Scared and upset and alone. These feelings weren't aftershocks from the Queen's humiliation. Something was terribly wrong with Lissa.

I gasped, jolted from the conversation and into her head.

Back in Oksana's home, I could feel Dimitri grab my arm, but worried chants of Rose. Roza. Roza? were lost to me.

"No no no," I agonized, taking in the scene playing out in front of my eyes.

Lissa was frozen in the doorway to her bedroom, just getting back from spending time with Christian away from the banquet. After weeks of no pranks or surprises, here was the worst surprise anyone could have sprung on her.

My stomach heaved. There, in the center of her and Natalie's room, was some… creature. Lissa's own thoughts confirmed it was a rabbit of some kind, but I didn't know how she could possibly tell.

All I could focus on was blood. Blood slowly crawling outwards on the wooden floor. Chunks of fur torn open and globs of gore I didn't want to look closer at. Lissa was trained on it. She crept closer, dropping to her knees in front of the thing. Blood reached for her beautiful dress, one she had borrowed from Natalie for the night.

I felt the familiar golden light well up inside me.

"Don't do it Lissa," I chanted to myself, to no avail. Load of good a one-way bond could serve in times of crisis.

I felt the same fluttering sensation, hot and cold, as I had earlier – Oksana was brushing my mind again. She was seeing with me.

Behind Lissa, we could vaguely register Natalie's cheerful voice, "Lissa, I've been looking for you." She cut herself off, her usually bubbly tone draining from her voice, because unwinding before her eyes was a miracle.

Lissa reached out, putting her hands on the creature. It twitched, pieces of itself seeming to knit back together. But the rabbit was too far gone. No amount of magic could save something that… dead.

She sat backwards, crumpling a note that lay next to the creature in her hand, and backing away, trying to get as much distance as she could between her and the animal. Lissa wiped tears from her eye, but in doing so, smeared some of the blood on her fingers onto her face. She flinched into herself.

Natalie caught her, dropping to her knees and soothing her. "We should get this cleaned up," she said, the most serious and unflinching I'd ever heard her. "No one can know about this."

Lissa was silent, shocked as she sat, frozen. When Natalie ran out the door, she uncurled her fist, uncrumpling the blood-stained paper she'd hastily grabbed from beside the mess. It was so saturated it was nearly impossible to read.

I know what you are. You won't survive being here. I'll make sure of it. Leave now. It's the only way you might make it out alive.

Natalie snuck back in, arms full of paper towels and one of the large black bags that lined the bathroom trash bins. Lissa moved to help her, concealing the note in one of the paper towels as she dragged it through the mess, attempting to help clean up. There was no use for it now. The damage had been done.

Together, she and Natalie made quick work of the mess. Natalie had the forethought to grab some of the all-purpose cleaner that the custodians kept under the cabinets. With it, the room almost looked exactly as they'd left it.

Almost, but not quite. That much was clear as Lissa looked down at herself, blood smeared on her hands and the skirt of the dress. "I'm sorry about your dress," she told Natalie robotically.

"Don't be," Natalie gasped, moving to cradle Lissa's face gently in her hands, like a mother admiring their child. It was bizarre. "Take it off, throw it in this bag, and get cleaned up. I'll talk to my daddy while you're showering and we'll get this all straightened out, alright? No one else has to know about it."

Lissa nodded blindly. She was numb. At the same time, she was freaking out. Who was doing this to her? Had Natalie seen what she'd tried to do? Why couldn't all the pain just go away?

She moved around the room, gathering exactly what she needed for a shower. Towel. Robe. Soap. Unexpectedly, she grabbed her razor.

Why would she need to shave after something like this?

I gasped, pulling myself from Lissa's head in a desperate search for help.

"Oksana you need to help me," I plead.

"What was going on, Rose?" She asked wary and horrified.

I registered Dimitri's hand, grasping mine and stroking it. When I looked in his eyes, they held overwhelming empathy and fear. Painstakingly, I tore my eyes away from his, seeking out Mark.

"How do you take the darkness?" I pleaded with him.

"Rose, that's not a good idea-"

"No, Mark. You need to tell me. I have to help Lissa."

Mark sighed, running a hand through his hair. I felt antsy. Every second I wasn't with Lissa was a second where she was closer to hurting herself. She had started cutting every so often since the accident and I didn't understand it. It scared me. I'd found her once, when we were away from the academy, blood dripping from her wrists. She tried to explain to me, how it wasn't about death so much as it was about release. Sometimes, she just needed a physical outlet to get all of the grief inside of her out. It was the only way she could get it all out.

"Okay," he conceded. I let out a rush of air that I didn't know I was holding. "You have to concentrate on her, on the emotions she is feeling. You have to will them into yourself, like you're pulling them out of her."

With a nod, I found myself back in Lissa's head. She had just turned the shower on, stepping under the icy blast as if it was any other temperature of water. As the water warmed, she moved to clean herself, and I knew what her intentions were once she'd gotten all the blood off.

With great effort, I concentrated harder on her. On the emotions rolling out from her that pulled me in in the first place. On the surface, she was numb. Underneath it all, she was scared. She was hurting. She was… on edge. I held onto those emotions, willing them away from her and into myself.

Suddenly, it worked. Her emotions hit me like a ton of bricks but I could feel her lighten up, beginning to take stock of what was really going on.

"Rose?" She asked aloud. I was already gone.

When I came to, Mark was nowhere to be seen. Oksana was crouched in front of me, reaching out to hold the hand that Dimitri didn't have a grasp on.

I felt a bitterness rising up in me, and I shook both of them off. "Get off of me," I whispered.

Dimitri attempted to protest, but I shot him a stony glare. Surprised, he shut up.

"Leave me alone," I said firmly as Oksana reached out to grab me again.

"I swear, Rose," she pressed. "I can help you."

I scoffed. "The only thing that will help this is finding the bastard who keeps doing this to her."

Just then, Mark reentered the room, holding a small jewelry box. "You have to trust me," Oksana plead, reaching out for my hand. I allowed her to take it.

Being on the receiving end of healing magic wasn't something you ever got used to. When Ms Karp had healed me back at the academy, it had been unexpected, something I had never thought possible since I hadn't been awake when Lissa had healed me initially. On account of being dead, of course.

Now, even in the short burst, I could savor it. Much like when I felt the feeling well up in Lissa, it was golden. Hot and cold, just like when Oksana brushed my mind. And gone all too soon.

It felt as though a weight had been physically lifted from my shoulders, though I still felt affected by the weight of what I'd just seen. I glanced at her and Dimitri with remorse, holding neither's gaze, afraid it might cause tears to start forming in my eyes. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me."

"You're fine," Oksana hummed, reaching behind her to scoop a silver ring from the jewelry box Mark had brought to us. Dimitri was silent beside me.

"I know the feeling," Mark assured me. "When you take your bondmate's darkness, it can manifest as exactly what they're feeling. Lissa had just gone through a trauma, so you were wary to trust."

"Where did it go?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"I healed it from you," Oksana said lightly, testing a silver ring that fit perfectly on my middle finger. She removed it and I sputtered.

"You… how?"

Mark answered for her as Oksana concentrated on the silver in her hands, closing it inside her fist. She was radiant, hard to tear your eyes away from. "Darkness is synonymous with Spirit users," he explained. "Where most elemental magic takes power from the world around the user, Spirit feeds off of the Moroi themselves. Darkness to balance the light. When a shadow kissed person takes the darkness away from their bondmate, it can affect our moods, but it's now no longer an innate part of the person, more like any other illness or injury. A Spirit user can heal that kind of ailment away."

"I'm so sorry," I apologized to Mark. "Now that I know what it feels like, I'm so sorry I put you through that."

"It's okay," he reassured me. "Oksana and I can manage it."

"One of the ways," Oksana continued. "Is with Spirit charms."

"Ivan has mentioned those too… how do they work?"

"You know silver stakes, right? They're infused with magic from all four elements. You can also infuse silver with spirit and it will slowly give the wearer healing magic and protection." She slipped the ring onto my finger. Though nothing felt drastically different, I did feel a hum of peace enter me. "They don't last forever though, they do have to be reinfused."

"Thank you," I whispered.

"It's no problem at all," she smiled, standing to sit back with Mark on their couch. She looked a little dazed, but perked up when she sat beside him.

"Interesting stuff," I mused, looking at the ring on my right hand. Like stakes, it bared no trace of the magic it stored inside. "I wonder what would happen if you infused a stake with spirit."

Ivan's eyes widened beside me, and he moved to furiously scribble a note on a page that seemed filled with musings on the encounter he'd just witnessed.

"I can't imagine anything," Dimitri said beside me. I turned to look him in the eyes, finally. "Stakes are made to kill… healing magic directly contradicts that."

"I suppose you're right."