"This is embarrassing," I groaned as Dimitri reached to pull me up from my place, splayed on the gym floor.
A few weeks had passed since my arrival at St. Basil's and, despite Dimitri finally allowing me to take combat practice with the other students, I was still getting my ass handed to me by him and everyone else in the class.
"You keep teaching me to do all this running," I remarked, moving back into a defensive stance, hands guarded near my face. "But I still can't land a hit on you," I side step one of his swings, spinning backwards.
"Running will be your best defense if you run into a Strigoi," he grunted, sweeping my legs out from under me. I rolled quickly back to my feet. "Good recovery."
"Ignoring the outright insult, that's ridiculous. You can't be serious," I strike out towards his shoulder, which he easily deflects, sending an elbow into my own exposed shoulder. He was going easy on me, and it was infuriating, though understandable.
"I'm not, that was a really good recovery."
"Hardy har har," I mocked, looking for my opening. "Why would I ever run from a Strigoi when I could just take it out?"
"I'm training you to fight the undead and protect Moroi. Stamina and overall fitness are vital to that, but no training can prepare you for a real-world encounter, and no situation is the same. If you're outnumbered or you don't have access to a weapon or you just need to, you run."
"And say I do, but they catch up to me," I postured. "What then? If I can't get a hit on my classmates, some of which aren't even training to become guardians… UGH," I was out of my element, unable to form words when I was dodging my own insecurities and Dimitri's force. "I'm sick of running," swing, "and I'm sick of you making me practice my stance," duck, "and I'm sick of my punches bouncing off everyone."
"Hit harder," he grunted, landing a gnarly kick to my shin.
I saw Dimitri aiming for my upper body, so I steeled myself up in an attempt to deflect him.
And then I felt it. Fear ricocheting into my body like a bullet. None of it my own.
The impact of Dimitri's hit pushed me back, and I could vaguely feel my body fall onto the gym floor again. Any real pain from the impact was masked with Lissa's adrenaline coursing through me.
Dimitri was no longer in front of me. I was in the familiarity of a St Vladimir's Moroi dorm room, which I remembered from sleepovers with Lissa back before I left, when she needed my comfort directly after the accident and I would sneak right into her window without a hitch.
Only, now, there was blood.
Shiny and crimson. Matte and dark. All blending together as it seeped into her once brilliantly white duvet cover.
There, on her pillow, laid an orange blur. Fur, I realized. Wiry and positioned as if the creature had laid down on her bed for rest, the fox looked almost… tame. Cuddly. Serene.
Until you considered the source of the blood.
The fox's throat had been slit roughly, revealing the pink lining. It was disgusting and cruel. Whoever had done this was twisted. Worst of all, the poor creature was still twitching.
I could feel the golden light bubble up in Lissa, but as she took a step forward, a warm hand wrapped around her wrist.
Christian. They had been studying together and he offered to walk her back to the dorm. Now, he gripped her firmly, halting her attempts to draw closer to the poor creature. If only she could help it…
Christian pulled her back by the arm, "We should go get the dorm Matron," he suggested.
"I need to-"
"There's nothing we can do," he pressed, pulling her from the room. "We need to report this to someone."
For once in my life, I was thankful for Christian Ozera. He lead her out, pausing before closing the door so that no one else could see inside.
"Roza."
I blinked my eyes, as if waking up from a long nap, and found myself on the soft mats of the sportzal. Dimitri knelt beside me, one hand shaking my shoulder gently as he spoke to a guardian next to him, I was vaguely aware that everyone had stopped practicing, intently focused on me where I lay on the mats.
"This has never happened before," Dimitri relayed to Guardian Anatolyevna. "Someone go get-"
I pushed against his hand, where he had pinned my shoulder to the mat. His head swung back to face me, but I didn't allow him to get any questions in.
"I need your phone," I said, swinging my leg under me to stand. I was aware of a tenderness in right shoulder, likely where Dimitri had met his target moments before.
"Not before you explain to me-"
I felt bad cutting him off, I really did. But I had greater fish to fry at the current moment. "It's Lissa," I pleaded. "Please, give me your phone."
Dimitri seemed to consider it for a moment, but before I could ask him again, a strange look washed through his eyes. He made towards his leather duster, where he had left it next to our place on the practice mats.
I followed him, plucking it from his hands and racing outside of the sportzal doors, Dimitri hot on my heels. In one of our emails, Lissa had given me the number to the phone at her dorm matron's desk, just in case of emergency. At the time, Lissa had implied that contacting her on the line might necessitate a heavy hand of compulsion, considering the phones were reserved for in-campus communication between staff, but it would be worth it no matter the outcome.
The first call met a busy line, likely because they had already alerted the dorm matron to the situation and she was contacting the office to get the right people involved. But seconds later, on my second call, the line cleared.
"Hello," the matron answered, voice jittery from the commotion.
"Let me talk to Lissa."
With a surprising lack of convincing, I heard the phone get handed off.
Lissa answered, uncertain. "Hello?"
"Lissa, it's Rose."
I heard her sob on the other end, and I suddenly wished I could be there, stroking her hair and reminding her that everything would be fine. So I did it verbally.
"Everything is going to be okay, Lissa. You're safe. They're going to figure out who did that and it'll be alright," I assured her.
"Were you there? Did you see it? Oh Rose, it was so horrible," she sniveled.
"Someone has a disgusting sense of humor," I snapped. "It's repulsive, the nerve of some people. If I could get my hands on Mia…"
"You don't think it was Mia, do you?"
"I don't know who it was, and I don't care. But they'll get it cleaned up for you, I'm sure they'd even more you to a new room, if you wanted," I assured her. I could feel Dimitri's eyes on me, trying to extrapolate anything he could from the conversation.
"Rose…" Lissa whispered, "Do you remember the last time-"
"No, Lissa. This isn't the same thing. No one saw the raven. This is just some dumb prank, it has nothing to do with that."
On the other end, I could hear a commotion start to rise.
"I have to go, Rose."
"Don't worry Lissa, we'll-" and the phone cut out.
I let out a deep, swooping sigh, staring at the phone a moment before passing it over to Dimitri. He took it gently, standing beside me silently. After a few more moments, I tried to grasp for an explanation. "It was Lissa…. She, uh-"
"May I ask a personal question, Rose?"
"Yeah," I responded, unsure of where he was going with this.
"Are you and the Princess… bonded?" It was almost as if he was tasting the words on his tongue for the first time, whispering it like a secret.
I nodded cautiously, turning to look into his eyes. I'd pictured them vaguely, holding skepticism, disbelief, maybe even admonishment for how I had acted i. Instead, they were gentle. He held my gaze softly. I suppose my own eyes betrayed my surprise.
Behind us, the sportzal door opened, and my fellow novices came flooding out, bound for bodyguard theory in the next classroom. Dimitri and I sprung backwards, allowing the crowd to pass between us. Rather than meet the eyes of any of my fellow classmates, I cast my gaze downward. When the final student passed, I moved back towards the doors, pulling one open so that I could slip inside. Guardian Anatolyevna caught my gaze but I looked away, beelining to grab my backpack and hoodie.
When I slipped back out, Dimitri matched my stride, but instead of leading me towards the usual classroom, he corralled me back towards the dhampir dorms. Rather than question him, I followed as he lead me silently into the first floor common room, gesturing for me to take a seat as he fidgeted with his phone. Then, he slid into the chair across from me.
We took a second just staring at each other before he just asked, "What happened?"
Unsure how much he understood beyond having sensed what exactly Lissa and I's connection was – how? I couldn't begin to understand - I decided to go with the basics.
"I was in… Lissa's head," I explained warily. "It happens sometimes, if she's feeling particularly strong emotions, like when she has nightmares about the accident or… when someone leaves a dead fox on her bed at St Vladimir's."
Dimitri looked shocked, eyes widening. "Is that what happened today?"
I nodded, biting my lip and breaking our eye contact.
"It's just a cruel joke. I mean, I don't want her to worry too much when I'm not there to talk to her all the time, and she has guardians looking over her, my dad made sure of it, but… there was this incident two years ago, right before I took her away.
"We were walking in the woods one day, we skipped class or something stupid, and Lissa found this bird, just dying on the ground. So, whenever she sees something helpless, something injured, this feeling just wells up inside of her- When I feel it, it feels like… this golden warmth just radiating out," I felt stupid trying to explain it to Dimitri, who probably didn't even believe a word of what I said. But when I looked up and met his eyes again, he nodded, total faith in his eyes. I felt something flutter in my stomach, my attraction to Dimitri had been building like a slow burn but, beyond that, I had never felt so trusted outside of Lissa.
"She went up to it and when she touched it- I swear to god Dimitri, this sounds insane but the bird was really dead, we saw it die, and then when she touched it, the golden energy just exploded and suddenly the bird was awake and it just got up and flew away.
"Lissa's mentor saw the whole thing and made her promise never to do it again- made me promise to never let anyone find out. But then, we felt like someone was watching us and the teacher, she was just getting so restless, like something bad was going to happen, and she made me promise to get Lissa away from all of it, to keep her safe.
"So, we ran away. Lissa was really scared and worried, so I told her that I would do anything to protect her, like a guardian should, so I took her away." At this point, I felt desperate to explain myself to Dimitri, who was leaning back in his seat, taking it all in. "When we got back, I told her everything would be fine, no matter where I was, that by now whatever threat she thought was there was gone. I told her that the fox today was just a joke but there's a really small part of me, Dimitri, that worries that it isn't, and I'm all the way over here, helpless. She's got great guardians protecting her, but I should be there too, we're bonded…" I petered off, barely speaking above a whisper.
Dimitri and I were silent for a while. I tried to catch my breath, suddenly worried that I'd said too much. Dimitri seemed to sense the change in me, briefly hesitating before he reached forward to rest his hand over mine. I watched his thumb run circles into the back of it, a simple, comforting gesture.
"I've never told anyone that before," I admitted.
Without a moment's hesitation, Dimitri responded, "Thank you. For trusting me, and for telling me everything. I wish you'd had someone to trust there, but now I know that you didn't take her away for selfish reasons, like everyone assumed, you took her away because you're her guardian, they come first, and you wanted to prioritize her safety and well-being. That takes a lot of guts and self-awareness, especially when you were so young."
He meant it sincerely, and I almost blushed under his gaze. "Yeah, well. My dad did the heavy lifting on making sure that we were actually safe the whole time."
"Regardless," he defended, "you made the calls and you put her first over any other reasons, you could have stayed to protect your own reputation, but you took her away, risking it all."
"And look how that worked out for me."
Suddenly, the door swung open and Alexei strode in.
"I figured you guys were still in here," he said. Alexei paused a second, eyebrow quirking up when he took sight of Dimitri's hand, clasped over mine. His eyes met Dimitri's and he tilted his head, smirking. "Best not miss another class, eh?"
