Chapter 10, you guys. Read; enjoy. It's short, but you can deal. I'm going through a bit of a crap time with my best friend, who is now refusing to speak to me... so, I have a bit of an excuse for it, I guess.

I woke late the next morning, to a note that had been stuck on my dresser. Janine Hathaway's italic scrawl read:

Rose,
The security checks — all of them — came back as negative. No one got onto campus.
I've been called back out to Europe, so you won't see me around for a while.
JH.

I shook my head, and sighed. Sure, whatever. I was fine with it. I got up, showered, enjoying the luxuries of the ensuite bathroom, and then dared to venture out into the corridor. It was completely empty, save for a Moroi man, standing, staring at my door. I started when I saw him.

"Can I help you?" I asked confusedly.

"Valik asked me to escort you down to breakfast, Miss. Hathaway." He glanced at his watch. "Although at this point, you might as well skip breakfast and just have lunch with everyone else."

"Escort? I don't need an escort." The Moroi waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

"Valik's orders." Huffing, I slammed the door, and strode down the corridor. I met a dead end. I thought I heard the Moroi snicker.

"This way, then, Miss. Hathaway."

Today was going to be a long day.

*

The Moroi guy was called Filipp, he told me as we walked down the canteen. I couldn't help but feel slightly unnerved by the fact that he kept shooting me strange looks for the whole trip down there, but I just ignored it.

I ignored it, that is, until we got to the canteen itself. I'd heard the buzzing of a hundred conversations from right down the hallway. When I entered, everything fell dead silent.

I shifted and cleared my throat awkwardly. Every face in the room had turned in my direction, and was now staring at me. I wanted to die; turned to leave the room. Steady hands on my shoulders prevented this, though, and steered me in, and over to where Valik was sitting with a group of Guardians and Moroi.

I sat down, and stared at the wood table. Slowly, conversations began to resume. The noise in the hall grew to what it had been.

"Rose?" Valik said. "Don't you want to get some food?" I shook my head.

"Not hungry." Valik sighed.

"So, what? People giving you a strange look after you falsely claimed to see a Strigoi means that you're going to refuse to eat?" I glared at him.

"Yep. Exactly that."

"Stop being so childish, Rose."

"I'm not." He sighed. One of the Guardians across the table called his name and yelled something at him in Russian. I wasn't sure what, but Dimitri's name had been said. Valik tensed up; the other Guardians had all stopped and were staring.

"Rose, go and eat with Anton," he told me, gesturing vaguely towards the opposite end of the hall. I scanned it and saw Anton buried in a book at his own table at the back. I wasn't particularly interested, though, and I wanted to know what was going on. "Now," he added, finally looking towards me and fixing me with a pissed off glare.

Wordlessly I got to my feet and made my way to the back of the hall. Anton didn't seem to notice me approaching his table, nor that I had sat down opposite him, fuming. He eventually glanced up, and started. Then he relaxed.

"Oh, it's you," he said warily, and looked back down at his book.

"It's me. What have the Guardians been saying about me?" He paused, looked up at the ceiling, looked back down at his book, sighed and looked at me. Then he closed it and put it to one side.

"What do you mean?" he asked. I explained about the Guardian up at the table. He frowned, then rubbed his neck tiredly. "Any idea what he said?"

"No. I don't speak your language. I don't hear anything apart from people spewing this complete gibberish and it's really getting to me." I snapped. Anton rolled his eyes.

"Rose, you came to Russia. You can't really expect people to suddenly change how they normally are just because one person that doesn't speak Russian is now staying here for however long." I huffed, but he ignored me and continued. "As for the rumours... they're not really anything. Well some of them are, but for the most part it's just that you're a bit delusional because you're still trying to cope with Dimitri's death."

"And the rumours that aren't nothing?"

"They... there have been rumours circulating that you and Dimitri were intimate. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, I guess. But you're training to be a Guardian, and Dimitri was already a Guardian. And then there's the age gap. And the fact that you're both Guardian dhampirs and yet... well, you know how people react when dhampirs fall for one another. You know it never goes down well."

I bit back my anger.

"I see," I said plainly. I stood up to leave, but Anton called out, making me stop. "What?" I asked.

"They haven't told you, yet?"

"Told me what?"

"Valik doesn't want you on your own at any point. They've assigned day and night escorts for you. And..." I groaned inwardly.

"And you're my day escort," I finished.

"Damn, Rose. Don't act so thrilled; you're embarrassing me." He looked quite upset. "I'm not that bad. What have I done to make you hate me?"

"Nothing... it's just..." he sighed and kicked the chair opposite him out; a gesture telling me to sit back down. I did.

"Never mind. Just shut up." He picked up his book, and carried on reading.

You know, it's really depressing how few reviews I get, for the traffic that I see on this story. It saddens me.