Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Academy.

Ch. 14 Bitterness

Tasha POV

I paced around in my empty suite, the one I had shared with Dimitri before he had moved out. Anger and sorrow filled my heart. How could he have left me, after everything we'd shared for the past seven years? How could he have forgotten his love for me? How could he leave me for that slut Rose Hathaway?

I had tried to compel him into forgetting her. I couldn't directly compel him to "Forget Rose" – he could've caught on that I was compelling him and that would've negated my compulsion. I would sometimes whisper to him to "forget anyone else whom you've loved" and worked a small bit of compulsion into my words. It had worked to a certain extent, but I'd sometimes caught him murmuring "Roza" in his sleep. With that, I'd known that I had to use something to compel him.

I'd turned to a good friend of mine who was an earth user, and said that I was making a love charm. Which wasn't entirely a lie. She'd warned me that it wouldn't be very strong, so I'd coaxed her into adding a lust charm. She'd put two spells in the silver watch – one was a general spell to listen to whatever I said, and the other was a lust charm. Occasionally, I would take it back to her to renew the spells.

Compulsion wouldn't work if someone knew you were compelling them since that would negate the commands. For some reason, in the few times I'd asked Dimitri to marry me while subtly using compulsion, it didn't work. I'd never been able to figure that out no matter how many times I'd tried.

Of course, even with the watch, it was apparent my poor Dimka hadn't forgotten Rose even though it had been seven years since they'd last met. What was it about her that made him never forget her?

Well, it didn't matter. I planned on getting back Dimka, no matter the cost. Of course, I needed to get Rose Hathaway out of the picture first. A smile curved my lips.

My revenge will be very sweet. And I plan on taking my revenge very soon.

Soon Dimitri will be mine….forever. No one will stand in our way.

Not even Rose.

Rose POV

"We can't just let Tasha get away with compelling you," I said to Dimitri later that night after dinner, when we were sitting in the lobby together.

Tasha mercifully hadn't shown up to dinner. I had this impending sense of doom when I thought about how balefully she'd been looking at me, but pushed it away. Nothing bad could happen now. Dimitri was by my side, free of Tasha's compulsion, and I was on vacation with my friends.

"I agree," he said, "but exactly can we do?" His voice turned wry after a few moments. "It's not like we can tell the authorities that she took me away from you. Relationships between dhampirs are still frowned upon, especially since we still can't have any kids."

He had a good point…and it was embarrassing to think about divulging all the nasty details to someone. I sighed before cuddling into Dimitri's side. "But you know we can't just let her get away. She'd be getting off way too easy." I think a little revenge was in order. Starting with a punch to her blue eyes that would make them black.

"I know, I know," he said softly, stroking my hair. "I would love to see her get some payback for everything that she's done to me. But violence isn't the answer for this."

I gave him a sideways look. "Really? I thought in my education that violence is the answer for everything." I remembered saying that to him a few years back when I'd told him how much I'd hated my mom.

"Not in this case," he said sternly.

I groaned. "Please, no more Zen lessons! Because if I have to-"

My words were smothered when he pulled me even closer and kissed me on the lips. I immediately forgot about everything else and just kissed him back before he pulled away.

"Oh c'mon, that wasn't even a whole minute," I complained.

"No, I have an idea. Vasilisa can help us," he said, a gleam in his eyes.

"How?" I asked.

"She can tell the authorities that Tasha used compulsion on me. You still have the silver watch, don't you?"

I nodded, wondering where this was going.

"We'll take the watch with us back to Court when vacation ends, which will be soon. Vasilisa can show someone the watch as proof, and an earth user can confirm it."

"Yeah, but who can Lissa tell?" I asked. "The Royal Council doesn't deal with the rules surrounding compulsion. Besides, Lissa still hasn't gotten her seat on the Council, even though she sits in on the meetings because of the family quorum and despite rumors going around that soon she might be eligible to take her seat."

"There's a council that oversees the creation of rules," Dimitri said. "I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but they would definitely look into Tasha's compulsion. At the very least she'll be sitting a few years in jail and paying a huge fine."

I raised my eyebrows to look at him. "Why, Comrade. I didn't know it was in you to want revenge." I could imagine him giving me a Zen lesson about the virtues of being forgiving and letting things go.

The look on Dimitri's face hardened. "Tasha needs to face the consequences of her actions. Compulsion is wrong to use in the first place – there's a reason the Moroi have had it drilled into them not to use it from a young age. And the fact she used so much of it to get me to stay by her side and make me do God knows what…" He shuddered, his whole body shaking. "She can't just get away with what she did. I'll never be able to forget what she compelled me to do..."

"But sitting a few years in jail is nothing," I said bitterly. "She'll be out in a few years' time and God knows what more damage she'd try to make with her compulsion. There has to be a way to put her away in jail for a really long time. It's just not fair, after all the stuff she made you do under her compulsion." Not that I wanted to know exactly what.

He opened his mouth to say something, but then Lissa came over, a frown on her face. I was surprised to not see Christian behind her. "A bellboy told me to give this message to you."

She handed me a folded piece of paper which I quickly unfolded. The note's really messy handwriting read, I need to talk to you right away. Come outside and meet me near the pine trees. – Adrian

I raised my eyebrows. I was pretty sure I knew what Adrian wanted to talk about, and it wouldn't be pretty. Not to mention that the grove of pine trees he'd mentioned was kind of far to walk to in the snow. "Well, guess I should talk to him."

"But it's so cold outside," Lissa protested, looking out the tinted windows. "It's snowing!"

"I'll get him to come back inside, and we'll take it from there," I told her. I bent down to kiss Dimitri's cheek. "I'll be back soon."

"See you, Roza," he murmured, a smile spreading across his face.

I waved at them both before walking out through the lobby and out into the snow. It was a little cold, but it wouldn't kill me, especially since the sun was still out. Once I got Adrian to come back in with me, we would talk things over at length.

I stepped out into the grove of pine trees tentatively and looked around. No sign of Adrian whatsoever. "Adrian? Where are you?"

A dark shape stepped out from behind one of the trees, and I stiffened. It was Tasha.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded. A cold sense of dread filled me. "Where's Adrian?"

A frosty smile crossed Tasha's lips. "I think he's a little occupied with alcohol right now. I pointed him down towards a bar…and I think you know what happened after that."

I placed my hands on my hips, heedless of the fact that the snow was coming down a little harder. "And you decided to intercept his note? How charming."

"That note wasn't sent by Adrian."

I froze and looked at her almost dead in the eye. "What?"

"I'm afraid I had to lure you out here, since I doubt you would want to chat with your new 'boyfriend's' ex," she said smoothly. "And Adrian was my best way of doing so. I wanted to talk to you."

"About what? We have nothing to say to each other, especially since you're such a scheming, manipulative bitch who compelled her own boyfriend. If you'd really loved him, you wouldn't have manipulated him for all these years." I felt really uneasy now. What made Tasha go to such extreme measures to get me out here to talk to her? I resolved to quickly finish the conversation and go back inside as soon as possible. Tasha had to be up to something, and I didn't plan on sticking around for long to find out what it was.

"I would never have had to go to such an extreme if it hadn't been for you," she hissed. "If you hadn't been the woman Dimitri thought he was in love with, he would've been mine. I could've had children with him, and I would've spent the rest of my life happily in his arms."

I snorted. I couldn't believe it – I was now confronting a pissed off, psycho bitch. "With your compulsion? I don't think so. There are some things Dimitri never would've done, even if you'd been compelling him from the moment you got him away from me. He would never have married you."

Tasha's eyes narrowed, but I could see that I'd hit a sore spot. "So I see you're the one who broke into my suite and stole the watch."

I glared at her. "You couldn't even play fair to win Dimitri's heart. You just used your compulsion and tricks. That isn't my fault that he didn't love you back. I'm surprised that you didn't compel him to marry you."

She haughtily retorted, "You know nothing about compulsion and its limitations."

Still, I detected unease in her voice and thought back on my words and what I knew about compulsion. Dimitri had never told me but surely he must've been proposed to by Tasha while he was under the influence of the compulsion charm.

It was possible to resist compulsion and lust charms, as I'd found with Dimitri that time long ago. I wasn't sure exactly how we'd managed to fight it, even to this day, but it was possible.

Suddenly I had a moment of clarity. The watch! If it had worked like Victor's lust charm (and it probably did, since it seemed to double as a compulsion/lust charm), Dimitri's not wearing it had probably significantly lessened how much of Tasha's compulsion he would obey. But I frowned to myself. Tasha was no earth user – so how the hell would she have gotten an earth user to put compulsion/lust spells that ensured Dimitri would listen to Tasha?

I forced my attention back to the ice bitch from hell. "Yeah, well I could listen to you go on and on about how you were so successful about compelling Dimitri for the past seven years," I snapped. "But why the fuck do you even want to talk to me?"

"Stay far away from Dimka," Tasha snarled, balling her fists. She didn't look so pretty when she was so pissed off. Oh who was I kidding? No matter how pretty she might be on the outside, her cruelty would always ruin her looks. "Or I won't be responsible for my actions. I'll do whatever it takes to get you out of the way and have Dimitri return to me/"

"Try telling that to him," I shot back. "He chose me. Not the other way around, you demented bitch. Try and take a little responsibility for your actions for once."

I turned, but then she grabbed my wrist and I yelped.

"You will stay away from Dimitri," Tasha said, her voice suddenly cool and calm, her blue eyes burning into mine.

I stared back, and for a moment she made sense. It was a good idea to stay away from Dimitri…He should be with Tasha.

But then I realized what she was doing. The eye contact, the smooth-talking…She was trying to compel me. Thanks to my bond with Lissa, I had a higher resistance to compulsion.

"No fucking way," I said, snatching my wrist back from her. "You're insane. Go fuck yourself because Dimitri won't ever come back to you. Goodbye."

I turned to walk back to the lodge, but I felt a sudden stab of pain in my arm. I looked down and saw a needle sticking out of my arm and gasped. Where the fuck did that come from?

My heart started to race more quickly than usual and I realized that it must be from…whatever was in the needle. I yanked it out and winced. I really didn't like needles.

I felt really high – like I was floating on clouds, on top of the world. It was almost close to the golden euphoria of the endorphins from a Moroi bite or the warm feelings I felt from Lissa whenever she used spirit. It was like a blanket promising that everything would be okay.

I dimly registered a sickly, sweet smell and a rustling behind me before I felt something hard strike the back of my head. The whole world went black and I floated into an oblivion.

Author's note: Yay finally updated! Please read and review :)

To the last reviewer: If you're going to be so negative about the story, do everyone a favor and just stop reading and complaining about it. Simple as that.