~Lissa

Why am I so cold? No wait I'm burning up? I can't open my eyes and there is someone beside me. I don't want to look unless it's Rose. Which I know is not. I most likely passed out in someone's house. When I feel a light tap on my shoulder my eyes flutter open staring at the blank ceiling. I turn my head and I'm surprised to see Mia who looks seriously worried. I smile trying to cheer her up a little bit. She shouldn't be worried. I should be worried. After a few seconds Mia smiles, but wryly. I sit up in bed and realize that a washcloth was placed on my forehead. I remove it and lay it on my nightstand. I look back over at Mia and touched her cheek with my palm and slightly caressed her cheek in appreciation, enjoying how soft it feels. I only keep my hand there for a couple seconds before standing up and walking over to my closet. I open my closet and pick out the dress I've been slightly dreading and hoping to wear. I pull out a white, lace, medium (stopping just below the knees) dress. I lay the dress on my bed before placing out matching heels. When I sit my shoes on the bed beside the dress I ask, "What do you think about the dress? Hot right?" As I'm now taking out the new accessories I bought for this outfit I look back at Mia who looks more than worried now than before. Lissa considers going to sit next to Mia, but brushes that thought away and continues to pick out jewelry.

"Lissa, are you ok?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"I mean you were sleep for a while, but it's like…"

"It's like what?" Lissa asks now slightly glaring at Mia. Lissa did not want to hear Mia tell her that she seems 'different'. If she would have known Mia was going to ask that she never would have spoken in the first place.

"You just healed really quickly," Mia finishes.

"Yeah," Lissa says after a few seconds pause, "I guess I did."

After a few long moments of uncomfortable silence between the two Mia ask, "Have you talked to Rose?"

Lissa didn't know why Mia asked that. I mean she's not even speaking to Rose. Instead of thinking these thoughts something in Lissa made her voice them, "Why do you care? Rose hasn't spoken to you in a week or to be exact since your party."

Mia stared at the back of Lissa's head as she continued to pick out jewelry flabbergasted before saying in none too kindly, "It was just a question. What crawled up your ass?"

"Nothing it's just that it was a dumb question that's all."

Mia glared at Lissa and thought, 'She's calling ME dumb? I had to take care of HER because she was practically dying.

"So, what do you think about the dress?" Lissa asks again.

"Lissa, look you—"

"I'm what Mia? Being a bitch? Clearly," Lissa says coldly as she smirks at Mia.

Mia stares at Lissa coldly, "Don't you see Mia, and I'm not the same little ole Lissa I used to be. I'm different; I'm happy now. The old Lissa was… how can I put it... cliché. She was a bore."

"The old Lissa was not a bitch, she was actually nice—"

"The old Lissa was a pushover. The old Lissa was afraid."

"No—"

"But yes, yes I was. But do you want to know why I've changed Mia? I'll tell you something not even Rose knows. Wouldn't that make you feel better?"

"No, I don't care to know. And I'm not upset."

"On the contrary, you are indeed. If I'm right which I know I am you're hurt. You feel shot down," Before Mia could ask Lissa finishes, "I can see it in your aura. I healed quickly right?"

"But tell me the truth Mia, you can't say this doesn't peak your interest."

Lissa doesn't wait to hear a response and instead continues to say, "One word, freedom. I feel free."

"Whatever Lissa, I'm leaving," Mia says standing and walking towards the door. When she places her left hand on the door Lissa quickly grabs Mia's right wrist and grips it hard enough to leave fingerprints and sweetly, but menacingly says, "Before you go Mia, can you do me a favor and fuck off."

"What?"

"Fuck off, get lost."

"You need help Lissa," Lissa tightens her hold on Mia's wrist saying, "And stay away from Rose, if not I'; ruin you."

"Yeah right," Mia says yanking her hand away from Lissa's grip and leaving.

Lissa smiles when she hears the downstairs door slam shut and walks out of the room to shower.

~Rose

"So you and Jesse are together now right?"

Rose looks over at Christian from the opposite black sofa, "I think so, now that it's been established that we actually have the hots for each other," Rose smirks as Christian groans disgusted, "And how we practically want to rip each other's clothes off—"

Christian who was lounging on the white sofa wearing a black shirt with words that say 'Sarcasm is one of the Services I Offer' in red and white words with black ripped skinny jeans turned his head towards Rose disgusted, "Quit it. I think I might vomit if you continue."

Rose laughed out loud, "But yeah we are, we still have to talk about things though."

"Ok, Rose I'm not trying to be a 'buzz kill' but I really think it's a bad idea to date Jesse."

"What?" Rose asks staring blankly at Christian.

"I mean if you want to date Jesse that's your decision, but… just be careful."

"You? Telling me to be careful? Christian two days ago you 'accidently' set Adrian's shoes on fire.

"Yeah luckily he wasn't wearing them, but really Rose…"

"Ok I'll be careful, but don't worry Jesse's not the same jerk he used to be," Rose says standing and walking to the kitchen. As Rose opens the refrigerator she asks, "Hey what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Aren't you going to start you know getting back out there?"

"What?" Christian asks confused.

"You know," Rose starts now standing in front of Christian with a bottle of water, "dating."

"Dating is overrated."

Rose snorts before flopping down on the black sofa, "No offense, but you need to really stop feeling sorry for yourself for at least a day. I mean Lissa has definitely seen some guys and brought a few home and that's just this week."

Rose didn't look over at Christian when she said this, but when Christian was quiet for a while Rose looked over at him and automatically regretted saying that. Christian and Lissa have only been broken up for a week.

"I'm sorr—"

"No, it's ok," After a few more minutes of awkward silence Rose had picked up her phone and started to play a game until she heard Christian say, "You're right… I should start dating again. Lissa has the right to move on."

"Yeah, but really Lissa has been acting out range lately. Everything I told you…you just have to see it in person."

Just then Christian's phone went off with a text. It was from Eddie. As Christian read the text his eyes slightly widened.

"Well I don't think I need to see it in person now."

Christian stands and shows Rose the message Eddie sent.

'WTF? Dude Mia just came back from Lissa in tears?!"

Rose takes the phone out of Christian's hand and began to reply.

'What the hell did she say?'

Christian raised an eyebrow, "What?" Rose asks.

"Nothing," Christian says before his phone chimes with a new text.

'Mia said that Lissa told her to stay away from Rose and if she didn't she'd ruin her.'

Rose gives the phone back to Christian before standing and grabbing her jacket off the sofa's arm and putting it on, heading towards the door. Christian throws his phone on the sofa before following. When Rose opens the door she turns to face Christian who had followed her and gave him a hug. At first Christian was stiff, but after a couple seconds he wrapped his arms around Rose hugging her back.

"Good luck tonight," Rose says before letting go and leaving in a slight jog.

~Lissa

While looking in the mirror in my room to make sure I look good, it almost time to go to the Royal meeting, I hear the downstairs door open. Knowing its Rose because she's the only one that has a key and I locked the door after Mia left. I smile to myself and my smile only increases when I see Rose open the door to my room.

"Hi Rose," Lissa says brightly.

"Lissa did you threaten Mia?" Rose asks clearly pissed.

"What? No Hi Lissa, how are you?"

Rose gives Lissa an impatient look causing Lissa's smile to drop, "Yes. I did. Why are you mad? I did us both a favor."

"You did this for us?" Rose asks incredulously.

"You and Mia aren't talking, so if you're not talking to her it's only right that I don't want anything to do with her either."

Rose just stared at Lissa more than shocked, "Lissa you shouldn't have done that."

Now Lissa stared at Rose incredulously before saying, "Yeah, right Rose," Lissa picks up her mascara and sits at her vanity table applying it to her eyes, "I just did what you couldn't pull yourself to do. Don't look so pissed, you're too pretty for that."

"You know what Liss, I want you to apologize."

"No… I'm not apologizing Rose."

"Liss—"

"Rose, I said no," Lissa says turning around to face Rose.

Without saying anything Rose goes over to the door to leave.

"Don't be pissed Rose I did this for you."

Lissa turns back to face her vanity mirror and see's Rose leave.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

The Royal Meeting

~Rose

Still slightly fuming from what happened with Lissa earlier I suppress those feelings and put on my guardian mask as I take my post. I see Eddie on the other side of the room. He seemed to not have even noticed me. I guess that's how it's going to be between us now. I also see Dimitri and he gives a slight nod and I nod back smiling inside. I haven't really seen him lately because he's been busy training guardians. Soon all Royals come pouring into the room and when I see Dylan he smiles at me and boldly tries to make me laugh as if I were a British guard and he an American tourist harassing me to smile. When Adrian walks in he pulls a smiling Dylan away and throws me a sexy smirk. These two are going to put my training at risk. And of course all the moroi girls and women swooned and broke out giggle fits when they saw the two. As more and more royals came when Jesse walked in my heart leapt. He looked at me curiously and I really really hope he wouldn't say anything to me. Instead he walked very close to me and gave me the most amazing smile I've ever seen him give. When he walked away it felt like my heart was beating 50 times over. That is until Lissa walked in the room and right past me, ignoring me. When Tasha came she looked amazing in a dark red dress and black pumps. I knew Dimitri was trying to stop himself from having a heart attack. I faintly wondered where Christian was, but my thoughts quickly changed when Queen Tatiana entered the room. Everyone greeting her majesty as she greeted us with respectful nods. When Tatiana took her seat everyone sat down. Slightly I leaned on the wall along with all the other guardians as the meeting started. After an hour or so the meeting took a different turn. It all started when Tatiana decide to make an announcement about when the moroi will be issued new guardians, this had also peaked my interest.

"I have decided after some deep consideration that after the new king or queen has been chosen that he or she will choose how the guardians will be distributed," Then that's when shocked gasps were heard throughout the room. This wasn't the first time everyone had heard of Tatiana stepping down, but those were just rumors. Now that she had announced it people were practically gaping. Well the shock only lasted a few minutes more until everyone bean talking at once about who was going to take her place. Tatiana then called for silence quieting everyone down before saying, "Each royal family can starting tomorrow put up their candidate for whom they would like to run for king or queen, but at this time questions will not be taken. Instead we have more important things to discuss. After a few silent groans Queen Tatiana then goes on to say, "As you all know we recently had a breech in our ward system and have added more guardians to guard the wards and make daily rounds. Starting tomorrow we will officially start investigating what could have caused such a sordid thing." I immediately thought about Eddie. That's why he looked so tired; he's been guarding the wards almost every day. Also it's about damn time we start investigating why the wards seem to have been weakening lately. Do we not care about our lives? And I have to admit that I haven't been doing my fair share of guardian duty. After another hour or so the meeting had turned into a debate and made a not so surprising turn when an interesting question was asked, "What about the people or shall we say radicals that want to allow moroi to fight alongside guardians? Tell me that I'm not the only one who thinks that is just as inane as letting moroi practice their magic offensively." This led to a lot of uproar.

"It is a silly idea."

"It's very stupid, absolutely dumb I tell you."

"I think it's only right the moroi learn how to use magic offensively and to give them the choice to fight alongside the guardians."

Everyone's eyes turned to where the voice came from. I can't believe it….

It was Christian.

"Oh, Christian Ozera, son of Lucas and Moria Ozera how are we any less surprised."

I look over and I could see that Tasha was also surprised, but she didn't show it, her face showed complete faith in whatever Christian was going to say.

"Clearly he wants us to end our race, considering he's about close to becoming strogoi then any one of us," some woman from the Voda family says.

"On the contrary, I'm actually closer to not becoming one seeing as I helped eliminate strogoi at St. Vladimir's Academy, along with a lot of great guardians we saved many of your children. With that being stated you cannot use the sin of my mother and father to judge me, with less than any proof that that's a possibility," Christian tells the women who had immediately faltered from Christian's piercing gaze. Christian then turned his attention towards everyone else continuing to say, "I believe that learning how to defend ourselves using our magic and being able to physically defend ourselves is very significant in our situation. And to be frank and no offense to the guardians, but they cannot do it alone. Even though it's been done for many centuries more and more guardians die every year, every month, every day. Are willing to just sit back and let this continue happening?"

Then a very 'smart' guy stated that looked to be in his late 20's stood up and said, "Well that's the price they have to pay for us giving them children," The guy smiled broadly , "They owe us."

"How inane of a statement for you to make, dhampirs do not owe us anything. They are not indebted to us. They do their job because they have to. To keep their race alive. Besides what would become of us if their race has died out? Ours will too."

The 20 something guy didn't falter, but instead continued to say, "That's impossible."

"Well if so tell me how?" Christian asks.

I had to stop myself from laughing at the guy. He just stood there before trying to digress. Everyone in the room was quiet and unmoving, clearly wanting to hear this guy's reasoning, ignoring the guy's futile attempt to change the subject to how Christian was, what was that he just said a few moments ago? Oh yeah an immoral freak. The audacity of 'this' guy. The guy was becoming increasingly outraged.

Christian who had a slight grin on his face finally decided to put the guy out of his misery. Instead of looking back at the guy who had now sat back down he looked at everyone again, "Our race will quickly die out if we lose all dhampirs because we are depending on them to fight and protect us. If only we could prevent that from happening by learning and helping the strogoi wouldn't stand a chance. We could save both our races if we just take the incentive."

I was frozen. The room seemed to have frozen along with me. After a long silence that felt like forever. There was a clapping. Someone was clapping. Everyone turned to where the clapping was coming from. In other words everyone looked directly at Tatiana. The Queen herself was actually clapping for Christian.

Soon everyone began to clap for Christian. As I clapped along with everyone else Christian turned his head and we locked eyes. I couldn't resist and gave him a small smile that he could only see. I'm….stunned. Christian just amazed everyone with his speech. I looked at Tasha and she looked proud. After all the clapping died down Tatiana spoke, "Lord Ozera if you will I would like to have a meeting with you tomorrow," Tatiana tells Christian before continuing to say, "Meeting adjourned. You may all enjoy the delicate refreshments that have been arranged," Tatiana finishes before standing and leaving.

When everyone began to stand and enjoy the refreshments and talk to Christian I couldn't help, but think that this moment has possibly changed a lot of things. But honestly I feel as if this was a good thing. This was needed somehow. I was broken out of my thoughts as something is placed in my hand. I look down and open the folded piece of paper.

'Meet me at my place after you leave'

I look up and I lock eyes with a smirking Jesse. He then diverts his attention to the guy he was talking to- Rufus Tarus. I slightly clear my throat and maintain my guardian mask perfectly despite the fact that I'm smiling extensively inside.