13. Emotions

Everybody was there and they were all staring at us. I took a look around the room and saw some of my classmates choking on their drinks. After a second of total silence the whispers began.

Jesse was the first one to say something I could actually hear over all the whispered comments. "No wonder she's an A student, she's been banging the teachers all year."

If Dimitri wasn't holding me back; I would have bashed in his face. Filthy lowlife bloodsucker should keep his mouth shut. Luckily Dimitri held me by my shoulders which made me incapable of moving.

"Do you want to know how she deserved those A's? I'm sure she would love to show you." Dimitri said with a smooth voice.

"What is she going to rip your clothes off right here?" Ralf said with a smirk on his face.

Dimitri let go of me then and I took a step forward. I really wanted to hit them but I knew I couldn't. There was a reason Dimitri held me in the first place.

"Did you forget the last time I broke your nose?" Jesse's face turned horrified for a moment and shook his head.

"And do you want to feel how much a broken nose hurts for yourself?" I turned to Ralf. He didn't answer but the smirk left his face.

"That's what I thought." I stepped back and Dimitri wrapped his arms around me.

"Rose, did you just not hit Jesse in his face? The one time no-one would blame you for punching someone and you learn control yourself?" Lissa said completely serious.

Everybody had been quiet during the confrontation but when Lissa said that; we all started laughing. The mood got a little lighter after that; there still were a lot of questions and a lot of people thought what we did was completely wrong. I was sure we would get hell for this at the forum that Lissa told me about but for now that didn't matter.

Some of the older royals came up to us for some questions but my dad told them that it was not polite to keep a girl from eating. They could speak to me after we ate something. The royals didn't like the way Abe talked to them but they did what he asked.

We found some food and I started eating right away; this was my first meal all day! Lissa waited for me to finish before going to the feeders. She wanted me to come with her, like I used to do. On our way I reminded her that I would be following her everywhere from now on, which made her actually a lot happier.

Lissa checked in with the greeter and she brought us to a cubicle right away. The feeder sitting at the table was one I knew well. It was crazy Alice, Christian and Lissa were one of the only Moroi who actually liked her. She was always rambling crazy things but after the last times she said stuff like that; I started to think she knew more then she let on.

"Welcome back wildflower." Alice said to me.

"Hi Alice, everything okay with you?" I asked her.

"Some things change even if others don't. Little things are important, don't ever forget that. Protect the Princess for one day she will be more than that." She smiled and turned her neck.

Lissa looked at me and when I shrugged she turned to feed. I had no idea what Alice meant and I knew by now that it was useless to ask more. Alice wasn't going to say anything else, she never did.

When we got back to the commons some Royals were standing around Dimitri. I walked over to them and pushed my way through the crowd to stand next to Dimitri. They'd been asking him about the time he was Strigoi and Dimitri was just about to answer when I interrupted.

"Hi comrade everything okay here?" I stood next to him and looked up to see his face.

"Now you're here, yes." He smiled at me "I was just about to tell them this was not the time for stuff like that."

He turned back to look at the royals "We will be at the forum to answer all your questions, there is too much to explain; half the people don't even know about the spirit users. We will try and explain everything after we've spoken to Queen Tatiana."

The royals nodded and turned away. Most of the older people left us alone for the rest of the night. They would be at court for the forum; which was going to be hell. Moroi talked a lot and they tended to over think everything. Which was why I wasn't looking forward to answering their questions at court, they were going to ask things I really didn't want to talk about.

My classmates however, wouldn't be at court to interrogate us and some of them decided that tonight was just as good as any other day.

"So Rose, how long have you been banging your teacher?" Camille Conta asked.

Camille was a supreme bitch and the self appointed leader of the royals at the academy, or at least she used to be. She was still a bitch but since Lissa had gone back into the social circles she'd kind of become their ruler.

Everybody wanted to hang out with Lissa; some just because she is the last Dragomir and others because she is in good with the queen. That's how the royals are, always playing some stupid game. Luckily, Lissa isn't like that; she can play the games just as well, probably better, but she doesn't. Not unless there is some higher reason to it, like helping me get rid of the bloodwhore thing when we got back.

"Are you jealous little girl?" I replied.

"Why would I be jealous? I don't have to fuck my teachers to get A's." Camille really needed to shut up.

"How original. You do remember that Jesse said the same things not that long ago, don't you?"

"Yeah well, Jesse was right wasn't he? I mean you had the chance to prove him wrong but you didn't." Camille said with a smug grin on her face, she really was pushing it.

"Do you want to know how I got my A's when I was at school?" Dimitri actually threatened her.

"The A's you got 20 years ago? Not worth much if you ask me" Camille smirked.

Okay now she'd gone too far. She can talk about me as much as she wants but nobody but me is allowed to insult Dimitri. I clenched my fist and stepped out of Dimitri's arms to make her face a little less pretty, but I wasn't fast enough. Viktoria stepped in front of me and hit Camille so hard I could hear a bone crunch under her fist.

"You do not talk about my family like that. Do you hear me?" She said to Camille, looking very much like her brother.

"Viktoria! That was so not necessary." Dimitri said as serious as he could manage. I always knew he couldn't be as strict as he pretended to be; but I never actually seen the laugher in his eyes. He was losing his guardian mask lately, I should really warn him about that. We wouldn't want everybody to know that he actually enjoyed it when Viktoria or I beat someone up now would we.

"Yes Dimka, it was. I've seen that bitch walk around school and she really needs to learn some respect." Viktoria grinned. "Rose, may I ask why you didn't remove that grin of her face years ago?" She added while her grin got even bigger.

"Because Guardian Hathaway didn't want to get in more trouble then she already was." Kirova said, standing behind Viktoria. I had no idea what trouble she actually meant but since I hadn't been out of trouble in years, take your pick.

"Yes headmistress, that is exactly why I never hit her. Although I would have changed that if Vikki here hadn't interrupted me. Couldn't you just pretend it was me and not punish Viktoria for it?" I put on my begging face to try and convince her. Viktoria had done exactly what I would have done but she could actually get in trouble for it.

"That wouldn't be very professional of me, but since Miss Belikov isn't actually a student here yet I can't do very much about it." She turned to Viktoria and added "You get of easy this time but if you still want to precede your classes here next year then I suggest you find Miss Conta and apologize to her." Kirova turned and walked away.

"What does she mean? You've been going to classes haven't you? Why aren't you a student here?" Dimitri asked like he completely forgot what happened before.

"Paperwork, Alberta didn't enroll me because she wasn't sure what year I should be in. I told you about that, don't you remember?" Viktoria said.

"Off course I remember. How could I forget that my baby sister might be graduating a year early. Now go and find Camille. You're lucky that nobody else saw what happened."

Viktoria left while I was wondering why exactly nobody had seen what happened. The commons were filled with people, how could they have missed that. I looked around me and saw the reason. Everybody was watching someone or something on the other side of the room.

I towed Dimitri along with me to see what they were staring at. When we got there I saw Lissa sitting on the floor, head resting on her hands. What the hell happened, how could I have missed that. She looked like she fainted and I didn't even notice. I tried to get a read on her trough our bond but all I could feel where happy feelings. Why did she look so bad and still be so happy, I didn't understand.

"Liss, what happened? Are you alright? Do I need to get you something?" I was there in an instant and she fell in my arms, crying. "Liss, what's wrong?"

Lissa just hugged me and when I pushed her back a little I saw that she was smiling. What the hell is going on?

"Liss, you are making me crazy. What is wrong? Why were you sitting on the ground looking like you just came back from the dead? I thought that was my job."

Lissa just smiled and turned her head to Christian. "Yes." That was all she said, could she be any more cryptic then she already was.

"If you don't tell me what's going on I will get in your head and find out myself." I warned her trough our bond.

Lissa turned back to me. "Can you give me a minute with Christian?" She really was going crazy, like I was going to leave her alone looking like that.

"I'm fine Rose, really I am. I was just surprised and I guess I should have eaten something today, just blood isn't enough you know." Lissa was smiling and she did look a little bit better.

"Alright but only if you take some food with you." Dimitri handed her a glass of water and some yogurt; Lissa took it and walked out of the room with Christian right behind her. They were both smiling as they walked away and it was driving me crazy, Lissa passed out just a few seconds ago and she was actually smiling.

"Do you have any idea what happened?" Dimitri asked me.

"Not one freaking clue. Do you want to dance? We can go after her and asked what happened when the song is over." I smiled at him and we walked to the dance floor.

"How can you not know what happened? Is there something interfering with your bond?" Dimitri asked me after our first dance. We decided to stay a little longer, Lissa was extremely happy and I really didn't want to bust in on anything gross.

"No, she is happy. She's been radiating happiness all day long and there haven't been any changed. Or at least no bad changes, she got even more ecstatic right around the same time Viktoria hit Camille but I figured that it was because she doesn't Camille either." I wanted to know what happened just as badly as Dimitri did but I had to respect Lissa's wishes; As long as she was happy I would do anything she asked me to do.

"Can't you go in her head to check it out?" Dimitri asked, he was really getting desperate.

"No I can't. I told her I would do that if she didn't tell me what was going on herself. That's when she asked to speak with Christian first." That was actually bugging me more than it should. I'd made peace with the fact that Christian had become so important to her and I'd even helped them get back together after Avery screwed things up for them. But when it came to Lissa being safe and healthy; I really didn't care who it was she wanted to talk to before me. I wasn't the one she spoke to first and that annoyed me.

"She asked for a minute with Christian right? It's been more than five minutes since they left; can we go and asked what's going on now?"

I could see the worry in Dimitri's eyes so I just nodded and followed him out of the room.

Lissa and Christian were sitting on the stairs that led to the dorms and Lissa jumped up when she saw us coming their way.

"We're going to get married!" She screamed right before she ran into my arms.

I looked over to Christian and saw that he was still sitting there with a smug smile on his face.

"You are going to get married to Sparky over there?" I had to verify, it seemed to me like I was missing something.

"Yes, I'm going to marry Christian and you are going to be my maid of honor; Like it or not." She let go of me and Christian came to stand by her.

"How soon is this going to happen?" Dimitri asked.

"We don't have a date yet, it might be better to wait a little while." Lissa answered and I saw Christian's face falter just a little bit.

"Do you have a problem with that Christian?" I asked

"Yes, I would marry her tomorrow if it was up to me. But she's right off course, we're moving soon and going to college in the fall. And apparently it's a lot of work to organize a wedding." Christian's smile faltered again but only at that last part; now I got it he didn't want a big wedding like she wanted.

"You could elope." I replied, not that I wanted that.

"No we can't." Lissa answered with a grim face. "Not if we want to live at court. The Queen accepted the fact that Christian and I will be living together but she's not going to be happy when she finds out I'm engaged, let alone married. We need to do this the way it is supposed to be done."

"If you two want to get married then I'll make sure Queen Bitch isn't going to try anything to stop you. Don't worry about anything like that."Lissa was always worried that she couldn't live up to the Dragomir name and the queen taking advantage of that annoyed the heck out of me.

"We know, but Liss is right. There is no reason to rush this; I love her no matter how long I have to wait." Christian was smiling again. He didn't like the reason behind the waiting but he didn't really care. He was right Liss wasn't going to leave him so why not make her happy.

"Ooh Liss, I'm so happy for you." I gave her another hug.

"As am I." Dimitri said and Liss was hugging him before he could do anything about it.

She stepped away and said "Thank you, both of you. It means a lot that you are happy with this."

"Why wouldn't we. Everybody with a little bit of sense can see you two belong with each other." I gave her a smile. "But I think we should get back to the party, the grown-ups will be leaving soon and I think they'll notice if the Dragomir Princess disappeared; especially since you just collapse in front of everybody."

We went back at the commons were everybody was standing around the dance floor. It was still early and there wasn't any real dance music on, at least not for the younger public. My parents on the other hand, they were dancing like professional ballroom dancers. They were twirling around the room, smiling at each other. It was kind of gooey and in some ways, gross to watch.

Christian held out his hand as an invitation for Lissa to dance with him; seriously what's up with all the guys lately, they hadn't been this polite before had they? I doubted myself a little bit; I hadn't been paying a lot of attention before I got Dimitri back so I could have missed the change in attitude before.

"Would you care to join me in a dance my love?" Dimitri held out his hand while making some kind of half bow. I took his hand and we walked to the dance floor.

When we'd danced before it was nice, we'd been slow dancing and I'd mostly just held him. This time though, there was ballroom music and Dimitri swayed me around. He was an amazing dancer; I'd never been great at that kind of dancing but with Dimitri it was easy.

Dancing with Dimitri was like a fairy tale; you know when you're the girl in white and all the people are standing in a circle watching you. That's how I felt, although I was wearing black and we weren't the only couple dancing. My parents and Lissa and Christian were dancing too, and they looked just as amazing as I felt. It was perfect.

When the song ended my father came to dance with me and Dimitri went to dance with his mother. Adrian was twirling with Lissa and Tasha got a hold of Christian. Alberta and Robert came to the dance floor too. I saw the way they looked at each other but I didn't comment; I didn't want to ruin whatever they had, they deserved it.

During the next song Adrian came to ask me for a dance. At first I wasn't sure if it was a smart idea but when I looked over his shoulders to Dimitri –Who was dancing with Viktoria- Adrian said

"Don't worry if he has a problem with it he can always slip into my mind and pretend you're dancing with him." He flashed me a grin and quite literally swept me of my feet and swung me around in his arms.

"Put me down or I'm going to kick your ass." I threatened him, he broke his promise again.

"Ooh Little Dhampir. Don't worry so much about your Russian bad boy, he can't hurt me." His mouth twisted up in a cruel grin.

I hadn't thought about that. Damn it, I couldn't hit Adrian without hurting Dimitri. So breaking his bones wasn't a good option which left me with only one other option.

"You're breaking your promise. You don't want to lose my trust in you do you?" I put on my puppy face hoping that he would laugh and drop me or something like that. Yeah I know letting myself fall out of his arms wasn't the best idea but it was better than this; there were people around and they saw me with Dimitri before, this was so getting to the queen and then I have to listen to her bitch me out again.

Adrian put me down and laughed. "Your right I don't want to break that promise. Although I do not think I was actually breaking it; I never promised to stop loving you. I promised I would be okay and I'm keeping that promise, that doesn't mean I can't have fun with you. You're still one of my best friends and I like hanging out with you." He looked at me, face completely serious.

I was standing now and we danced for a little bit. I wasn't sure how I should take this. He was a flirt and he was like this with a lot of girls; the problem was that he'd actually loved me and I turned him down. Was it healthy for us to keep hanging out like this?

"What do you think of Viktoria?" I asked looking up at him.

A grin spread across his face "I'm not sure yet; she's fun... I think I could really like her, but..." He trailed off at the end looking at something behind me.

"But you're not over me yet." I finished for him.

"It's something like that yes. I'm not sure; she's like a mix of you and Dimitri. It creeps me out a little bit." He was still staring away from me but I could hear the doubt in his voice.

"You're not sure you actually like her or it's just because she reminds you of me?"

"Hmm... I guess so." Adrian replied; why couldn't he just answer the question.

"I think you shouldn't look at it like that. It only means you didn't just like me for my looks, which is actually good to know." Off course I already knew that but that wasn't the point here.

"What do you mean? Your smoking hot off course I fell for your looks, are you going crazy?" Adrian looked at me now, with mock shock written over his face.

"Ow come on, don't start now I'm serious. You just like girls that can take care of themselves and not follow you around like puppy dogs. I get it, with all the blond bimbo's that run after you... They're fun for a night or two but seriously, how stupid can you be." I grinned at him.

"I guess your right; but I'm still not sure if Viktoria is the right girl. Sometimes she just looks way to much like Dimitri, it's creepy I don't want to kiss Dimitri." He made a face at me and I chuckled.

"Just get to know her, she's fun and she would be good for you. You'll get over their resemblance and if you don't; looking like Dimitri is actually a good thing so stop whining about it." I glared at him to make sure he got the message.

"It would be better if she looked like you... or me. But I'll get to know her; I think she's fun anyway and a new friend is never a bad thing." He turned to look at Viktoria and Dimitri dancing and smiled "You know what, I'll get to know her right now. I'll see you later little Dhampir."

Adrian left to asked Viktoria to dance and Dimitri came back to me.

"Are you having fun? You looked a little bit irritated when Adrian lifted you up." His eyes where bright like he thought it was funny but he kept his face straight.

"You know, you need to work on you mask again. You used to confuse the hell out of me but lately, your eyes give you away." I reached up to give him a kiss before answering his question. "And yes I am having fun. I just realized that I can't hurt Adrian anymore but besides that little downer, this is a great party even if the parents are still here. I'm actually enjoying dancing like this."

"I can't control my eyes Roza. Not when you're with me, you make me too happy." He kissed the top of my head. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself and I would appreciate it very much if you don't hurt Adrian. He isn't really hitting on you anymore, you know that right?"

"Actually I have no idea. That's the problem I'm not sure what he's planning." I said; honestly I had no idea.

"Well, I do. He still likes you, that didn't change. But he deals fairly well at least as long as you're not mad at him." He frowned a little which made me chuckle.

"I never thought you would mind if I was mad at Adrian." I said grinning at him.

"I wouldn't, if he deserves it then I'm fine with it. It's just that he gets all frustrated if you're mad at him. He's just being himself and he hates it that you don't like it when he's like that." He was staring at me now, face completely blank.

"That's kind off the problem, how can I be sure he's just being a friend when still treats me like I'm some sort of goddess..." I wanted to add that I was kind off a goddess but I shut my mouth just in time.

"One day I'm going to tape one of our practices; you should see how amazing you look when you're fighting." He didn't explain so I lifted my eyebrows at him.

"When you fight, you are a goddess there is no question about that." He paused for a second. "Now as for Adrian, don't worry about his intentions. I know what he's feeling and nobody's going to take you away from me. I don't care about a little bit of pain; if he tries anything I'll break his nose myself."

I gave him another hug "Thank you, I would like to be able to be friends with Adrian. He's a good guy."

"Yes he is. I wasn't sure what to think about this bond thing at first but it turns out that it's actually a good thing. Normally I would have gotten very mad when he lifted you up before. But I didn't because I knew he didn't have any other intentions besides having fun with one of his best friends. He might sound like a jerk sometimes but he never actually means it like that, he's just having fun." The corners of his mouth turned up a little, he didn't completely understand Adrian but he started to get it.

"Yeah I get that, I don't mean most of my comments either." I actually called Dimitri cheap foreign labor ones, not one of my better moments if I might add.

Dimitri smiled at me "You're just lucky that nobody in his right mind can stay mad at you."

He twirled me around again and we danced our way to the side to get something to drink.

Mark asked me to dance after I'd finished my drink. It wasn't as easy to dance with him as is was with the 3 but he still new enough that I didn't look like a total dork.

"So how are you guys dealing with everything?" Mark asked.

"Actually everything is great. We haven't had much time to really think about it with the movement and stuff but Dimitri seems happy." I smiled at him, it was nice to ask.

"Yes Dimitri does seem happy, I saw his aura trough Oksana's eyes and it looked really wonderful." Mark sounded like there was something more.

"What are you hiding? I need to know what's going on."

"It's nothing you don't already know. It's just... I wanted to warn you. You know Oksana hates to do it but she swept his mind." When he saw the shock cross my face he quickly added "She really didn't want to but Yeva made her do it."

"Why would she want that?" Why would Yeva ask Oksana to invade his privacy like that, I didn't get it at all.

"I'm not sure; I think she just wanted to make sure her grandson was dealing. And he is; you make him very happy Rose, as long as you are there to help him he'll be fine. I just wanted to tell you that there is more than just his guilt over what he did to you." Mark said with a sad face.

"What else is wrong with him?" He was making me nervous; people should really learn to actually say what they mean.

"Nothing, it's just that he remembers everything. Some of which will come in handy later because he knows a little bit more about the Strigoi then us but there are also things that are just... against everything he stands for." Mark said.

Off course, I knew what he meant. Dimitri had fed; he'd killed people for lunch. It wasn't like I didn't know about that but I just never really thought about that bugging him. It was only logical that it did though; Dimitri really cares he's like me in that way, we thought every life was sacred and we hated the fact that we needed to kill for our job even if they weren't technically living.

"I see. To be honest, I hadn't really thought about that but I understand your point. I will keep an eye on him, thank you for telling me."

"Good. And how are you dealing with the shadows? Are the healing sessions getting better?"

"Fine, we don't need that many sessions at the moment. Lissa hasn't done any mayor healings and she's been incredibly happy lately. She's a little worried about living at court but she's just too happy to really notice it." I said.

"If you need any help just let me know okay? That goes for Dimitri and Adrian too."

Robert came to dance with me next; it seemed like every guy I knew wanted to dance with me today.

"Guardian Hathaway." Robert greeted me with a smile "It's a great pleasure to see you happy again; I was very worried about you."

"Why were you worried?" I didn't get it; there was nothing wrong with me.

"Rose, when I met you... I thought I was seeing a ghost; you were so pale and you face was full of pain. That's why I tried to help you; I had to try to take that pain away for you."

"Oh, I..." I had no idea what to say to that.

"You had no idea; you thought you were hiding it pretty good." I nodded at him, it wasn't like I didn't feel horrible all the time; I just thought I was dealing pretty well.

"Don't worry; you were dealing better than anybody else would have. You are a special girl Rose, you might not realize it yourself but you can do some amazing thing and the love you have for your friends is almost blinding." Mark spun me around while talking.

"You don't know about my special ability do you?" Mark asked.

"You're a spirit user."

Mark laughed "Yes but every spirit user is different, we can learn everything when we get stronger but we have one ability that's always stronger than the others. For Pr... Sorry I mean Lissa it's healing, Oksana is best at mindreading and Adrian is incredible at dream walking. I'm incredibly strong with auras; actually it's not just auras anymore."

Marked looked serious now "Rose, can you keep a secret? Lissa and Adrian have to learn how to heal the shadows before they can try this."

"Why? You don't have a bond mate, how can you deal with it then?" I had been curious about that ever since I met him; he didn't seem crazy or anything like that.

"That has something to do with it. I will explain but you have to promise that you won't tell before it's time." He gave me another serious look.

"Okay, if it's important I'll try to keep it to myself. Although I can't do anything about the mind readers though."

"Oksana knows about it and if Lissa finds out that way, well then she'll also know that she had to be very careful. The learning curve is hard and it will take a lot in the beginning, I'm sure she won't do anything as long as she knows it will hurt you." He smiled at me and made me spin around.

"The first thing I learned to do was seeing auras; I learned healing and some other stuff later. It was hard for me at first; I wanted to kill myself so many times I lost count. Like you said I don't have a bond mate but Viktor helped me a lot. I know he's an ass now but he used to be a good guy, he actually helped me with my research for spirit. After a while I couldn't take it anymore and I left to go live somewhere in the mountains but being there made it even worse. I actually tried to fight with a bear ones." He chuckled and I looked at him in surprise, how could he have survived that?

"I used compulsion on him, I was already stronger then Lissa is now and I found out it works on animals too; you can tell Lissa that if you want she'll be able to do it with small animals if she tries and I know she won't use it against them she loves animals too much." I smiled at him and nodded, he was right Lissa would never hurt an animal.

"After that I got out of there, I thought I was ready to die before but when I came close I saved myself anyway. And I'd seen something in that bear, it was a mother and she thought I was one of the hunters around there; I felt love. It was such an odd thing, I never felt emotions I could see them in the auras but feeling them was something new. I think it was something like you have with Lissa.

I went back to the human world but not to Viktor, I decided that a monastery would be better; I found peace there. I could feel the emotions of the monks and it calmed me down. I learned how to heal there; they knew who I was but they didn't care they wanted to help me and they thought it was a blessing to do the things I could. They helped me with research and we found another spirit user, her name was Arianna Mazur." He saw the confused look on my face.

"She was your great grandmother; she died before you were born. She was a wise woman and she was a Spirit user as well, she died of old age. When I met her she already found out how to deal with the bad side of Spirit and she helped me a lot."

"Did my father know about her?" I had to ask

"He knew her but not that she was a Spirit user. She told me about her family and she said she left when her husband died. He'd been her bond mate, she saved him and they'd been together ever since. She told me he was an amazing fire user and she had to heal him every day because he liked to fight with their guardian. He was the only one who knew about her magic and they kept it that way, they were afraid people would try to use her and they knew that it was just too dangerous." He paused to take a breath

"I'm sorry; we should have kept it a secret." I looked down; it had been a mistake to tell everybody about spirit.

"No it's alright; if we stand together we can deal with this." He gave me another smile and went on with his story.

"After a while I learned to heal and I learned to control the emotions, I couldn't pick them out yet but I was able to shut them off if I wanted to. We stayed there for a year or so and worked together to learn as much as we could. We disappeared and when we left the monastery we used different names, we didn't want to be found. It wasn't like anybody would actually be looking but just in case, we were happy to stay put and find out more.

After a while I started to pick up more than just momentary emotions; I picked up the love they had for different people, their hopes and dreams. It was like a mix of reading minds and feeling their emotions, I knew about all the emotions but not the actual memories. This wasn't always a good thing; some people have a lot off rage and anger. It's not so hard if you only feel emotions from that moment because you can avoid situations where people get angry; you can't avoid everybody who's ever felt rage.

When Arianna died I left the monastery, it had been nice there but I wanted to find more Spirit users. I contacted my brother again and stayed with him for a month or so, I couldn't stay long because I was getting worse again. I needed to be around people with love and peace, it made my life easier. Viktor was nice to me but I knew him; I told Viktor that I could feel emotions and he learned to control them but he didn't know about the rest.

I left and traveled trough Europe for a bit, I found another Spirit user with a bond-mate, Kyra and Irena, they were half sisters and best friends. Kyra lost her father when she was just a baby and her mother married her guardian 5 years later, next year her little sister was born. Irena fell of their roof when she was 13 and Kyra brought her back in front of her parents. When I met them I could see her aura and I knew what she was. I stayed with Kyra and Irena for a while to help Kyra and we found out they could heal the shadows away from each other.

One night we were attacked by two Strigoi, one of them was Irena's beloved husband; He'd been turned that night and she didn't know about it. She fainted and I tried to help her while our guardians killed the two Strigoi. When she came back she started to yell at me that I had to heal her husband; I told her he was Strigoi there was nothing to save but she got frantic, telling me to look at him and not be such a baby. I did what she asked and saw his aura, that made me change my mind and I helped him. That's how we found out how a Strigoi could be saved." He stopped and took a breath.

"What happened to him?" Obviously something happened since he didn't have a bond-mate anymore.

"Our plane crashed and the 3 of them died in an instant, I woke up in a hospital two days later and it was too late to save them. I felt horrible and thought it was my fault; I went crazy and wanted to kill myself again. I kept in contact with Viktor and stayed in contact with people but most of them regarded me as a crazy fool. That's when I met Oksana and Mark, they were nice people. I taught them how to heal each other and Oksana taught me to read minds. Being with them for a little while had been good for me, I wasn't completely alone anymore.

I could have gone to my brother but I didn't want to, I wanted to get better again and I went back to the monastery. The monks welcomed me back with open arms and they told me that they found out some new things. The monks had done more research and they found out how spirit worked, they told me that Spirit came from the soul and they told me they knew how to make it feel better.

The monks made me go through some Zen lessons and told me that I had to learn to filter the good emotions from the bad. I worked at that for a long time and it hasn't been very easy, I needed to use a lot of spirit and it almost broke me. I was lucky though, I was surrounded by peaceful monks and there weren't a lot of bad feelings. Eventually I learned to split them up and wrap myself in lovely feelings from others without the anger. I needed it to think straight again and having good people around me made me feel better." He smiled at me.

"And that's when we found you." I finished his story.

"Yes, that's when you found me. To be honest you scared the heck out of me, I couldn't split your feelings. I felt everything the good and the bad, the love and hatred, I wasn't sure what to do about you. The fact that Viktor was with you wasn't a good thing either, he's such an ass. But when you asked me to help you I understood, you could be no other then Rosemarie Hathaway. The monks told me about you; I'd brought them in contact with an alchemist and they told them about you, they did some research and found out that you're shadow-kissed. Those monks are very handy with computers, it's weird but they are; they had none until I gave one to them but after an hour of explaining they didn't need me anymore.

Well when I saw you standing before me, asking me to help bring your mentor back... I felt a lot of pain and love in you, but there was bravery and determination too. You almost broke my heart just by visiting me; I couldn't let you go without trying to help you, not just because I could see the pain on your face but because I could feel it myself. You had so many feelings in you that it was impossible to ignore, something I've never seen before."

"How is that possible? Why couldn't you split my emotions and just feel the good stuff?" I didn't fully understand what Robert meant by all that, why was I so different from everybody else?

"Because your feelings at that time were to closely linked with each other; I didn't know that at the time but I found out last week at Adrian's place, all the hatred and sadness in you was gone. It's all about him, I see that now; I used to think that you were just a girl that went through to many painful things but that's not it. Don't get me wrong the things you've seen are awful but you're able to deal with them, at least you can if you have your friends with you. I've known your friends help you stay strong ever since I met them but when I met Dimitri; there was nothing left of the pain, just love. You love all your other friends just as much but you cannot live without Dimitri and Lissa, you need them. With them on your side you shine like a star."

"That's what Yeva said." I had been so wrapped up in his story that I hadn't really noticed what was going on around us. That last sentence made me snap out of it, I looked around myself to see if Yeva was here to and I saw that most of the parents and family members were leaving; the reception thingy was ending.

"Yes, I know. I spoke to her spoke to her after the ceremony and she told me about the dreams, they are real you know; she dreams about the future but it's very abstract and not complete set in stone. Normally she dreams about things she can understand because it's logical like an accident or surprise party's but her dreams about you and her grandson are different, she doesn't know much about Spirit or being Shadow kissed and there is a lot that we don't know about yet. I only learned about the dream walking when I met Adrian and I've been researching Spirit for years now, who knows what else we can do."

"We will help you as much as we can; will you come to court with us?"

"I have to be there to speak with Queen Tatiana and I'll attend the forum to answer some questions. I'm not sure if I'll stay, the emotions coming from you and your friends lately are nice and you make me feel a lot better but I'm not sure if it's enough to hold me up at court; there is a lot of hate and political games at court, it's not fun to be surrounded by people like that it's hard not to break their noses." We both laughed at that.

"Okay, I understand. I would like to invite you to come by our house but I have no idea where that is, so just drop by if you know where we are." Not knowing where I would live was starting to bug me.

"I'll find you. Now you go find your friends and have fun at your graduation party, this will be your last night of complete freedom don't waste it." Robert gave me a wink and left the room after Alberta.

All the grown-ups had left with exception of some guardians. I walked back to the bar to get something to drink and turned around to search for Dimitri.

Quick question:

Should I write the Russian words with the Cyrillic alphabet or the Latin alphabet?

Let me know what you think is best :)