"Heard about the show you put on in class today, Rose. You went to the trouble to change your name, but I'm not sure you understand the concept of a low profile."

Ivan had worked through lunch with Alexei by his side, so this was the first time our whole group had gotten together, able to discuss the events at hand. Despite how Alexei might have heard about my… episode… the news obviously hadn't reached Ivan yet, he looked at the rest of us, puzzled.

"What show, Rose?"

"I wanted to wait until all of us were together to discuss this," Dimitri clarified to his Moroi. "Rose and the princess… are bonded."

Whatever Alexei imagined has happened, with his tireless sarcasm or jokes towards me, it certainly wasn't that. He and Ivan froze for a moment, shocked. Upon a moment's consideration the guardian gasped and started to ramble aloud to himself, obviously unable to control his reaction as well as Ivan had recovered remarkably faster.

"When did she di-" another gasp from Alexei. "The Dragomir accident."

Dimitri nodded solemnly, as if he was confirming his partner's ramblings. "That's what I thought as well."

"Hold up," I said, slamming my hands down on the desk we were all standing around. "What are you guys talking about? What does the accident have anything to do with this?"

For a moment, the three of them shifted their eyes amongst themselves, uncomfortable.

"I vote Dimitri. They're… close" Alexei said, adding a strange inflection to the word close.

I blushed, remembering how he had walked in on Dimitri and I earlier. I can only imagine how he interpreted the gesture. Ignoring Ivan's raised eyebrows, I focus in on Dimitri.

"How much do you know about how your bond was formed?" he asked, unnervingly gentle.

"Nothing," I admitted. "I woke up in the hospital and it was overwhelming. Some people were asking me a billion questions but I was so tired and all I wanted to was to find out where my parents and Rose- I just wanted to find out where I was. I was so confused and there was the most annoying beeping sound and I just knew I had to get out so I held onto the beeping sound and I found myself in a different hospital bed. I was alone." I gave myself a moment to collect my thoughts. "I guess that was the first time I was aware of the bond."

Ivan nodded solemnly, taking over from Dimitri. "You are probably unaware of my research as a whole, but it's pretty pertinent. I've found myself to be a sort of," he paused, grasping for the words, "magic historian. We have been working for the better part of the past few years on learning more about magic and its uses around the world. We've met with people who live off the grid and use their magic to protect themselves, as I've been teaching students here. But we've also met a handful of people who have a rare magic that, for the most part, has been considered lost.

"Has Princess Vasilisa specialized in any specific magic?" Ivan asked the question as if he already knew my answer.

"She never did," I answered, curious as to where he was going.

"From our research, we don't believe that anyone truly goes unspecialized."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Ivan continued. "Rather than being unspecialized, we believe the Princess, like others, specialized in that rare, supposedly lost magic I mentioned."

It was all a lot to process, but I realized with a start how much this could help Lissa. She'd gone so long, dragged down by the idea that she was inferior, stunted. Her teachers had long since given up on her specializing before we ran away, sticking her in private study with the weird teacher, Sonya Karp, and hoping something would trigger her. But even now, I knew Mia and some Royal Moroi gave her grief for still being in the Freshman classes for those students who were unspecialized. The knowledge that she was a part of a new magic altogether could change her whole world.

"What can she do? What is it called?" I pressed, leaning forward.

"We call it Spirit. It's more variable than other magics, as far as what we've read or heard about from the few Moroi who've admittedly possessed it."

"Like who, what can they do?"

Dimitri spoke up from beside me, "Back in Baia, my village, there is a woman named Oksana who wields Spirit. She can see auras, little waves of color coming off of a person that reflect their emotions and intentions. She also possesses healing magic, which she can imbue silver with to create charms to help the wearer. St. Vladimir, for whom your school in Montana was named, also had the gift of healing, and incredible charm to others."

When Dimitri spoke of auras and St. Vladimir, I had the vague idea that maybe they were playing some kind of joke on me. None of this could possibly be real, but then it struck me.

"Lissa can heal too, I saw her bring a raven back to life once." The words hung heavy for a moment, the men nervously glancing at each other but not denying the possibility, like I assumed most people might. "I still don't see what this has to do with the accident or our bond…"

Dimitri sighed softly, taking the lead once again. "Oksana has a bond mate as well, his name is Mark. Mark is her guardian and…" Dimitri hesitated, "he died protecting her from Strigoi. Oksana, overcome with grief for losing her guardian and her partner, used her healing powers to bring him back to life."

The world spun. They couldn't mean that I… My vision blurred and I was vaguely aware of Alexei pulling over a chair and Dimitri guiding me back into it by my shoulders.

We were all quiet for a few moments.

When I spoke again, my mouth felt dry and I had to clear my throat a few times to speak. "They said that, where I was in the car that night, I shouldn't have survived… but I- I made it out with only a few scrapes. No one could explain it."

"For the bond to have formed," Ivan explained, "You would have had to die in the car that night and Lissa, probably overtaken by grief, triggered her specialization in reaching out to heal you. We call it being shadow kissed, because you went to the land of the shadows and returned. You've seen the afterlife."

"And I didn't even get a t-shirt," I remarked, blindly trying to bring a semblance of life into the room. Alexei chuckled, while Ivan looked at me with extreme caution and empathy. Dimitri cast his eyes to the floor, contemplative.

"What happened today in your training?" Ivan pressed.

"I was in Lissa's head again. She- well someone's playing games with her head. It's dumb. She was just upset and I couldn't get out of her head."

"Rose said that she took Vasilisa away from the Academy because these things have happened before," Dimitri picked up for me. "Someone was taunting the Princess and she took her away at the request of the Princess's magic teacher… want to guess her name?"

Ivan looked speculative. "Sonya Karp?"

It was all too weird. "Wait- what do you know about Sonya Karp?" I interrupted their exchange. "She was Lissa's mentor before we left, but she's gone now. No one will tell her anything."

Lissa had told me much in our emails, but I had written it off. Nevertheless, it was a topic she brought up several times since the first, something wasn't sitting right with her. The teachers would immediately change the subject. Her guardian would claim not to know anything and, despite her being a new arrival, her tone made it seem less than truthful.

The trio grew uncomfortable again, shifting eyes.

"There's a little more I need to tell you about my research into Spirit," Ivan admitted. "Do you remember when I said it was… forgotten?"

I nodded. These men really needed to stop beating around the bush.

"Well, I think that I'd less that it's been forgotten… and more that it's been, well, buried. Spirit isn't like the other four elements. For those, the user draws their power from the natural world, from the element itself. But with Spirit, the magic feeds off of the energy of the user."

"Which is why Lissa gets so weak after she uses it," I supplied.

"Exactly," Ivan confirmed. "Using Spirit takes the light energy-"

"The golden feeling I can feel welling up inside her when she wants to use her magic?"

"Yes. It takes that energy and it changes it into a sort of… darkness. It can present itself as a sort of madness."

"I've never seen that in Lissa, though…"

I suddenly wished Alexei would break the tension in the room with one of his usual witty remarks. Instead, he stood motionless against the wall, having removed himself from the conversation and taken up the role of guarding.

Dimitri took charge. "As Oksana and Mark explain it, a shadow kissed individual, having died and touched the shadows, is capable of pulling the darkness away from their bond mate. It may manifest in you as… uncontrollable emotions. You either have to burn through them or, as they have learned, you can wear a Spirit-infused charm to ease the effects."

I circled back to the original person in question, drawing on old memories. "Ms Karp, everyone thought she was unspecialized… but she healed me once. She didn't have anyone to help her, though. That's why everyone thought she was so strange… why we called her crazy."

Suddenly, I felt ablaze and I turned my gaze directly into Ivan's eyes. "What happened to Ms Karp?"

"She couldn't get rid of the darkness," Ivan conceded, "so she did the only thing that made sense to her. She became Strigoi."

Needless to say, we didn't do much language practice after that. My head was spinning with the information. Willingly becoming a Strigoi was so… taboo in our society. I could hardly imagine that being someone's only source of salvation.

I followed Dimitri to the sportzal for our afternoon practice.

"Let's go for a run in the woods," he offered, standing from his chair once I'd come back from changing.

"Nice try," I laughed. "I've only been running on the track so far. That's just an invitation for me to get lost in the wilderness."

Dimitri smirked at me, as if the answer to my problems was so obvious at this moment. "I will be running with you today."

"Since when?" I asked as we pushed through the doors and into the lingering sunlight. A lot of the color that was usually suppressed on me had built up over the past few weeks of running outside. At least the physical exhaustion of constant running was paying off somehow. "You always make me run alone."

He shrugged, leading me towards the trails that snaked through the school's forested surroundings. The larch trees around us were slowly fading in a stunning, golden yellow as the season wore on. It was magnetizing.

"I figured you might need a longer run for processing and, if need be, someone to process with."

We set off, quiet except for our footfalls and his periodic directions when the trail split, always in Russian. They had done a good job of acclimating me to the language, but I was grateful that they still lapsed into English when we were all gathered, just to make me the most comfortable. Settling in beside me, Dimitri let me set the place, which was admittedly a bit slow as I tried to stop myself from thinking.

About a mile or two in, I turned to Dimitri, hanging a right around a curve as he called it. "If I take the darkness from Lissa… am I going to become like Ms Karp?" I said it quietly, barely above a whisper, but in the silence of the forest Dimitri still heard me.

"Not at all," he replied immediately, reassuring but firm. "Ms Karp and a lot of other Spirit users, they get locked away for insanity." At the look on my face, he fumbled, "Hear me out. We've met some of these users, locked away because they don't have anyone, because their madness concentrates with no release. But we've also met couples like Mark and Oksana who balance each other. Mark can pull the darkness, but Oksana can create charms powerful enough to heal it away. It's all about learning to… live with the powers that are bestowed on you both."

Dimitri allowed me to lapse into silence for another mile or so.

"So do I get any cool powers?"

"Huh?" Dimitri grunted. Then, realizing what I'd meant, he chuckled to himself. "Mark has had experiences, because of how you shadow kissed enter the world of the dead, he's had experiences communicating with ghosts."

"Talking to ghosts," I weighed. "That's pretty sick."

"Not as Mark tells us," Dimitri replied grimly. "He says it takes a really big physical toll when he lets his guard down, but that he's learned to control it with some mental barriers."

"Well I haven't seen any ghosts yet. So, I think I'm in the clear from that ability."

"Perhaps," Dimitri confirmed. "Spirit powers are variable so maybe shadow kissed powers are too. Regardless, maybe we can set up some time for you to meet the two of them. It could be helpful to get some context."

"I'd like that. I'd like to learn more about what distance can do for the bond. I'm worried for Lissa," I admitted, thinking back to the incident from earlier. "Someone is playing these cruel jokes on her and I'm not there, immediately at least, to do something about it."

"She'll be fine. If the Princess has you to protect her, regardless of where you are," Dimitri clarified, "she'll be fine."