Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, the amazing Richelle Mead does!

Chapter 1

Dimitri was the guy I was in love with right? After everything we had both been through together, it was only logical to stay together and to be in love; but if this was the case, why is it I seemed to have these unusual feelings for none other... Christian Ozera, my best friend Lissa's boyfriend.

Ever since I had met him and seen him with Lissa, we had always had a weird sort of relationship. Christian was a very troubled moroi and he specialised in fire, whereas Lissa specialised in spirit and was also a highly regarded moroi royal. Christian on the other hand, hadn't been accepted into our moroi society ever since his parents turned to the dark side and changed into strigoi; although Christian himself would never willingly turn into a strigoi, people were wary around him; people didn't know what to expect from the son of two, now dead, strigoi parents.

Lissa had always been sure about him though. I remember when I had a hard time trying to block out Lissa and Christian having sex in secret. Before you think I'm a perv or something, I'm not. Lissa and me, we have this bond. I can go into her mind and read her thoughts, and I can also see everything through Lissa's eyes wherever she may be; I remember the feeling of excitement when I realised I could do this. Lissa hadn't been thrilled about it though and I didn't blame her. Having someone reading my thoughts and being able to see me having sex was not something I wanted to think about and this is why I hate it when I can't control my mind to stop wandering into Lissa's thoughts. Especially during those sexy moments; although I have to admit Christian has a hot body; hotter than hot in fact; which brings me back to my dilemma.

When Lissa turned Dimitri back into a dhampir, I thought I would die with happiness; I was finally going to have the man I loved back. I would end the world for him. I would do anything for him; what I didn't expect was for him to push me away, telling me when I finally did confront him that "love fades" and that he didn't ever want to see me again. I was heartbroken. I hated myself for feeling jealous when I saw him with Lissa and the worship I saw glittering in his eyes when he looked at her, but I couldn't help the rush of bile I could feel coming up my throat. It was me who had gone to Russia, choosing him over my best friend to kill him when he was still a strigoi. It was me who had risked my life while there and it was me that broke into a highly secured prison to break out when of the most sought out criminals of all time in the moroi world to find out the information to turn back Dimitri into a dhampir. It wasn't Lissa, so why didn't he look at me the way he looked at Lissa?

That was the least of my problems however. The day I told him about the age restriction for young dhampirs being able to fight at sixteen instead of eighteen, was the day I was thrown in prison for the murder of Queen Tatiana; a death I know I didn't cause. You would think that I would be able to free myself, or at least Dimitri would be the one to save me as a thank you for helping him over the past four months. However, it wasn't him, or Lissa, or Adrian for that matter. It was Christian. Well, mostly Christian; Dimitri had wanted to save me from the cells for his own reasons, which didn't include wanting me to be safe...

I had been in the dirty cell for two weeks, waiting for my trail which I was expected to be seen as guilty at, when I heard a loud noise outside the door a few feet away from me, leading to the entrance to the prison, I knew someone had come to save me. At the time, I had thought it was Dimitri, finally coming to his senses, coming to help me for once; when Christian came flying through the now opened (and burned) door, using his speciality, fire, to burn the three guards outside my cell, I had to admit to myself that all I felt was disappointment. It crawled inside me, becoming stronger; it was like an unstoppable force and although I knew I was close to freedom at last, freedom didn't seem worth it if Dimitri didn't want me. Not to mention the fact that everyone thought I had killed the late Queen and therefore wouldn't want anything to do with me, and if they saw me, I would find myself back in the cell again. I would have to be in hiding forever.

I watched in numb silence as Christian burned the three guardians that had been watching my cell to a stake and then burned the bars that stopped me from escaping the cell and waited for me to leave it.

"Come on Rose!" He whispered in a quiet panicked voice, but I couldn't move. It was like my body was frozen in place and every thought and feeling I had was put on hold. Christian began to walk towards me and I started to inch backwards until my body couldn't move anymore due to the wall my back now rested on. Christian leaned in towards me and grabbed my face in both his hands. "Rose, we have to leave now before the guards come and I'm thrown in prison with you. Then neither of us will be able to escape; this will be our one and only chance to get you out of here. I'm running out of energy already and I don't think I will be able to hold the fought any longer by burning people to a crisp. You have fighting power though. Although looking at you now, I'm not so sure..." Christian trailed off, looking at me pleadingly to go with him, to be out of this hell hole once and for all. But I still couldn't move, or speak for that matter. "Okay Rose, I didn't want to do this, but..." Before I had chance to process his wording, I felt a slight sting in my lower arm as he stuck something sharp there. The next thing I knew, everything was becoming darker, until eventually everything went black.

I woke up to find myself in a small(ish) bed in a small room I didn't recognize. It smelled strangely of chocolate, something I hadn't had in a long time and all of a sudden craved. As I felt my mouth watering, it was then that I saw Dimitri, of all people, sitting in a chair opposite the bed I was in, happily eating a bowlful of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. He must have realised someone was staring at him because he then looked up and straight into my eyes; it was weird looking into his gorgeous brown eyes, seeing the warmth and love there that I hadn't seen in a long time, not since before he turned into a strigoi. I actually found it overwhelming to see something I never expected to see again after his "love fades" comment. It was at this moment that Christian walked through the door, ruining the moment I had with Dimitri.

"So sleeping beauty is finally awake." He said with a huge grin on his face. I didn't understand why he looked so happy, until I remembered that I wasn't in jail anymore. Christian had saved me. The question was, how had Dimitri come into the equation? And what had put me to "sleep"? Surely Christian hadn't drugged me...?

"Of course I'm awake. I would also like to know what happened. What I missed while I was "sleeping"." I said to him with my best judging him but pretending not to be face.

"Well we, me and Dimitri that is, wanted to help you escape from the prison. You know you would have died if you had been found guilty of killing the late Queen. We wanted to protect you from that."

"What, by burning the guardians to a stake, kidnapping me and making sure I have to live in exile for the rest of my life, because you know this is what's gonna happen. Anyone that sees me isn't going to protect me; they will report me straight to the authorities if they see even a hint of me walking around anywhere."

"That is not going to happen Roza." I had actually forgotten Dimitri was in the room. As I had been yelling at Christian, Dimitri had walked upto the side of my bed and was kneeling down, so that his face was only inches from mine. He had enlightened me with his statement with a cool scary voice, that I would have feared if it was a statement that was threatening me. The statement also cleared my panic a little. Dimitri would be able to protect me, right? I had always felt safe around Dimitri, from the day I had first met him. I'm not saying I have always liked and loved him, but the only thing I have ever had to fear around him was whether I would be expelled from my school; which turned out not to be the case.

I reached out and pulled him onto the bed, which turned out to be easy as he didn't resist at all. He pulled me into his arms and we hugged for what seemed like ages; I really couldn't bring myself to release my hold on him – this was the guy I had and always would love. Nothing else mattered as long as I had him close. It was then that I realised Christian was still in the room; he had occupied the chair that Dimitri had been sitting in when I first woke up, and he was eating the chocolate and vanilla ice cream Dimitri had been eating before too. He was looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face, but other than that, his expression was pretty unreadable. Sometimes I really couldn't understand Christian; one minute he was his annoying cocky self, irritating the hell out of me, then the next it was like we were the closest people ever; in a platonic way that is. There was also the rare times, like just now, where he wore this confused, or puzzled look on his face which suggested he was thinking too much about things he probably shouldn't – yeah, I was great at understanding people...

"So are you guys gonna tell me where we are and how Dimitri fits into all of this?" It turned out to be a question I didn't want the answer for.

Christian was the only that explained how after my first trial, the one that would decide whether I was going onto the bigger and scarier trail, Christian took off, away from Lissa, his aunt and Adrian, and sought out Dimitri about my "problem". They both realised, with his fire power, and Dimitri's fighting skill, they could help me escape jail. What they didn't realise, was that there were thirteen guardians guarding the prison. Five in the main office, another five leading to the cells, and three outside my cell; this meant they had needed the help of a spirit user, and seeing as the only spirit users they knew were Adrian and Lissa, they had to ask one of them to complete the task. At first they contemplated asking Adrian to do it, but then turned against this idea because not only was Adrian a drunk, (well he drank a lot due to spirit's side effects) but he was also madly in love with me and would want to be involved with every chapter of getting me to "safety"; whatever that was. This meant switching their plans to asking Lissa to do it. Although they didn't really like this idea as Lissa had been using spirit quite a lot recently, they also knew that Lissa would do anything for me and she would also back off when Christian and Dimitri told her to. That was that plan sorted; they planned to "free" me in exactly two weeks – not straight away because they knew how safety was supposed to be in prison's and although it was always high tech, it always loosened up after a couple of weeks of the criminal being there.

That was when the real fun started. On the day they planned to release me, both Dimitri and Christian decided that it would be better if Christian went to retrieve me from the cell because it would be too emotional if Dimitri was there; Christian agreed.

When they arrived to the opening of the prison, killing or at least knocking out the moroi and guards on duty was a real risky and hard task. But they managed to somewhat do it and while Dimitri held the forte in the main office, Christian went to do some guard crisping in the holding cells where I was kept. After killing the guards that had been holding me, Christian tried to plead with me to leave with him, but when I didn't move, he had to drug me to go with him.

"Wait a minute! You drugged me?" Christian and Dimitri could feel my anger rising and tried to control it by doing the one thing they knew – making me feel guilty or that I was responsible for their actions.

"I had no choice Rose. You wouldn't come, you just sat there like a stature and I didn't know what to do. I brought the drugs with me in case this happened, but if I'm being honest I didn't expect to use them. I thought you would want to escape that horrible place." I knew Christain was being honest and I accepted that, but it still annoyed the hell out of me. Who was he to drug me without my permission?

"Come on Roza, he did it for your own good." There was Dimitri again; my rock. He always knew how to put me straight, another reason why I loved him so much.

"Okay, I'm sorry Christian. Well tell me how we got here then." And on the story went. It turned out that we were actually still in court. How they thought staying in court would be the way to keep me safe, I don't know. "You're telling me, that after this whole escape route, we didn't even leave court? That we're in the place that is probably the least safe place for me right now?" Again I felt my anger rising, but it turned out that there was a good reason I was still here; this time it was Dimitri that filled me in.

"The reason, Roza, that we are still in court instead of fleeing the country, is because you are no longer the person charged for the murder of Tatiana." He paused for a minute as he said 'Rest in peace' under his breath, something I always found so sweet about him, the way he cared about people/moroi/dhampirs so much; he looked so fierce on the outside, but on the inside...

But Dimitri wasn't able to carry on with his speech to me, as Christian beat him to it. "What he was about to say was that Adrian was charged for her murder. They found significant proof that it was him and not you." That made me speechless.

Okay if you read this, I know there isn't really much Christian/Rose action and it's more Rose's "love" for Dimitri, but it will change as the story goes on. Please review if you DID read it and tell me what you think ;)