It seemed very unlikely to most people, as I, Rosemarie Hathaway, stood in front of thousands of royal and non-royal Moroi as well as a handful of commoners and a whole bunch of guardians, that I was innocent in committing the murder of Queen Tatiana Ivashkov. I stood calling out Tasha Ozera, the most unlikely suspect, on first degree murder and framing an innocent person, me. That wasn't something you saw happen everyday, considering it was the murder of a queen. However, this was a serious matter, all the evidence now pointed at her. I had been framed by someone, and I was now staring her in the face. The only thing that didn't appear guilty was Tasha herself standing in front of a procession of confused people, in tears, not daring to believe what she was hearing.

"But Rose, I've been behind you this whole time! I swear it wasn't me, how could you even come up with such a thing?" She turned franticly to the man standing next to me. "Dimka, you believe me don't you?" She looked at Dimitri with such desperate eyes that I started to feel a knot of guilt twisting in my chest and stomach. "Tell her it's ridiculous! You know I'd never do such a thing!" The truth was, I did think it was absolutely ridiculous. I felt crazier than ever standing in front of Tasha and her friends and family, accusing her of murder. It was simply wrong. But the evidence didn't lie. People did.

Dimitri Belikov simply turned to face me, his face showing almost no emotion, except I knew him well enough to know that he felt almost as bad as I did. I stared back at him, and he came over to me slowly. "What should I say?" I whispered to him. His face looked thoughtful, and then he took the microphone from me.

"Tasha, we have evidence. We're not going into this blind sided. You apposed the age law, you had access to her chambers, and you were there the night she was murdered. However, there were no existing records of your visit, since it was private." She looked absolutely devastated, and the knot grew tighter.

"Tell me this, Dimitri," He and I both flinched, and I could see Christian's shocked face sitting right next to hers. She'd never called him by his actual name before. "Why in the world, would I frame Rose? I have nothing but respect for and her abilities! I've supported her through as much as I could…" And that's when anger flared up inside me, as everything clicked into place, and I knew why she'd framed me. It was a petty reason, very childish, and I wasn't about to sit there and listen to her go on about how she respected and loved me, it made me want to throw up. So I stole the mic back and I cut her off.

"That's a lie! You and I both know exactly why you framed me!" Hot tears of anger began rolling down my cheeks as I yelled at Tasha. Any under lying conversations in the crowd stopped immediately as my voice rang through the ballroom and they saw me loose control for once. For once in my life, I felt like I'd been stabbed in the back. That didn't happen often, and especially not with people I was close to. I'd been framed, locked up in prison, broken out, been on the run, on the most wanted list, and living a life of hell for the past two months or so. All because of jealousy? Apparently.

Tasha gave me a warning look that also contained fear, and in true Rose form, I smiled. It was mean, but I knew I had her. Dimitri cringed beside me and I'm not sure if it was because I smiled at her pain, or because he knew what was about to come out of my mouth. Either way, I started to blurt everything out. "You're jealous! Yeah, that's it.That's all. The only reason! Just because, because…,"

It was harder bringing myself to actually say it out loud than it had been in my mind. I chanced a sidelong glance at Dimitri. He was smirking. Right at me, and I had a feeling it was because it was so like me to call someone out like this. So that's all he did, but I was sure I'd be getting a mouthful from him later. I continued anyways.

"Because you wanted him, and I already had him!" Lissa, who had been standing by the whole time feeling uneasy, burned a hole in the back of my head. She was shocked at me, shocked at the news, and just plain upset about everything. She knew it was true though, she trusted me. However Hans, who was closer to Dimitri than me, did not trust me. Most of the time. He laughed and moved closer.

"You're joking right? You think Lady Ozera murdered the queen because she couldn't have the man she wanted? That's ludicrous!" I snapped my head towards him.

"No! I didn't say that. Her act of killing the queen was completely political. She framed me over a romantic conflict." He scowled and turned his head towards Tasha who had moved forward towards us as much as the crowd would allow. I continued.

"She could have framed anyone, but she chose me because I had Dimitri and she didn't!" Some gasps came from the crowd. Those who never knew about me and my pretty much illegal relationship with him, now knew. That was about half of our population. Great. But that didn't stop me, I kept talking.

"And you knew!" I was screaming now, as more hot tears found my cheeks. "You knew they'd believe you because you used my stake, which already had my fingerprints! They'd believe you because more than enough people knew I didn't care for Tatiana, and I already had a bad enough reputation from school, and breaking Lissa out! See, look how easy that was! I could have framed myself too!" I was adding in some frantic hand movements here and there, and the last comment was probably unneccisary, but I threw it in anyways.

I could tell Dimitri was trying not to laugh from barely even glancing at him, and so was my father. Heck, I probably would have too if I had been watching myself, but at that moment in time it pissed me off even more, so the tears just kept coming. Those who saw my rant as over, which it was since I couldn't think of anything else to say, started yelling. To my surprise and all of my supporters, it wasn't at me. Tasha was being called a wide range of names that even I didn't want to repeat. And even though I still felt awful that this was happening to her, it was only because I couldn't believe she'd let lovesickness get the better of her. I understood her situation, but I didn't think I would have framed someone of murder because of it.

My breathing was heavy and the last of the tears started to dry up as Lissa and my mother came over and hugged me individually. It felt nice to have supporters in something like this, and I hugged each of them tightly as I watched the crowd parting so the guardians could take Tasha into custody for questioning. As I watched her leave I still felt anger burning inside of me. This wasn't over.

Dimitri came over and took me in his arms at last, still with a smile. "Rosemarie Hathaway. I cannot believe you just did that. But I wouldn't expect anything less of you I guess, right?" He kissed my forehead and I felt warmth inside me, but it burned cold.

"No. You shouldn't." I paused, and in cold voice added, "In fact, you should expect more. I'm definitely not done with her yet." Dimitri pulled away from the embrace and tilted my head towards his to give me a concerned look. I think he saw the affect of Spirit in my eyes as much as I was begining to feel it. The others just looked frightened. "She needs to pay for what she's put me through. And I won't let anyone but me take the money from her." They knew I didn't mean money and it scared them even more. I think so much to the point they didn't bother asking questions. They let it drop, as did I. But it wouldn't leave my mind until I felt satisfied.

Dimitri held me tighter and my blood still burned cold. I felt like a different person. Spirit was slowly taking over, all because of jealousy, and I wanted my revenge.