"Nastia! What's the status on dinner?"
"Check it yourself, Paul."
"Fine, fine." Paul shuffled into the kitchen and peered over his cousin's shoulder into the pot on the stove. "No need to be such a bitch."
"Paul."
"Yes, Anastasia?"
"If you want to eat, you could have made dinner yourself."
"But that requires effort," he whined, and punched her in the shoulder.
Anastasia made a face and pulled the wooden spoon out of the borscht, pretending to threaten him with it.
"You wouldn't."
"I would," she said, smug.
"She would," her father, Dimitri, added as he came into the kitchen. "She used to do it to me back in Moscow when I would get in her way." He kissed her on the head and reached between the two cousins to open the cabinet to the flatware. "Turning into Yeva more and more each day."
Paul snorted, made a noise of agreement, and shuffled back out of the kitchen.
"So Rose is coming out tomorrow?" Anastasia asked conversationally.
"Yes." Dimitri's tone was careful, controlled. He paused in setting the table. "We've discussed this."
She frowned as she worked out the meaning of his words and then neutralized her expression. "I mean, I am meeting her tomorrow."
"Yes."
"Okay."
"She's going to be here at seven tomorrow morning."
Anastasia heard the warning and nodded, sampling the stew. Satisfied, she shut the stovetop off and called for dinner.
—
"Don't really see the likes of you in these parts," Anastasia teased.
"What can I say?" Ivan shrugged and knocked a shot of vodka back with a grin. "I heard a pretty girl with a devastating smile and killer libido was coming tonight."
She crowded in close, pressing tight against him. Behind her, Tpahc had hit its rush for the night. Dubstep blared through the club, several girls dancing up on the stage. If she looked to her right, Anastasia could see her cousin Zoya up there. Black and strobe lights littered the ceiling and corners of the large room. Dhampir girls were clothed in bright colors, their Moroi male counterparts much darker.
"Pretty Girl is meeting her mother in few hours," she replied, signaling to the bartender for another round. "So she is drinking her nerves away."
"Would a few rounds of intense fucking help with that?" Ivan asked.
Anastasia hit his shoulder, feigning a scandalized expression.
He reached behind him and grabbed their shots. "To us," he said, much quieter than a club asked for.
"To us," she echoed, taking the shot. They drank them together. She gave a small shudder as the liquid ran down her throat.
"Do you have to go back tomorrow?" he asked, this time yelling to be heard over the music again.
"Because I have to graduate?" she replied. The vodka was burning through her system, and her body felt much looser than it had earlier. She hadn't planned to come to Tpahc tonight, but when she realized that she wouldn't have any prep time the next day before Rose showed up, she needed to distract herself.
"I'll miss you."
"You are coming to my trials on Friday."
"So?"
"Ugh." Marina planted herself on the barstool next to Ivan and Anastasia. "Love."
"Rejected much, Rina?" Anastasia made a face at her cousin's attitude.
She threw her hands up in the air. "I can't even get laid anymore. This sucks."
"False," Ivan said, wrapping an arm around Anastasia's waist. "You just need to find a Moroi with an exhibitionist or slut-shaming kink. I'm sure you'd find someone like that in here."
Marine rubbed a bite mark on her neck self-consciously.
"Besides, look at this way." Anastasia was curled up in Ivan's embrace, and her head was resting on his chest as she yelled to Marina. "You are going to be a sanctioned guardian by the end of this weekend. Any marks you do have besides your new tattoo will get you a crappy assignment so fast, you won't even have time to protest."
"You sound like Uncle Dimka," Marina grumbled.
"Born and raised!" Anastasia shouted and then dissolved into a puddle of giggles.
"Taking care of her soon?" Marina asked Ivan.
"It's been four; I'm letting her have another before we head out."
"I heard that!" Anastasia slapped Ivan on the arm again, but this time, her hand lingered and Ivan swallowed hard.
"Have fun," Marina chimed, grabbing a pink drink and walked away.
—
She was nervous. Really nervous. Seeming to sense her nervousness, she gladly accepted Dimitri's proffered hand.
"She looks like you."
"I know. You send pictures."
Silence.
"I've missed you."
"Me, too." She looked out the window. "Not that I'm happy I turned into my mother."
"We made the right decision. Things will be better for her in the end."
"No, I know, you're right. I have to remind myself of that."
"I love you, Roza. I always have and I always will." He lifted their clasped hands and pressed a kiss to the back of hers.
"The feelings are mutual." Rose's mouth quirked. "I never take saying that for granted, you know."
Dimitri's smile was answer enough.
An hour later, Dimitri quietly murmured a little ta-da when he pulled into the Belikov driveway. It was right around seven, just as he'd promised Rose when she was making her travel arrangements. The sun was breaking over the horizon behind the white-painted wood house.
"They'll start getting up in about a half hour if Iza doesn't already have Paul calming her down. You met Paul, right?" Dimitri asked as he pulled Rose's bags out of the trunk.
"Yeah." Rose's expression turned fond as she recalled the sweet ten-year-old boy who played along with Yeva's pranks against her. Worry churned in her gut. "Viktoria still doesn't hate me, right?"
"She never did."
Rose nodded. Talking about the first time she met Dimitri's family was always a careful dance — they never mentioned why she was there or what happened after she left. It was a dark time in their past that unnecessarily opened a lot of wounds.
Inside the house, it was exactly as she remembered, save the scattered baby items in the living room and a fresh coat of paint on the staircase. She smiled when she saw the bookshelf next to the television that held the books Dimitri read when he was learning English.
"Iza is Paul's daughter," Dimitri quietly explained, setting Rose's bags down and moving a baby blanket off the stairs to the banister. "He's in his mid-twenties now."
"It really has been seventeen years," Rose noted.
"Shit."
Both of them stopped at the expletive, and the sound of something being shoved around in a sink seemed much louder than it should have.
Dimitri poked his head into the kitchen and his body went from tense and alert to tired in a second. He waved Rose in, who stopped immediately when she saw the girl in front of the sink.
"Asya, we talked about this last night."
The girl flipped around when she heard Dimitri's voice, her eyes going wide when she saw Rose in the doorway behind him.
Dimitri looked as though he were waiting for an explanation. The girl sized him up and crossed her arms over her chest. Her Russian accent was thicker than Rose remembered ever hearing out of Dimitri's mouth.
"I am just getting painkillers. I will be up in two hours. Ivan sends regards."
She crossed the room to exit when Dimitri's hand came down on her shoulder and she sighed.
"Fine."
"I don't make up curfews for my health, Anastasia."
She looked to Rose for help, who was barely suppressing a smile at the situation.
"I told you that Rose was going to be here at seven. If you were still going to be up, I would've rather you stay at Ivan's and just come over looking more presentable. I know you have clothes over there."
Anastasia and Rose both assessed her outfit. A black shirt sat on one shoulder and it was clear she wasn't wearing a bra. Her bellybutton was pierced, the ornament dangling from it making up the several-inch gap to a pair of cut-off jean shorts that barely covered her butt. A pair of bright green stilettos put her almost at Dimitri's full height.
"I resent your implications," she sniffed.
"You're over six feet. You don't need heels."
"Well isn't your sex life bone dry," she retorted, rolling her eyes.
Rose choked and she got two very different resulting expressions.
"Go to bed."
"Bite me."
Dimitri's jaw tightened and she rolled her eyes again, using Dimitri's arm to reach down and take her heels off. She handed them over to him.
"Breakfast is at nine. We leave at noon."
Anastasia moved to leave, and Dimitri's hand tightened. Rose could see where his thumb harshly dug into her collarbone. If it hurt, nothing about Anastasia gave it away.
"Do not. Embarrass. Me."
She met his gaze, hard and unrelenting, and nodded once.
"I understand, sir."
He let go, and she left like nothing was wrong. A feeling of uneasiness wedged itself inside of Rose; very rarely did she see that side of Dimitri, a side he usually kept tucked away from public eye. Apparently he had no problem using it as a parenting technique. Rose was still digesting what she witnessed when Dimitri dropped the heels in the corner of the room and rubbed his face.
"She's a handful," he said tiredly. "Makes me glad we didn't meet until you were seventeen and half. At least you had a little maturity under your belt."
Rose hummed as he took a seat at the large, round table that took up a good portion of the kitchen. That, too, had changed in the past seventeen years; it used to be smaller.
"I distinctly remember you telling me to grow up at some point during my first semester training under you," she said, following him and straddling his lap, her back resting against the edge of the table.
"I probably did." His fingers splayed across her hips. "You were extremely frustrating."
"I still am," she whispered, leaning in close to him, her long hair falling around the two of them. "Christian got on my case just the other day for something I can't remember right now."
"Details always escape you."
"Not the kinds I care about."
Their mouths met in a long, playful kiss.
"Hello, Roza," a voice said. Rose pulled away to see Olena smiling happily as she flipped the stove on and opened the refrigerator.
"You have the worst timing in the world, Mama," Dimitri groaned. It suddenly struck Rose that she had never seen Dimitri interact with his family members; she knew Dimitri and she knew his family, but she didn't know them together.
"And have you defile my kitchen?" Olena threw back, her eyes glittering as she pulled a pan off the drying rack. "I think not. Now get out before your babushka comes in and makes you move."
"We wouldn't want that," he murmured as Rose stood up so he could suit.
"No, we wouldn't. I've lived with the woman for sixty-three years and she still intimidates me."
—
"So remind me why Anastasia's home, Dimitri."
"She officially finished her studies a month ago, but novice trials are held on the same weekend all around the world, so they send everyone home for the month. This way they're not paying for their graduating novices to sit around do nothing and can have a smaller budget."
"And then she goes to Court."
"Yes."
"Gotcha."
Anastasia snorted as Zoya made a face. "'Gotcha'?"
"It's the lazy American way of saying 'Got you' which is slang for 'I understand what you're saying'," Paul explained, handing Izabella off to his wife, Sofia.
"Gotcha," Zoya said, smirking that she got the context right.
The entire table erupted into giggles and Anastasia outright laughed at Rose's confusion.
"What?" Rose asked Anastasia, annoyance flicking across her face.
"You're enemy territory, darling," Anastasia replied, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. She leaned against the counter, a cup of yogurt in hand. "You're about to become best friends with my cousin-in-law over there. This house is the epitome of Russian ideals, which means we're as anti-American as we are anti-Moroi, and coming from family of blood whores, that means we definitely hold them in a special place in our hearts." She let herself become super smug when Rose was visibly tense. It was a wonderful distraction from her headache.
"Asya?" Dimitri asked, not looking at her.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"Keep this up and you're not driving back to school."
"Offended," Anastasia snapped and stormed out of the kitchen.
—
Her bags were packed and loaded into the old, white car, and she was waiting in the driver's seat with a cooled-down car, Ivan tapping away on his tablet next to her, by the time Dimitri and Rose came out of the house with two minutes to spare until noon.
"Ivan," Dimitri said as he and Rose slid into the backseat after depositing their belongings in the trunk.
"Papa," he murmured, distracted.
"There was a Strigoi raid on town about twenty-five kilometers from here," Anastasia explained. She glanced behind her and started backing out onto the street. "So, Rose, don't mind him if he does not respond for a little while."
"Alchemist," Ivan confirmed, holding up his tablet and giving her a knowing smile. "I'm sure you know all about them."
Rose returned the smile, which dissolved into confusion. "You sound American."
"I am."
"Then—"
"My family moved here when I was about seven or eight." He opened a new web page and started typing in the address. "My dad was transferred out here because the Alchemists wanted someone to keep an eye on Dimitri."
"They weren't exactly secretive about it, either," Dimitri muttered, staring out the window.
"We moved into the house right next door. I think I fell in love with Asya the moment I met her," he said, giving her an adoring look.
Anastasia made a noncommittal noise, pulling onto the highway.
"Anyway," he said with a small smile, "My dad did a fine job of his assignment, and we stayed and stayed. Asya taught me how to speak Russian, and because she didn't know English at the time, I taught her my language."
"We took the really, really long route because we were still very young," Anastasia said as she straightened her dark blue cardigan. "Zmey is surprised he ever learned the language at all."
"You know your grandfather?" Rose asked, surprised.
"Yeah." Anastasia glanced at her in the rear view mirror. "He's a known quantity around Baia. Yeva has made sure he drops into town at least a half dozen times a year since his first visit when Papa was four. Besides, it isn't a secret around here that you are my mother."
"You mean this highway knows Rose gave birth to you?" Ivan teased.
"Oh shut up." She slapped his arm. "Stop distracting the driver."
"This is a seven hour car ride, right?"
"We will be there at sunset." Much quieter, she added, "I won't be offended if you nap at some point. I know your body doesn't adjust well to schedule changes."
Ivan thanked her and went back to work.
—
An hour from St. Basil's, Anastasia was jolted out of her thoughts by soft voices coming from the backseat. Last she checked, she was the only one awake, her iPod quietly playing on shuffle through the car stereo.
"You're awake."
"I don't sleep well in the car."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It's a long story, but usually these trips are just Asya and me, and we create these long playlists that we play really loud. Sometimes we'll try to sing over each other, but she always wins."
"You sing?"
"Only in front of people who won't judge me for not being able to hold a note. She got vocal training at school."
"I wouldn't judge you."
"Yes, but I care about your opinion, Roza."
"Wait. . . . They do vocal training at her academy?"
Dimitri paused. "I mean no offense by this."
"Okay?"
"St. Vladimir's is like an inner-city school with no budget compared to St. Basil's, and I'm not biased because I went there."
"How so?"
"You'll have to see it yourself, but it . . . it's an amazing school. For dhampirs, at least. They've got three training buildings for their novices, and Court gives them a bonus every year for renovations to all their buildings if the top ranking student is from St. Basil's, so everything is as modern as it gets. They place a major emphasis on making their guardians well-rounded individuals and offer a selection of extra-curriculars so vast, it makes your head spin when you first look at them. Asya involved herself with the arts, which I was very happy to see her do."
"Wow."
A pause.
"So she can sing?"
"She took ballet, too, mostly because I kept telling her that it would help her when she became a novice, and it did, so she keeps thanking me for that one." He chuckled. "She also got involved with the violin, but that only lasted a few years. She hated the required practicing."
The car fell into silence after that. Anastasia chanced a look in her rearview to look at her dad and Rose. He was curled up along the bench of the backseat, his head on Rose's lap and facing the ceiling. His hair had come loose of its ponytail, and she was gently carding her fingers through it. They looked happy and content, Dimitri's face lighter than Anastasia had seen in a long time, but something didn't feel right. Uneasiness twisted itself in her gut and she refocused her attention on the road.
Hi! I'm alive! I ended up taking a sabbatical to get refocused on writing and my personal life. I used to have a story about a daughter of Rose and Dimitri's name Anastasia, and I believe it was similar in concept to this (I have no memory of it, and since I wrote it all in the document manager, I don't have a back up copy), but I've revamped her and her story. The first chapter's kind of jumpy in terms of setting things up; things get longer and smoother after this.