Warning: Things are getting dark. Nothing that wasn't in the books, but there is cutting in this chapter. Rose has a tough road ahead of her. Thanks for coming along for the trip so far. Your reviews have been amazing.

ROSE

I scrunched up in the corner of the SUV, watching the landscape whiz past the window. Dimitri was driving and Lissa was sitting beside kept turning around to look at me, but I kept my face turned to the outside. I knew what I would see if I looked at her. Relief to have me back, joy that I was me again, that unconditional love that had always flowed between us. All things that I didn't deserve.

Sonya was sitting beside me. She hadn't said a word the entire trip, which I was grateful for. I suppose if anyone understood what I felt then, she did. But I didn't deserve understanding either. I thought of my mother's stake in my back. That's what I deserved. If only she'd aimed just a little higher. Of course, she hadn't meant to kill me. Janine Hathaway would never miss like that. I didn't know if I'd ever forgive her for that.

When we got to Court I waited for the car to empty before I started to climb out. Lissa was watching me with tears in her eyes. She started to speak, but didn't seem to know what to say. Christian took her hand and tugged her away gently.

Dimitri was waiting for me, but I turned and walked the other direction. I didn't know where I was going, exactly, I just wanted to walk. He followed behind me, silently keeping pace. I covered most of the grounds before I went back to our apartment. Night was just ending, bedtime for us nocturnal creatures.

Dimitri shrugged out of his duster and walked into our bedroom. I went to our east window, hugging myself tight as I watched the horizon Dimitri stepped back into the doorway, I spoke without turning.

"Do you know how many I killed?"

"No," he answered quietly.

"I kept track." I pulled out my phone, with its running tally of my victims. "If I killed more than Derek, the Master was going to let me kill Lissa. It was all a game." I scrolled through my list. "Twelve humans in one week. Then I got bored. But Moroi are harder to find. I only found five of them. Five killed in four days. Two royals."

I leaned my forehead against the glass. "I didn't count guardians. They weren't worth any points. Just obstacles to get through. Just dhampirs."

Dimitri stepped up and laid his hands on my shoulders. I tried to shrug him off, but he held on tight. "It wasn't you, Roza." He leaned down and kissed the back of my head. "I know it doesn't feel like that now, but it wasn't."

I didn't answer him. Because it didn't really matter if it was me or not. Not when I had the voices and faces of my victims swimming in my head.

He gave me a gentle tug backwards. "Come to bed."

I pulled back. "You go ahead. I want to watch the sunrise."

He didn't go. Together we stood and watched the dawn break.

My days fell into a rhythm. I almost even managed to convince myself that it was a comfortable one. I got used to avoiding eye contact with everyone. I got used to watching over Lissa without cracking jokes. I got used to haunting the lab where Sonya experimented with my blood. I even got used to sleeping on the opposite side of the bed from Dimitri since I wouldn't let him touch me.

I don't know if I would have been able to keep myself away from Dimtri's arms for long, but I wasn't actually spending that much time in our bed. I was having horrible nightmares, where I relived all my kills. The worst ones, though, weren't memories. They were nightmares of me killing my friends, laughing as they stared up at me with empty eyes and slack faces.

I took to roaming around Court during the day. I enjoyed the sunshine, even more than I had before I was Strigoi. As an added bonus, almost everyone else was sleeping, so there were less people for me to avoid.

Of course, there was no hiding my condition. I was losing weight, and since the few hours of sleep I managed to snag usually ended with the nightmares, I constantly looked and felt exhausted. Nathan removed me from Lissa's protection detail, since I was never alert enough to fulfill my duties. I didn't argue with him. Adrian had healed his arm before we'd even left the motel, but I still couldn't look him in the eye.

Sonya was actually the person I was most comfortable with these days. I barely said anything to her and she didn't push. She never spoke to me unless I spoke first, just let me watch her work. I had no clue what she was doing, either with biology or magic, but I took comfort from the fact that she was doing something. This was my redemption, the one good thing that could possibly come out of my time as a Strigoi.

And then that hope was ripped from me. Adrian and Sonya were bent over a vial of my blood while Sydney worked with a microscope at another table. I wasn't trying to follow their conversation, I was just glad that Sonya had convinced the other two to let me sit quietly in the corner and watch. But even I understood giving up.

"I don't know what else to try." Sonya slipped off her gloves and sat back. "You might as well use it all to make as much ink as you can, Sydney. It's obvious enough what's different about Rose's blood, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to duplicate it."

None of them looked at me. Apparently I'd become such a fixture here they'd forgotten I was watching. I slid out of the room like a ghost, my last hope of redemption gone. Doomed to wander like a lost spirit forever.

Somehow I wound up in Lissa's rooms. She wasn't there, but I stayed. I aimlessly picked through her things, studying her clothes, her books, her shoes. Almost like a normal college student. But we'd never been normal, even for vampires. And we never would be.

In her bathroom I found razor blades. I took one out and sat down on the floor with it, turning it in my fingers. Slowly, curiously, I drew it across my arm and watched the thin red line bead up in its wake. I'd never understood Lissa's cutting, but it almost made sense now. My head was just too full and loud and confusing these days. And my body felt cold and numb. That thin red line brought pain, but it was warm and real in a way that nothing else in my life was.

I drew a second line, a little deeper this time. I watched my blood flow out. No reason to keep it inside me. It was worthless. It was supposed to by my salvation, but it had failed me. I had failed everyone.