I had been plunged into a pit of blackness and despair from which there seemed to be no return. I fell into a deep comatose sleep with no way to keep track of the world outside of me. As far as I was concerned, there was no world outside of me. No, I was trapped in the torment conjured up by my own mind: the mind, it had seemed, that had finally cracked and given in to spirit after all this time. Huh. I would've expected it to happen much sooner than this. It was finally here. I had been playing with fire—figuratively speaking—for years now, and it had all accumulated and built up within me, a small catalyst ready to explode given the smallest provocation. And now spirit had come to collect...for real this time. I braced myself, anticipating the worst.
...only to receive the best.
I was trapped in this comatose state, being held prisoner inside my own mind with no means of escape...but apparently, I could still dream. I knew instantly that it wasn't a spirit dream of my own creation, because I had felt my spirit magic burn out right as I had fallen unconscious, but it may as well have been. Spirit was apparently fucking with me today by digging deep into my subconscious and giving me exactly what I wanted: Sydney.
I couldn't help but gasp at the ethereal beauty my eyes beheld in looking at her. We stood outside in summertime, with the high noon sun shining brilliantly in the sky—but being that it was a dream, it didn't affect me at all—and wild flowers were in bloom all around us, astonishing me with their magnificent beauty. But their beauty was significantly dwarfed by Sydney's presence and my jaw dropped open as my gaze swept her body appreciatively. She was standing in the grass before me, barefoot, wearing a simple white sundress that fell to about her knees and was made of thin gauzy material, with an elegant yet simple floral design imprinted on the fabric. I recognized this dress, somewhere in the back of my mind. And then it hit me. This was a dress I had admired in the window of a store located in a shopping plaza in Palm Springs...a dress that I had wanted to get Sydney for her birthday, but I lacked the funds to purchase it at the time. Apparently, my mind felt the need to make up for it by manufacturing a dream of Sydney wearing it. Regardless of spirit's intentions here, I certainly appreciated the gesture.
Golden sunlight bathed her, giving her an almost luminous glow, and a warm summer breeze stirred, whipping some unruly strands of hair around her face. Beaming at me, Sydney reached up and pushed those strands back, holding her hair with one hand and smiling broadly at me. My God, that smile...that beautiful smile of hers. I lived for that smile. It had been so long since I had seen it, and only now did I realize just how much I missed it. God, I missed it—I missed her—so much.
"Adrian," she spoke at last, regarding me now with a small, knowing smile. There was amusement and I could've worn almost a mischievous glint hidden in the depths of her eyes, like she knew something I didn't. "You look good. Amazing, even."
Glancing down curiously, I saw that I was wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of loose khaki shorts that were nice and could have been dressy, but were also quite comfortable. My feet were also bare. I then looked back up and dared to look around us, half expecting a raid of Alchemists to come and tear her away from me once again.
"Sage," I murmured, the mere sound of my nickname for her causing me utmost agony. "I'm gonna take a wild guess and said you picked out these shorts for me, considering your khaki fetish."
She smiled at me again, a small, simple smile. "I did no such thing," she countered. "This is your mind, Adrian. And this is your dream. I have no part in it—no control over anything that happens here. I suppose you're just projecting me into every aspect of your life in any way you can in order to hold on to my memory longer."
"That's a plausible theory," I relented, still looking around curiously, unsure of what to expect here. This wasn't like any other spirit dream I had ever experienced...but there was something strange about it. It certainly had all the makings of a spirit dream and gave off a similar vibe. I definitely knew spirit was playing the key role here, but I just didn't understand what my role was in this particular dream. Was it just like any other dream, a manifestation of my deepest desires...or was it something much, much more than that?
"Yes," Sydney said abruptly, making my musings come to a halt as I turned and looked at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
"What?" I asked, when she didn't elaborate.
"Yes, this is real," she assured me, but being that she was some dream-version of Sydney created in my mind's eye, I didn't find her words too reassuring.
"It is?" I spoke the words doubtfully, alternating between looking directly at her and at my surroundings, trying to find the connection. "I see. And how's that now?"
She offered me another reassuring smile and took a step towards me. And then another. And another. Until suddenly, she was standing right in front of me and she had to tilt her head back slightly in order to look me square in the eye. "Well..." She frowned as she reconsidered her words. "It's real in its own sense. Obviously it's not real and happening at this very moment out in the real world, but it's real in that, I'm real. I am Sydney—your Sydney...three years from now."
Startled, I took a step back, and her smile shifted, becoming compassionate and she reached out to touch me, but I unconsciously took another step back before her hand could actually make contact. "What..." I swallowed and felt my throat tighten with unexpressed emotion. "...what are you saying?" I managed to say, after about an entire minute had passed. "How is this possible?"
She regarded me with a dry, knowing look—like the ones I used to give her when she had missed something that should've been oh, so obvious and right there in her face. "Are you seriously asking that question?" she asked flatly. "After all you've seen and all you know, you're really going to ask how this is possible, when you, yourself are the very embodiment of the impossible?"
"Fair enough," I said, still a little weirded out. "So...I get to buy you the dress, apparently, then?"
A reminiscent smile crossed her lips as she reached down and smoothed out her skirt, her eyes momentarily flitting down to admire the dress and some past memory that I apparently wasn't in on yet. "That...is neither here nor there, I'm afraid. That's not why I'm here."
I blinked, confused. "You mean you're actually here for a reason, and spirit's not just messing with me again?"
"No, spirit's not messing with you," she hastily assured me. "It's really me here with you."
"And the how of that is...?" I urged, still not accepting this as her being real.
"Let's just say a lot more perks of spirit are going to be realized later on down the road," she said, her voice filled with implications. "You can tap into these, I guess, visions, you can call them. Visions that alert you to impending danger or important details about the past that you need to know. Visions that prepare you for what is to come."
"I see," I said, relaxing only slightly at her explanation of what still seemed too insane for me to comprehend. "And what exactly is the cost of these visions, huh? What toll do they take on me? I mean, am I in the fetal position, a drooling mess on the floor , three years down the line just because I sent you here to tell me all this?"
"No," she sighed happily and took a step towards me, hesitating in doing so this time. "You aren't. We've found a way to keep those nasty side effects under control and let you keep touching the magic."
"And that way is...?" I prompted, still a little uneasy as to this little interaction of ours.
"Not important," she said, almost dismissively. "At least not right now. You'll learn what you need to know when the time is right. But for right now, I'm here to help you."
"Help me, how?" I asked, my brows knitting together in confusion.
She reached out and took my face in her hands, her penetrating gaze burning into me and offering all the comfort and love and solace in the world. "I'm here to help you bounce back from this," she told me. "Spirit has really done a number on you, considering you used three people's spirit magic all at the same time...and I'm going to help you come back from that."
"This is all in my head," I pointed out. "How are you going to help me, when chances are, you're probably just another delusion? A hallucination my mind has cooked up to help me cope with losing you?"
"Adrian," she said, sounding a little hurt by my lack of faith in her. "I am real. I'm not just some figment of your imagination, and I can prove it to you." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes momentarily before continuing on. "You are going to save me from the Alchemists." My heart nearly leapt for joy with those words, until I remembered that, again, this was probably just wishful thinking talking. "We're going to flee to Italy, disguised by your spirit, and evade the Alchemists without any problems. We live in a small town where no Alchemists are stationed nearby, and there are several guardians living within a twenty five mile radius in case somebody does show up to help protect us. Lissa's orders. That's for the first two years, anyway.
"And then we manage to slink back to Court unnoticed, and we live there with our friends," she continued. "Alchemists never come there—they have no reason to—and if they ever did or needed to, Lissa would know well in advance, so she'd make the necessary accommodations to have us removed temporarily until it was safe to return. And if any surprise visits emerge, well, we have Abe to do damage control and cover any last-minute rescues. That's Rose's orders." She smiled fondly at the mention of Rose, and I could only imagine the conversation Rose would've had with her notorious, vampire mobster father to get him to agree to this.
"We take care of each other," she added. "And we fight through anything that stands in our way."
"Super," I remarked dryly, resisting the urge to start demanding answers right here and now. "And how do I pull off this heroic rescue of mine, if you don't mind me asking? Because right now, I am neck deep in frustration, self-pity, and no answers, and frankly, I have no idea how to escape any of it."
"Sorry," she said apologetically. "I can only reveal so much...and I can't give that away. You have to figure that out on your own."
"Naturally," I growled. "That's just...awesome." I turned my back on her, glaring angrily off into space and seething with all these problems that I had no idea how to solve.
"You don't believe me?" She sounded so hurt again, that it felt like someone had plunged a dagger into my gut.
"It's not you I don't believe," I returned. "It's this fucked-up mind of mine that tends to run off on a whim at a moment's notice. My mind isn't the most reliable source, especially considering the fact that I practically drowned myself in spirit just moments ago. So I know I'm still recovering from that, and that means I can't trust anything that is said or done in this...whatever the hell this is. Dream or vision or whatever. I'm like the schizophrenic that claims to see the ghost of Elvis everywhere he goes, only instead of Elvis, I see my girlfriend...because I feel guilty that I couldn't save you. I feel responsible for what happened to you, and this is just my mind's way of coping with that guilt. I can't be sure that you're real. I don't know the difference between reality and...not-reality anymore. I don't know! And that kills me. It kills me because I don't know that you're really here. I don't know that you're really my girlfriend, and I don't know how I'm supposed to save you. I don't know what's real here! Do you understand that?"
"Adrian," she murmured my name, and when I turned back around to face her, she lurched forward and captured my lips in a kiss. I instinctively returned it, knowing no other reaction when it came to kissing the woman I loved—whether she was just a figment of my imagination or the real deal. It didn't seem to matter in this moment. All that mattered was that she was here, in my arms, again, and all was right with the world. Everything was—
"Whoa!" I broke the kiss abruptly, startled, and looked at her, wide-eyed and gasping. She had just done something magnificent with her tongue, a move that only I knew. All my talents and skills in the bedroom were all wrapped up in this one move, that one tiny flick of the tongue that would break any woman. That one maneuver had been known to make nations fall to their knees. That one maneuver is what made the name Adrian Ivashkov a legend still spoken on the lips of many women to this day.
It was truly remarkable, but the thing was...I hadn't used it on Sydney yet. I'd had no reason to. The bedroom had been plenty satisfying enough—and then some—without me needing to urge her to up her game. "What the hell was that?!" I demanded.
Her smirk turned into something more suggestive, and she leaned her body into mine, running her fingertips along my arms. "Something real," she said matter-of-factly. "Something that you taught me...after you rescued me from the Alchemists," she spoke those last words triumphantly, knowing that they would prove her point for her.
My God. This wasn't...that is, this couldn't be...how could this be—? Tears started brimming my eyes, and I didn't hold back this time. Pain distorted my features as I took every inch of her in and memorized every last detail about her. "S-Sydney?" I stammered.
She nodded and I noticed she was starting to tear up as well. "I told you, it's me. And even though it's been three years, it still kills me to see you like this, you know that?"
I didn't give her the chance to offer up any more words; instead, I wrapped her in my fierce embrace and our lips met once more in another, more passionate kiss. I could hardly dare to believe it, but it seemed to be real. There's no way even spirit would've been powerful enough to create something as powerful and all-encompassing as this, was there?
I hoisted Sydney up into my arms with ease, lifting her up so that her head was actually a couple inches above mine and I actually had to tilt my head back in order to keep kissing her. Her arms wrapped tightly around my neck, and I spun her around in delight, kissing her all the while. We stood there kissing for a long time, having no reason to break away, but when we finally did break the seemingly endless kiss, our lips and forehead were still touching. She looked down at me and smiled, her fingertips lightly brushing the skin at the nape of my neck, and she bit her lower lip in a suggestive way that made me want to throw her to the ground and have my way with her all over again. But I couldn't, sadly. Not yet.
"So..." I murmured, my voice low and guttural. "...you're here. And kissing me. Does that mean you're, like, cheating on three years from now me? Does future me need to come back and kick my ass or something?"
She chuckled. "Something tells me he'd be quite understanding of the situation," she mused. "I think he'll be all right with it, all things considered. After all, you need me, right?"
I nodded and closed my eyes, overwhelmed with the realization that she was real and she was here, even if it was just in my head. "I always need you."
She started running her fingers through my hair, and I didn't even care about the fact that she was messing it up. Hell, I didn't care about anything except her touching me. That was all that mattered. "That's what three years from now you says too. He's always going on and on about how he's always gonna need me."
"Sounds like future me ain't so bad," I noted, quite pleased that I apparently turn out semi-decent, considering the train wreck I had been before Sydney.
"Present you isn't so bad either," she said wryly, with a small smirk twitching at her lips—one that could've come straight out of my playbook. Oh, yeah, I clearly teach her remarkably well, I thought smugly, only to have that thought vanish and instantly be replaced with the realization that I didn't have to teach her a damn thing. This was all her. She never needed me to make her amazing; she did that just fine all on her own.
"Adrian..." My name sounded off in the distance, distorted and slurred. I glanced around, confused, looking for the source of it.
"Did you say that?" I asked Sydney, earning a head shake from her.
"No," she admitted, "but that is my cue to go. Or rather, that's your cue to go. Me, I'll always be here...lingering in the back of your mind, lending you the necessary strength to see this task through. I'll always be here for you, no matter what. Always remember that—"
"Adrian!" My name was repeated by a familiar voice, but it sounded different this time. Hard. Panicked. Frantic. Like someone was desperately trying to reach out to me, but I was too far out of their reach. "Adrian, can you hear me?! Come on, open your eyes, damn it! Talk to me! He's still not breathing. What the hell is going on? I've never seen a spirit crash this bad before..."
"Well," another, more reasonable voice answered, and I instantly recognized it as Belikov's. "He's also never attempted something this extreme with his magic before. That's bound to take its toll on him. I'm sure he'll be all right. Just keep trying to get through to him. It's only a matter of time."
"Maybe somebody should punch him," another familiar voice suggested, with a little too much amusement for my taste, if you asked me, considering the circumstances. Christian. "Rose?" he added expectantly. "Go do your thing. If that doesn't work, I don't know what the hell will."
"Christian!" Lissa's voice added in agitation. "That is not funny—"
Just then, I was ripped out of that dream—or vision or whatever—and torn back to reality, where I jerked upright, gasping and glancing around fanatically, desperately hoping that Sydney would be hovering over me, looking down at me with her never-ending warmth and compassion. I should be so lucky. "Sydney!" I gasped out, looking between the familiar faces that were regarding me with concern and panic and a hint of relief that I was awake—and breathing now, apparently. "Sydney!" I repeated, and my heart sunk in despair with the realization that she wasn't here. Not anymore. Hell, she probably never was. "Oh, God..." My heart clenched in my chest, and I felt a cold sweat breaking out on my skin.
"She's not here, Adrian." Rose hovered above me and she reached forward and took me by my upper arms, leaning toward me so that she could look me square in the eye. "You know that. My God," she added, shaking her head in disbelief at what she had just witnessed. "What the hell happened to you?"
Looking around at those concerned faces, I decided to break the tension with a joke, so that they wouldn't suspect anything about my feelings for Sydney. I couldn't have anyone prying—if they knew, I know they would never help me in a million years—so I just forced my trademark smirk and fixed my knowing gaze on Lissa and Sonya. "Well," I said lightly. "I would've bet good money that I'd be the first one of us to go crazy. In fact, I'm pretty sure I placed that bet quite some time ago with one of you, didn't I? I can't remember who exactly, but I think one of you owes me money. Pay up."
"Adrian, you are not crazy," Lissa said obstinately, voice hard and determined.
"Really?" I challenged. "Because I don't see you or Sonya lying on the floor." And just then, I saw the opportunity for another joke. "And I told you beforehand that we should've moved that damn coffee table. I nearly cracked my skull hitting that thing after I collapsed. Just remember for next time." I reached up and clutched at my head to make my joke more convincing. "Seriously, still seeing stars over here."
"That's not funny," Lissa replied, looking horrified by my joke.
"Oh, come on," I teased. "It was a little funny."
"No, it wasn't," she shot back. "Adrian, you are not going crazy. Trust me, 'crazy' is cutting your wrists just to make the pain go away."
"Yeah," Sonya agreed. "Or 'crazy' is willingly turning yourself Strigoi and selling your soul over to the dark side to make the pain go away."
"Oh, yeah?" I said, still keeping that light tone. "And where exactly does indulging in copious amounts of alcohol and nicotine fall into that 'crazy' category of yours, huh? I mean, what does that make me?"
"Desperate? Pathetic?" Christian suggested, earning a sharp look from Lissa that instantly silenced him.
"That's not the healthiest, most ideal method," Sonya admitted. "But you, of all people, know that with our power—with what we can do—there is no ideal method of dealing."
"Sonya's right," Lissa agreed. "Alcohol and nicotine might not be the greatest thing to turn to, but in all reality, you were just coping with what we all cope with every single day...in the best way you knew how. And it's certainly a hell of a lot better than our coping methods were. You aren't weak, Adrian, you never were. You're strong. Probably the strongest spirit user I know. Definitely stronger than Sonya and me."
Sonya nodded her agreement. "There's no predicting what spirit will do sometimes," she said, repeating the party line we'd all been told to make us all feel better about our impending doom. "Lissa and I didn't use as much spirit as you just did, so obviously the toll is going to greater on you. We used a lot, sure, but since we were passively working our spirit in the background, it wasn't as bad for us. You, on the other hand, had the spirit magic of three people working through you...so that means you also had the bounce back of the spirit magic for three people. You essentially suffered the toll it would've taken on us...for us."
Lissa's eyes widened with the realization that Sonya was right. "Oh, my God. She's right. It makes sense. Sonya and I are fine...because you're suffering our consequences for us."
"Awesome," I muttered. "Well. Better me than you two, I guess, right?"
"Adrian!" Lissa sounded hurt by my words. "That's not true. Sonya and I are no better than you."
"Well, tell that to the rest of the Moroi world, because I don't think they're so sure," I grumbled. "After all, I'm supposed to be the good-for-nothing, do-nothing, spoiled brat, Adrian Ivashkov, right?"
"We all know that you're much more than that." Surprisingly, the reassuring words came from Dimitri this time. I turned my shocked gaze on him, waiting for further elaboration, but when he said no more, I just snorted.
"Right," I said flatly. "Good talk."
"Look, Adrian," Rose finally chimed in. "What Dimitri means to say is that you've done so much for us—so much for our people—with the use of your spirit, and others might not see that, but we do. You single-handedly manipulated spirit into the blood of a restored Strigoi in order to make a vaccine against being turned Strigoi. And the vaccine works. You did that! Had it not been for your work with spirit, we never would've had what we do now."
"No," I snapped. "Sydney did that. I might've worked the spirit mojo, but Sydney's the one that concocted the vaccine that worked. Not me."
"She might've done the final part," Rose conceded, "but she wouldn't have been able to whip up that handy concoction of hers if it hadn't been for you."
I snorted in disgust. "Rose, please. Please just...stop sticking up for me. Stop trying to turn me into some kind of hero." She blinked once, confused by my words. "I am not the hero of this story...Sydney is. Sydney's the one that saved our race from decimation; Sydney's the one that gave us a snowball's chance against the Strigoi. And now, she's locked away. Imprisoned by her own people for a crime she didn't commit. And you people won't do a damn thing to help her. Sound familiar?"
Rose flinched at that, and I took great pleasure in seeing her looked pained by my words and the implications they represented. "Oh, no wait," I corrected myself. "You at least had people that helped you. Sydney has no one. No one that's willing to do what's right and stand up for her in a world gone wrong. No one but me. And I can't save her alone. Some hero I am, huh? I can't even save the woman that I— " I cut myself off abruptly before I said something that I would come to regret later. I knew it was too late, though. I had sold myself out. I couldn't tell if anyone read into the implications of my words, though, because Rose immediately steered the conversation in a different direction—notorious for avoiding awkward topics, herself.
"What did you see?" she asked at last, after several moments had passed without a word from anyone. "In your dream," she clarified to my questioning gaze. Which dream, I thought bitterly. "What did you see? Did you get through to her? Did you see Sydney?"
"I saw her," I said tonelessly, knowing that if I allowed myself to express any emotion whatsoever, I'd probably break down and wind up pouring my heart out to these people. These people that would never understand how I could possibly love a human—an Alchemist, at that—and how said Alchemist could return that love when she was taught her entire life to be completely disgusted and repulsed by what I am.
"How's she holding up?" Rose asked, and I heard the genuine concern in her voice. She really did care about Sydney and saw her as a friend. Looking in her eyes, I could see how much it killed her to have to sit this one out...but she just couldn't stand the repercussions that a rebellion of this magnitude would bring down upon Lissa and the Moroi nation altogether. "Is she okay?"
"Define 'okay'," I muttered bitterly, unable to help the hopeless desperation that laced my words. "They're keeping her locked in a freezing cold holding cell, naked. She said that they destroyed her clothes and all her possessions when they brought her in because, you know, they were 'tainted'. And somehow, they think that keeping her naked in subarctic temperatures are going to 'purge her soul of the darkness' somehow. They're also starving her—they won't give her any food until she admits her wrongdoings, which she refuses to do because she hasn't done anything wrong. The only sustenance they give her is water, which of course is drugged. They go on and on, telling her to admit she's sinned and that she wants to be better and then they'll give her food and clothes and warm her up...but she's about as stubborn as you are, Rose, though you never would've guessed it. She's never going to give into them, and they're just sitting back and starving her until they get what they want out of her. But they're never going to get it. Not in a million years."
Rose's face darkened as I went on, describing in more detail what Sydney was going through—everything her own people were putting her through to get back at her for getting in good with our people—and I saw the realization smack her in the face. Rose might have been wrongfully imprisoned by her own people for a crime she didn't commit, but she was never treated that badly. Hell, even Victor Dashkov was treated better than that after he had abducted and tortured Lissa to get her to heal him! He at least had sustenance and some comforts. For example, he was never held in a damn freezer.
"Adrian..." Lissa began awkwardly, shaking her head in disbelief at me, while Rose silently seethed over what the Alchemists were doing to Sydney. "My God," she murmured, and I could see how much it pained even her to have to sit back passively on this one. Sydney might not have been Lissa's friend like she was Rose's, but Lissa had a good heart, and she couldn't stand the thought of anyone living in such inexplicable conditions. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "That's awful; truly, it is. I wish...desperately that there was more I could do for you."
"Save me the repeat chorus line," I snapped. "I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear any of it. I'm sick of all the excuses, of all this talk about right and wrong. You people sure seem quick to forget everything Sydney has done for us. We wouldn't have the Strigoi vaccine if it wasn't for her. Rose, you never would've found Belikov in Russia if it weren't for her. She took you to his family; she helped you, guiding you through Russia when you had no one. You had nothing left. And she was a friend to you. And then she helped you escape when you were an accused murderer, because she knew, in her heart, that you never could've done something like that. She gave up everything she had ever known and hit the road with you two, hauling your sorry asses across the nation and keeping the guardians off your ass in the process. She got herself captured and brought to the Moroi Court—a place she was terrified of—so that you could get away. Sydney really cares about you—about all of you—and yet, here you sit on your asses, letting her rot away in that godforsaken place!
"And you know her. You know how she is," I reminded her, my voice growing more frantic with every word I spoke. "She's probably reduced to 98 pounds of nothing already. They won't feed her anything; it's been three weeks. It's only a matter of time before she starves to death. Couple of days, if that. Can you really live with that hanging over your head, after everything she did for you?"
Rose gulped and remained quiet, silently weighing her options as she stared off into space. Mikhail and Christian, too, remained silent, not moving from their positions since this conversation started. Christian couldn't offer much more than a sarcastic comments, and those didn't do us any good right now, and he knew it. So he sat back and let the others battle it out. Dimitri stood back and let Rose and Lissa make the final decision here. I knew that whatever Rose decided, he would be on board with and he would back her up...but really, the final decision here rested in Lissa's hands. If she gave the go-ahead for this mission, even if she didn't officially authorize it, she would be implicated in the break-in, particularly when the Queen of the Moroi's designated guardian left her side and stormed into an Alchemist compound, breaking down doors and kicking ass to break out someone who was seen as a "sinner".
But me? I couldn't get caught up in the logistics and the politics of it all. I loved Sydney, and that's all there was to it. There was no logic or reason when it came to love. I was going to get her the hell out of there—one way or another...with or without their help. I'd use compulsion if I had to. Whatever it took.
In the midst of it all, my gaze drifted over and landed on Sonya—the only one here who knew about my feelings for Sydney—and she regarded me knowingly with a look of utmost pity and sorrow and compassion. She knew how difficult this was for me, but she also knew that there was no easy answer here. We would be risking the entire Moroi future on this mission, for one life. For one person. For Sydney. Was it really worth it? In my eyes, absolutely. There was no question about it. But for everyone else...they couldn't take the chance for one person. Even if that person was the love of my life. Thinking back on Rose's earlier words, I realized they were true. This group of people really would do anything in the world for me, but this was too much. This was crossing the line, as far as they were concerned. And this was the one thing they couldn't do—the one thing they couldn't give me, no matter how badly they wanted to.
It was then that I realized Sonya wasn't the only one that knew about my feelings for Sydney. In that moment, Lissa took a step forward, standing directly before me—all prepared to turn me down again—but then, she stopped suddenly, and something shifted in her expression as she stared at me. I realized too late that she was studying my aura and she could read my feelings for Sydney as clear as day.
Caught off guard, she took a step back, nearly staggering into Christian in her shock. "Oh, my God," she breathed, bringing a trembling hand up to cover her mouth. "How did I not see it before?" She turned on Sonya then. "You knew...didn't you? You knew all along. How could you not tell me this? How...?" She then turned back to me. "How did this happen?"
I shut my eyes and hung my head in regret. Damn it. I knew I should've hid my feelings better. "Can we please skip the whole, 'Oh, my God, how can you love a human?!That's sick and wrong and twisted!' speech?" I asked, and even I heard the pleading desperation in my own voice. I couldn't bear to have my friends look at me in disgust, not after everything I had been through.
"Wait, you love a human?" Rose asked, those startling words snapping her out of her musings. Since she was no longer bonded to Lissa, she couldn't read my aura through Lissa's mind anymore. If she had been, something tells me that she would've been the one to call me out on this atrocious behavior of mine. It didn't even occur to Rose that it was Sydney that Lissa was referring to.
"Look, I've been through hell these past few weeks—only to take another run-through now of my own free will here," I pointed out, ignoring Rose's words altogether. "I don't have the time or energy to argue about this right now. I know that you guys think that me loving Sydney is wrong—"
"You love Sydney?!" Rose exclaimed, shocked and appalled by the words that left her lips, not daring to believe them herself.
"And quite frankly," I continued, in a hard voice, "I don't care. I don't give a rat's ass what you people think. I never have. And whether you like it or not, I love Sydney, and yes, that's why I'm doing this. I can't stand by and watch the woman I love suffer so tremendously—and possibly be killed—when she has done nothing wrong. As you well recall," I added pointedly to Rose, who quickly averted her gaze and shifted her weight uncomfortably at the reference to the brief yet disastrous time we had spent dating.
"So yes," I declared boldly, not cowering away from these people or hiding the truth any longer. These people were my friends, and if they couldn't handle my choice of girlfriend, well, they could all just line up to kiss my ass for all I cared. This wasn't about them. This was about Sydney and me. "I love Sydney, and that's why I'm doing all of this."
"Was it..." Rose began awkwardly, finding her voice again after several long moments of uncomfortable silence. "Was it mutual?" she asked simply, though I knew that she was probably dying to explode and unleash a whole new can whoop-ass on me for falling for a human and breaking the taboo of both our races.
"Yes," I said, narrowing my eyes at her accusingly, since I knew exactly what she was thinking and what she really wanted to say to me. "It was mutual. We were in love...and they took her away for falling in love with a monster like me." I nodded my head slightly in mocking agreement, like I could see exactly why the Alchemists would see fit to do such a thing.
"How...how could you let that happen, Adrian?" Rose demanded, finally ready to unleash that Rose Hathaway spiel of self-righteousness on me.
"Are you frigging kidding me?" I shot back. "You're really going to sit here and lecture me on forbidden romances!? You, of all people! You fell in love with your mentor while you were underage and still his student—in high school, of all places," I pointed out in case she had forgotten that little fact. "Guardians falling in love is frowned upon in the first place, but while you're in high school—while you are still his student...that's not just frowned upon. And you know it. And I kept my mouth shut back then for your sake, because I knew what it meant to you, and I didn't want to get you guys in trouble by any means. But I could've gone to someone at any time, and you know it. I could've gotten Belikov fired, I could've gotten you kicked out of school, I could've—"
"Adrian," Dimitri interjected at last, taking a step forward and reluctantly placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Rose didn't mean it like that. I know she still cares about you, and if Sydney makes you happy, then of course we want you to be together. She would never wish misery or unhappiness upon you; none of us would. It comes as a bit of a shock to us, yes, just because Moroi and human relationships have been...stopped for quite some time now, and yes, some people might look down on you and judge you for it...but you have to know that we never would judge you for something like that." His eyes flicked over to Rose with his next words and something shifted in his expression, the tiniest hint of a smile playing at his lips. "You don't pick who you fall in love with. That's not the way it works. And sometimes...that means falling in love with someone, even when all voices of logic and reason dictate that it's wrong. But you can't help it. You love them anyway, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Some things in life we can control. Love...isn't one of them."
I stared in amazement that Dimitri was the one coming to my rescue here, considering our rocky history with one another. I was also amazed because I think that was quite possibly the most I had ever heard him speak—at least directly to me, anyway. Normally, he tended to steer clear of me, ever since the incident with Rose, probably out of guilt, due to his boy scout nature. He knew he had hurt me, and he didn't wanna make matters worse by interacting with me and scrounging up bad memories. He had apologized to me time and time again, and I knew he never meant to hurt me. Neither he nor Rose did. It just...kind of happened. And frankly, I was over it. It happened, and it was done. But regardless, that didn't mean he and I were ready to climb aboard the BFF train just yet.
I exhaled shakily, not really sure how to respond to his little impromptu speech. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful that he was coming to my rescue and defending my relationship with Sydney here, even though I knew that he couldn't have approved of it any more than Rose did. But hell, what was I supposed to do here?
"Thanks," I said finally, shifting my weight uncomfortably under his scrutiny. "I, uh...appreciate that."
Dimitri nodded in acknowledgment to me and then snapped right back into guardian mode, scanning the room for any potential danger, even though I knew that no one had entered the room since we began this little get-together here.
"If you think about it," I began, addressing both Rose and Lissa now, since they apparently were the decision makers of this particular mission, "you dhampirs never would've existed had it not been for relationships like mine and Sydney's. We never would've had guardians; you either would've been born to a Moroi woman and just been full-blooded Moroi like the rest of us...or you never would've existed at all. It might be easy for you people to forget the ways of the past and say it's wrong and we don't do that anymore...but it's not that simple. Because my life...nothing has ever been more right than being with Sydney. She might be human, but come on, are you really gonna be a bunch of bigoted racists and say it's wrong just because a centuries-old tradition says it is?! The books also say that you can't hold the throne anymore if something were to happen to Jill, God forbid. They were going to deny you your spot on the council because we thought you were the last Dragomir. How was any of that fair? And how is it fair that Sydney and I are denied what come so easily to you people...just because of what we are?"
"He's right," Lissa conceded at long last, turning her knowing gaze on Rose. "You know he is. We can't hold it against him based on some thousand year old tradition saying it's wrong for humans and Moroi to be together."
They held each other's gazes for a long time, and even though they no longer shared their psychic bond, I could almost imagine they did. I think Rose had just lived in Lissa's head for so long that she knew exactly what her friend was thinking and what call she was going to make just based on the information given.
"Are you sure, Liss?" Rose asked, waiting for Lissa to give the go-ahead before making any decisions herself. Amazing, I thought. She never would've thought twice about going against my great-aunt's wishes—hell, she was notorious for doing just that—but now that her best friend was queen, the whole damn world stopped when it came to Lissa's decisions.
Lissa didn't give her consent out loud, but shortly thereafter, Rose gave a curt nod and turned back to me. "Okay," she said boldly, and I knew in that moment, once she agreed to take on the task, that she was going to follow through with it. "Count me in."
"Me too," Dimitri added, not that that was really any surprise. If Rose was walking into danger, you could pretty much guarantee that Belikov would be right behind her...or probably right in front of her, if he gets his way.
"If you want," Mikhail suddenly spoke up, startling all of us, "I'd be willing to help in any way I can as well. I know that Sydney means a lot to Sonya, and I don't like the idea of anyone suffering so horrifically, regardless."
I nodded my thanks, and Rose chimed in to answer him. "That'd be great, Mikhail," she said. "Thank you."
"So, Liss, do I get to go on this mission?" Christian asked, almost enthusiastically, and I could only imagine how eager he was to set some Alchemists on fire for what they were doing to Sydney.
"No!" Lissa, Dimitri, and Rose all shouted at the same time.
"Absolutely not," Dimitri added, and the hard look in his eyes reminded me that he was Christian's guardian. I had nearly forgotten about that. "No other Moroi will be brought into this mission. It's too dangerous. We can't have anything happening to you."
"Nothing will happen!" Christian scoffed. "I'll just incinerate anyone that tries to touch me, problem solved. And you can't deny that having me there sure would make this raid of yours a hell of a lot easier. I could provide one hell of a distraction while you run in there and bust her out—"
"No!" Lissa spoke now. "Absolutely not, Christian. Are you out of your mind? You are my boyfriend—everyone knows who you are! If those Alchemists see you and it gets back to any of the superiors, then they will know...they'll know that this was my doing. That I gave the okay for a bunch of guardians to tear in there and break one of their prisoners out. It's bad enough that my personal guardian will be there, along with yours. That'll be telling enough all on its own, and we can't risk anything happening to you."
"But I—"
"Christian!" Rose interjected now. "The answer is no. Let it go. We've got this without you. Although, I assure you, your continued support is greatly appreciated."
Christian just rolled his eyes and let out an irritated sigh. "Damn," he swore, crossing his arms bitterly across his chest.
"All right..." Rose turned to me now. "So, where do we start?"
"You might wanna start by calling Daddy, Rose," I suggested. "Something tells me that we could use a couple of those shady connections of his right about now."