. You didn’t want that, once upon a time.” My face felt cold as a night breeze blew over it, the result of stealthy tears on my cheeks.
“We need to be together.” “Why?” I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard. “Because I want you.” I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we’d meet again in the land of the dead. “Wrong answer,” I told him. I let go.
See, here’s the thing. In that moment before I let go, I really had been contemplating my death. I’d come to terms with it and accepted it. I also, however, had known Dimitri might do something exactly like this. He was just that fast and that good. That was why I was holding my stake in the hand that was dangling free.
I looked him in the eye. “I will always love you.” Then I plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn’t as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. “That’s what I was supposed to say. . . .” he gasped out. Those were his last words.
And then, the world around me dissolved.
“You love her more than me?” Lissa had asked me almost the same thing when I’d left to hunt Dimitri. My life was doomed to always be about choosing between them. “I love you both,” I replied.
But it wasn’t real. It was too easy, and if I was learning anything, it was that life wasn’t easy.
“Oksana . . . a Strigoi touched this ring. And for a few moments—while he did—it was like . . . well, he was still Strigoi, no question. But while he held it, he was almost like his old self too.”
Now, with Lissa, I had to accept the reality of everything and truly feel it: I had killed the man I loved.
You forgot another lesson: Never turn your back until you know your enemy is dead. Looks like we’ll have to go over the lesson again the next time I see you—which will be soon. Love, D.
Dimitri was coming for me this time. And something told me that I had blown my chance at being turned Strigoi. He was coming to kill me. What had he said when I escaped the manor? That there was no way we could both be alive in the world?
“Do you believe in fairy tales?”
It was Dimitri. Always Dimitri. Dimitri, the man I’d loved. Dimitri, the Strigoi I wanted to save. Dimitri, the monster I’d most likely have to kill. The love we’d shared always burned within me, no matter how often I told myself to move on, no matter how much the world did think I’d moved on. He was always with me, always on my mind, always making me question myself.
How could these measure up to what I’d already faced? How could these mock fights compare to a mob of Strigoi descending on our school? I’d had to stand against overwhelming odds, not knowing if those I loved were alive or dead. And how could I fear a so-called battle with one of the school’s instructors after having fought Dimitri? He’d been lethal as a dhampir and worse as a Strigoi.
I’d always equated graduation with freedom. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Not you. While planning the trials, the guardians decided you needed something . . . extra. Something special. After all, you’d been out fighting in the real world.”
“There’s more than one. Victor’s in one of the worst. It’s called Tarasov.”
“Mikhail Tanner,”
It occurred to me that I was standing face-to-face with the hero of a love story nearly as dramatic as my own.
He really was like me, I realized. We both knew the idea of bringing back Strigoi was impossible . . . and yet we so, so wanted to believe it could be done
Even if the side effects didn’t show up right away, they would likely come back to haunt her in the future.
I’d saved Eddie’s life twice, and I knew he meant what he said. He felt indebted to me. He would go wherever I asked, not out of romantic love, but out of friendship and loyalty.
We’d have to check into this another time—say, like, the next time we decided to break into a maximum-security prison.
fear that this could someday be her fate. Or mine as well, if I siphoned away spirit’s effects.
“You guys didn’t really think you could go off on a party weekend without me, did you? Especially here of all places—” He froze, and it was one of those rare moments when Adrian Ivashkov was caught totally and completely off guard. “Did you know,” he said slowly, “that Victor Dashkov is sitting on your bed?” “Yeah,” I said. “It was kind of a shock to us too.”
“Because there might be a way to save Strigoi. To turn them back to the way they were. And Victor . . . Victor knows someone who might have done this.”
You’ve given him no reason to help. You just hurt him again and again. Just like you did Mason.
We stepped inside, off to see Robert Doru. And what might be Dimitri’s only salvation.
Robert had once been bonded to a dhampir—and that dhampir had died, drastically speeding up the deterioration of Robert’s mind.
“No. You cannot. It’s like nothing you can imagine. Nothing. Right now . . . right now . . . you have the world. A universe of senses beyond those of others, an understanding of another person that no one can have. To lose that . . . to have that ripped away . . . it would make you wish for death.”
Spirit’s punishment still affects you . . . soon you won’t be able to tell reality from dream. . . .”
“That which is dead doesn’t always stay dead. . . .”
“With a stake. She was killed with a stake, and in doing so, was brought back to life.”
Spirit healed. Spirit had brought me back from the dead. In joining with the other elements within a stake, was it truly possible that the twisted darkness that gripped Strigoi could be obliterated, thus restoring that person to their rightful state?
“The shadow-kissed don’t have the gift of life. Only the spirit-blessed,”
Those words were what snapped me out of my stunned state. In fact, they were what shattered this whole thing, this far-fetched dream of saving Dimitri.
“Bonds form when someone dies—when their soul has actually left and moved onto the world of the dead. Bringing it back is what makes them shadow-kissed. Death’s mark is upon them.” His gaze suddenly snapped onto me. “Just as it is on you.”
Maybe all it actually took to convert a Strigoi was a spirit-infused stake. He only thought a spirit user had to do it because he had done it.
“That’s why you had Natalie turn. You thought . . . you knew about this. What Robert had done. You were going to use her Strigoi strength and then have him turn her back.”
Dimitri was among them.
I couldn’t do it. Dimitri couldn’t die. Not yet.
“Dimitri left a pile of corpses there. You know it. People died because you wouldn’t let me stake him.”
“I love him,” I blurted out, without meaning to. Eddie hadn’t known. Only a handful of people knew about my romantic relationship with Dimitri and what had happened in Siberia.
“I’m not saying he did anything. Like your boyfriend said, nothing wrong with looking. But a lot of people knew the Dragomir prince liked to party it up wherever he went—especially if there was female company.”
“I will if my dad turns me out.
As I’d hoped, watching Adrian cheat with spirit did indeed distract Lissa—so much so that she grew interested in trying it herself. Great.
I slept heavily, but my dreams were haunted by the fact that I’d let one of the Moroi’s most dangerous criminals escape and allowed a Strigoi to walk free and gotten a bunch of humans killed. I held none of my friends responsible. This disaster was all on me.
It truly, truly hit me then that I was in the real world. Fear slammed into me. I’d taken on the title of guardian when I graduated, but had I really understood what it meant? Had I been playing make-believe—enjoying the perks and ignoring the consequences? I was out of school. There would be no detention for this. This was real. This was life and death.
