A/N: I nearly forgot the disclaimer. As I am sure most of you know, I do not claim the rights to any of these characters. Rose and her friends and the entire Vampire Academy world are the property of Richelle Mead. It is by her kindness and generosity that I am able to post my own imaginings with her characters. That said, I hope you enjoy this new chapter. Now that I'm terrified to disappoint. :) Feedback is appreciated. Good, bad, whatever.
Robert was not the threat here of course. Not by Lissa's or my estimation. The thing was that we knew of very few spirit users. There was St. Vladimir, who was long since dead. Oksana, the gentle woman I had met in Russia. Avery, whose brain had been fried when her shadow kissed connections back-fired on her after her attempt to turn Lissa into her minion. And of course, there was Lissa and Adrian. Lissa herself could never hurt a fly, except for the time she had punched Reed Lazar under my guidance, but even then that had been self defense. And Adrian was the late queen's favorite nephew. Queen Tatiana's murder must have bothered him more than he let on. The only other spirit user we knew of was Robert...Victor Dashkov's illegitimate half brother, who we had last seen in Las Vegas. Since Robert was pretty much devoted to Victor, it was highly possible that the two had come up with some convoluted scheme to kill the queen.
This news was bone chilling and slightly maddening. I had been responsible for breaking Victor out of prison and leading him to Robert, even if I had not done as much work as Lissa had. Though Lissa had used her compulsion to get us in and out of the prison and to distribute people once we were in, it had been I who had organized the prison break. It was because I broke Victor out of prison that Robert had revealed to us how to restore a strigoi to their previous entity. It was for that reason that when Lissa and Christian went to Lehigh, they had tricked her guardians into teaching them to use a stake. With that knowledge, Lissa had been able to use her spirit infused stake to turn Dimitri back into a dhampir.
The plan had not been for Robert and Victor to get loose from us, obviously. I had intended to use Victor shamelessly, just as he had done when he kidnapped Lissa. I was going to return him to Tarasov prison after we had gotten the information that we needed from Robert. However, when we were at the hotel we were jumped by a party of strigoi...Dimitri's party, to be exact. Eddie and I had assumed our guardian instincts and fought them off to the best of our ability. Lissa and Adrian escaped safely. And apparently so did Victor and Robert, because in the scuffle of the battle we lost them. And though the knowledge that they had escaped from us was miserable and depressing, I hadn't really considered what would become of them. Upon returning to court there was the obvious panic over Victor's escape from Tarasov, but after getting swept up in court life, I had almost forgotten about what I had done. Everything happened so quickly, one after another, that I pushed all thoughts of Victor out of my mind. Even if I had had the time to think of what I had done, I certainly would not have considered this. Victor Dashkov...or Robert...had killed the queen and framed me for it.
I could not, of course, regret breaking Victor out of prison. Doing so had been my only hope of saving Dimitri, and it had worked. I had him back, never mind that he claimed he did not love me anymore. Never mind that being a strigoi may have hardened his hard to the point where he wasn't capable of love. He was here, a dhampir again, because of Lissa's and my efforts. That's all that was important.
Yet I could not shake the knowledge that my actions had led to this. I broke victor out of prison, only to end up in prison myself. The knowledge was far beyond frustrating. But I would have to brood over my actions later, because shortly after I left Lissa's mind, Mikhail arrived with Christian in tow.
"Rose." Christian said, coming to the bars. He had probably spent the entire walk here trying to come up with some snarky comment. Either nothing had come to mind, or else the reality of the situation made him forget to sound superior. I'm not sure whether one of his sarcastic comments would have served to frustrate me, or if it would have provided a measure of comfort. However, Christian simply looked at me through the bars, a look in his eyes that i was unaccustomed to. Pity.
"You know I didn't do it." I said. It was a statement, rather than a question. Christian and I thought along the same lines most of the time, even though that was scary to admit. He too could see that the set up had been too perfect; leaving my stake in the queen's chest. A real criminal mastermind, like the way Sydney made me out to be, would never have left the stake there. They would have hidden it in a not-too-hard-to-find spot. Besides that, Christian was my friend. Though he swore I was crazy, he knew me better than to think I would kill the queen.
"Of course I know that. You are not a murderer."
"No. But I am a dead woman walking unless you can help me." Christian looked surprised by my revelation. I guess he had expected that I would stay strong. But right now, I was not going to put up a front. Christian would have seen through any facade I tried anyways.
"When Lissa, Eddie, and I went to Las Vegas, we split up. Adrian and I were in the casino of the Witching Hour while Lissa and Eddie went to book our return flight. When we were there, we met the manager. He let it slip that Eric Dragomir-"
"Lissa's father." Christian said automatically. I don't think he meant to interrupt me; the use of the name had probably been so unexpected that he had to have that clarification. I nodded.
"He said that Lissa's father was a repeat customer. He implied that Eric liked to party, particular in the company of women." I paused to let him sort that through in his head, but he had not known Lissa's family. Believing Eric Dragomir capable of infidelity was probably not a stretch of Christian's imagination. "And then I received some notice from a friend that some alchemist records were stolen. Paper records of course. And guess who they were on."
Christian didn't need to say it, because he could tell. But he did not understand why. "Who would steel information about the dead? Whatever he did is done now. There's no point in scandalizing his memory."
"Maybe that's not why the records were stolen in the first place. Maybe whoever stole them was trying to prevent a scandal."
"I guess that's possible." He thought it over a moment. "Depending on what type of information was stolen."
"Everything. Apparently the alchemists have records of everything. It was mostly financial information regarding large deposits into a bank account." Christian didn't react to that, and so I decided to elaborate. "A bank account in Las Vegas. In a woman's name."
"What woman?" Christian asked, suspicious.
"Jane Doe. There was no name on the account, at least not that the alchemists could find. And the alchemists can find a lot out about anything." I decided not to tell him that they could possibly be spying on us right now. The alchemists were not talked about too much. In fact, I had not really even known about them until I had met one in Russia. The conversation about the alchemists was one that was best suited for another day.
"Do you think he had another wife?" The idea kind of surprised me. In fact, I think I was surprised that I had not thought of it. But after further thought, I dismissed the idea.
"Not a wife. Not even a girlfriend. I don't think he would have been the type to cheat on his wife." Well, obviously he had cheated on his wife. Or at least, he had according to the queen. Not that the queen had said that. Manipulative though she was, she would have never talked open slander against someone, particularly a dead royal. But He must have cheated on his wife if he had another child, as the queen insisted. And that was the information I needed to share with Christian.
"The queen left me a letter." I said quickly, before considering how to phrase that. I probably should have thought about it though, because the shock on Christian's face was tangible. In any other time or place, I would have laughed.
"The queen?" He repeated, dubious.
"Yes." I reached into my pocket and let my hand close around the letter. It had been burning a hole in my pocket. It was something that I had wanted to share immediately, maybe even as evidence in the court. See, I didn't kill the queen. She knew someone was after her, and she trusted me enough to send me on a mission. Yet the reminder that I was supposed to share this secret with as few people as possible kept me from making her trust in me public. I glanced at Mikhail, who was pointedly looking the other way. I slipped the note through the bars and nodded at Christian, indicating that he should read the note right then and there.
His blue eyes flew over the page at lightning speed and he looked up at me grimly. "This could be anyone's handwriting. It's not that hard to forge a signature, particularly when you don't know what her writing looks like." Ah, we did think alike indeed. I had said almost that same exact thing.
"That's what you are going to find out for me." I said quietly. Christian looked up at me as though he had some fiery retort on his tongue, but he let it fizzle out and die, whatever it was.
"Ok. How?"
"You are going to break into the guardians records." Mikhail looked up, suspicious. I looked directly at him. "And you are going to help."
