"She's thinking about coming back, but she doesn't want to let Mason down," Adrian mumbled.
"Thinking about it?!" Dimitri asked in shock. That she might choose not to come back hadn't seriously crossed his mind. He was suddenly confronted with the very real prospect of a life without his Roza – and the possibility scared the hell out of him.
"Dimitri, you need to think how bad her mental state must have been that she even considered suicide. That's not going to pass just because you've come back."
They sat in silence for a while.
"I wish she'd known me before," he said, more to himself than Adrian. "If she'd seen me then, she'd know how much I need her. How much she's changed me. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think I started to fall in love with her from the very first day; when I found she and the Princess in Portland. She tried to fight me to protect Lissa. She hadn't trained for two years, and it was a hopeless task, but she tried anyway. She was so fierce and brave. I admired that about her. When we got back to the Academy, they all looked at her, but none of them really saw her."
"And you did?" Adrian asked. It was hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic.
Dimitri shrugged. "I saw more than they did. Enough for me to agree to mentor her."
"Oh, I'm sure that was a hardship… Hot and sweaty in skintight workout clothes." There was no mistaking Adrian's sarcasm this time.
"It wasn't like that."
Adrian raised an eyebrow in contradiction.
"It wasn't," Dimitri maintained. "At first I just wanted to figure her out. Help her if I could. She seemed so tough; that she didn't care what people thought or said about her, but underneath I could see it hurt her and she wanted to prove them wrong. Then I got to know her, and slowly we learned to trust each other, and she opened up to me. It was two steps forward, one step back, though. She'd get me so frustrated!"
"Oh I bet," Adrian said salaciously, the double entendre not able to be misinterpreted.
Dimitri smiled wryly. "Yeah, well, there was that, too," he admitted, blushing a little.
"It must have been a relief when you knew she felt the same way?"
"No. It made it a hundred times worse because we couldn't be together."
"So what changed?"
"Spokane. Tasha. You."
"Me?"
"Seeing another man interested in her. I was trying to fool myself it was just a crush, but the prospect of you, of any other man with Rose, made me see red."
"And Tasha?" Adrian asked curiously.
"Same sort of thing. Tasha made me an offer at Christmas – to be her guardian but also her lover. We could have lived out in the human world - had a family together even. It was an excellent offer, so I considered it, I really did. But no matter how I turned it over in my mind, I couldn't see myself in a relationship with anyone but Rose. I don't want a family unless it is with her."
"You really fucked this up, Belikov."
Dimitri sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "I know it," he moaned.
Rose was fascinated hearing Dimitri speak to Adrian so candidly. She'd never thought about how she'd changed Dimitri. Seeing him openly admit his feelings, and to Adrian of all people, was certainly eye-opening – there was no way he'd have done anything like that before he'd left. It was like he genuinely didn't care what people thought anymore.
"Who's there now?" Mason asked her.
"Adrian. He's not saying a lot," Rose replied.
"We should start to think about going," Mason said, looking at her carefully. "That's pretty much everyone now." He didn't say it, but he meant pretty much everyone except Dimitri. She still hadn't told him Dimitri had been there the whole time.
"I know," she said. "I'm just not quite ready yet."
"I can't wait much longer…" Mason pressed.
"Just a little bit?" Rose pleaded.
"A little longer," Mason conceded.
Back in the room Adrian and Dimitri were making small talk when a guardian knocked on the doorframe.
"Belikov? Sorry to interrupt, but it's 7 pm, Alberta's not on duty yet, and Novice Castile is here demanding entry. I'd send him away, but he's quite insistent."
"That's fine. Let him in," Dimitri said, realizing Eddie probably had no idea of what was going on and might be freaking out.
That turned out to be exactly the case. Eddie charged in demanding to know why Rose was in the infirmary, and how come no one was telling him anything. The gossip at breakfast was that she'd been carried unconscious through the Commons last night, but beyond that, no one was talking. Adrian took charge, outlining what had happened. Dimitri excused himself to stretch his legs while Adrian explained everything; including Rose's contact with Mason and her illicit relationship with Dimitri. By the time the Russian guardian came back, a stunned Eddie was sitting in the recliner talking to Rose.
He looked at Dimitri with an inscrutable expression, his eyes widening slightly as Dimitri sat beside Rose on the bed, grasping her small hand in his and gently kissing the side of her face. "I'm back milaya," Dimitri crooned, before lapsing into silence.
"Adrian said Mason had a message for me? In Rose's letter?"
"Yes," Dimitri said, pulling the letter from his shirt pocket, where he'd tucked it against his heart. He was going to read the relevant passage to Eddie, but recognizing the hungry look on the younger man's face, he handed him the letter. "Don't crumple it," he warned.
Eddie took the sheets, reading slowly to himself. There were tears as he read Rose's words, but he smiled when he got to Mason's message. Reading the last of it, he wordlessly handed the letter back to Dimitri, noticing the careful way his idol folded the papers, placing them back in his top pocket.
"Did the message mean anything to you?" Adrian asked curiously.
"Yeah it did," Eddie said. "At the Ski Lodge Mason and I had a guys' chat. He was talking all about Rose, as usual, and I was telling him about a girl I like but probably have no chance with. She has red hair," he admitted ruefully, Dimitri immediately divining he probably meant Chelsea, another Novice in their year. "Is Rose going to be ok? Is she going to wake up?"
"We don't know," Dimitri said sadly.
The three of them were still sitting there when Alberta arrived half an hour later, walking in with Janine Hathaway,
"No change?" the latter asked, hopeful despite the fact she'd issued firm instructions that any change, any change whatsoever, and she was to be roused.
"Adrian spoke with her again. She's thinking about coming back to us."
Like Dimitri, Alberta and Janine grasped the subtext. Thinking about coming back implied she was also considering not returning.
"We need a plan for when she returns," Alberta said, refusing to entertain the idea Rose might not come back to them. "It might help her make the decision to come back knowing how things will stand? The guardians know, but they're a discreet bunch. Castile – what are the students saying?"
"At the moment people are mostly thinking it's a training accident although some of the Royals are saying it was a Strigoi attack and a few people are saying appendicitis. No one seems to know for sure what's going on."
"We can work with that," Alberta said shrewdly. "I'll instruct a couple of key guardians to be overheard discussing Rose being knocked out practicing. The gym is deserted at that time, so no one will know any better. It will be easier all around if the truth isn't widely known. Dimitri – you said you'd resigned your allocation. Was it amicable?"
"No," he said sadly. "Tasha outright forbade me to return to St Vlad's, so in the end, I had to resign."
Janine winced. She and Alberta knew that resigning from a post would mean a serious black mark on his record. Best case would be being overlooked for quality allocations in the future, but if Tasha made an issue of it, he might even be charged with abandoning his post – a crime that could attract jail time.
"I'd backdate a recall to St Vlad's, but as a royal allocation, hers outranks an Academy posting," Alberta said apologetically.
Dimitri shrugged. He'd known the consequences when he'd made his decision, and he was willing to suffer the fallout.
"What do you mean?" Adrian asked, looking at Alberta in confusion.
"Allocations work on a hierarchical basis," she explained. "As she's royal, guarding Tasha is a higher priority than guarding at the Academy. Unless Tasha releases him, I can't request Dimitri back here without it going to the allocations board, where it would almost certainly be knocked back."
"So he's treated like her property?" Adrian asked in amazement.
"It's how guardians are allocated, Lord Ivashkov," Janine said delicately.
Adrian was mulling it over in his mind. "What if someone who's a higher priority requested him?"
"Then he'd be free to accept the offer," Janine said, "But until the Princess graduates she can't request anyone."
"That wasn't what I was thinking. Guard me," he suggested, looking levelly at Dimitri. "I'm royal, I have no guardian, and I am pretty sure I outrank Tasha Ozera," he said with a smirk. "I'm staying on campus until Lissa graduates in May, and you can seek another allocation then. It might help with some of the difficulties with Rose, too. If you're on campus as my guardian technically you wouldn't be Academy staff."
Alberta looked at Janine, and Dimitri could almost see them simultaneously running it through their minds.
"You know, that would probably work," Janine said in surprise. "If the request were specific and came from Lord Ivashkov, Tasha would have no recourse. They'd allocate her someone if she insisted, but it wouldn't be Belikov."
"And it would keep you on campus with Rose," Alberta admitted, giving Dimitri a cautiously optimistic look.
Dimitri looked at Adrian uncertainly. He couldn't understand what was in this for Adrian. Why would he offer him an allocation to help him stay with Rose?
"Because I can," Adrian said under his breath understanding Dimitri's wordless question. "And it's the right thing to do. I want her to come back. It's only three months, and I'm here anyway."
The two men looked at one another. Dimitri hadn't given Adrian enough credit. The guy barely knew Rose, not compared to the way he did, but he was willing to do so much for her.
"There is another problem," Alberta said, taking a deep breath. "Dimitri, it was Tasha who came to tell me about you and Rose. She made out that her concern was for your reputations and careers if your relationship became known. She had a compromising video of the two of you in the gym."
Dimitri swore in Russian as he suddenly appreciated how all this had happened; that Tasha had known he was in love with Rose and the lengths she had been willing to go to separate them. He'd felt so guilty asking Tasha for help so soon after rejecting her offer at Christmastime. Now he realized that was her plan; force him to leave the Academy and then be there when he needed an urgent allocation elsewhere. He blushed furiously, also remembering exactly what that video would probably show.
"Do you think she'd show it to anyone else?" Alberta pressed.
"I don't know," Dimitri moaned. "I would never have thought she'd go to you in the first place. She was still… interested… in me after I accepted the allocation with her, even though I'd made it clear I accepted on a friends only basis. Nothing happened," he quickly said, seeing Janine's pursed lips, "But she wanted it to. She was pretty angry when I left - I wouldn't put it past her."
"Who was angry? Put what past who?" Lissa asked. She and Christian were standing in the doorway and had caught the last of Dimitri's words.
"Christian's aunt," Dimitri said, giving Christian an apologetic look before quickly outlining the situation, including the existence of a video and their concern she might use it vengefully.
"Do you think she would?" Alberta asked Christian.
"It's hard to know. She might…" Christian admitted. "She gets pretty pissy when things don't go her way."
"I wish I'd known - I would have swiped her phone while I was there and deleted it," Dimitri moaned.
"It wouldn't have helped. She's got an iPhone, and I set it up to backup to iCloud," Christian explained.
Alberta looked confused, but her office computer was used as a glorified paperweight. Janine didn't seem much more clued in, but Adrian, Eddie, Lissa, and Dimitri understood what he meant.
"I don't suppose you know her password?" Eddie asked flippantly.
"I might," Christian said looking troubled. "She's hopeless with technology, so I set up all her stuff for her. But she's my aunt – I can't betray her privacy like that!"
"But it's ok for her to betray my privacy and Rose's?" Dimitri snapped.
"You were in the gym, that's a public place," Christian countered. "How bad could the video be?!"
"It's bad," Alberta interjected, seeing Janine's eyes narrow dangerously. Dimitri was scarlet with embarrassment.
"I'm not sure I could do that to her," Christian said, looking beseechingly at Lissa. "She trusts me!"
"It would ruin Rose's career if it got out," Lissa said. "Dimitri's too. Tasha did the right thing reporting them, but it was for the wrong reason, and if she shows anyone now it will be out of vengeance. It might be wrong hacking into her account, but it would be righting the wrong she did," she argued, in what would pass for a fine piece of Rose-logic.
"I'd have to blank her phone, too," he said with a sigh.
"Can you do that from here?" Lissa asked him nervously.
"I can if she hasn't changed her password," Christian said in a resigned tone of voice. He looked up at the anxious group of people surrounding Rose's bedside. "If I do this, she's going to know. It comes up with a message saying it's been remotely blanked."
"Don't do it," Dimitri said resolutely. "This is not your responsibility. I'll call and talk to her."
Leaning to kiss Rose's temple, he whispered some loving words into her ear before picking up his phone and slipping on his boots. "I'll be outside," he said ominously.
Sitting in the courtyard, Dimitri looked around to make sure he wouldn't be overheard before dialing Tasha's cell.
"Dimitri?" she answered guardedly.
"Hi, Tasha. I didn't want to leave things the way we did when I left. Is now a good time to talk?"
"What's to talk about? You used me as your get of jail free card, and then ran back to the Academy when you changed your mind," she said bitterly.
"That's not quite how it happened," he replied. "I had no choice but to come back. I had to see Rose."
"Yes, that's pretty clear," she snapped.
"Tasha - she's in the infirmary. She tried to commit suicide and would have succeeded if Lissa hadn't healed her. She's still unconscious, and there's a chance she won't make it," Dimitri said, struggling but failing to keep his voice steady.
"She tried to kill herself?" Tasha asked in shock.
"Yes. I know you know about spirit, but there's a side-effect you might not know about. Adrian and Lissa call it the darkness. When they use their magic, there's a trade-off in terms of depression and anger. Adrian deals with his through abusing alcohol."
"I've never seen any sign of anything like that in Lissa?" Tasha said, sounding perplexed.
"That's because as Lissa's bondmate, Rose takes most of it," Dimitri explained. "It's one of the reasons we trained so often – to help Rose burn through the depression and anger caused by spirit."
"I had no idea," Tasha murmured, her voice softening in sympathy.
"I know you know about Rose and me, Tasha," Dimitri announced. "Alberta told me about the video and how you manipulated her into asking me to leave. I can't believe you did that – that you blatantly disregarded my happiness and Rose's. What the hell were you thinking? That I'd dump Rose and run into your arms? I love her, Tasha, and she loves me. Even if she doesn't make it, there's never going to be anyone else for me. I thought you were my friend! I trusted you! Then I find out the whole time you're plotting behind my back. Scheming and plotting against us." Dimitri's voice was laced with bitterness.
There was silence, although Tasha could hear Dimitri's heavy breathing. He was incensed, and he had good reason to be.
"I'm sorry Dimitri," she whispered. "It was a stupid thing to do; I know that now. I just thought if you were away from her, maybe you'd be able to see how good a life we could have together? That maybe you'd fall in love with me the way I'm in love with you?"
She'd finally told him.
"That's not going to happen," Dimitri said quietly, the fight going out of his voice. "She's the one I've fallen for. She's the one I can't live without. I'm sorry Tasha, but that's the way it is."
"I get it. And I'm sorry, I really am. I hope she makes it, Dimka. I'll delete the video," Tasha promised in a sad voice. "I won't tell anyone about you and Rose, and I'll put in the paperwork to release you from your allocation with me. I hope one day in the future we can put all this behind us and be friends again?" she added hopefully.
"Yeah, sure thing," Dimitri said, but they both knew it was a lie. There was no coming back from this; on both sides, too much damage had been done.