I excused myself, eager to catch a moment alone.
As soon as everything had settled, Ivan took to asking Mark and Oksana a million questions, especially about her experience brushing my mind while I was in Lissa's. It had been dangerous, she said, and I suddenly felt like a burden, having put the couple at risk healing Lissa and I's troubles.
It only took one look at myself in the small mirror of their bathroom for the tears to start welling up and over my eyes. I hadn't cried in years, not even when Lissa and I had said our goodbyes at St Vladimir's – her eyes had flooded as she desperately clung to my shoulders, but I had put on a brave face so she would feel assured that we could get through the separation.
Now? I wasn't so sure.
Maybe, if I had been with her, the incident tonight would never have happened. She wouldn't have used her magic and she wouldn't have felt the need to hurt herself.
Deep down, I knew it wasn't as simple as that. But I couldn't help but hope.
A few moments passed before I heard a light knocking on the door.
"Rose? Roza, please let me in. Dimitri's voice came through the door, strong and clear. I tried desperately to will my eyes to dry, but I couldn't. There was no way I could open the door in this state. Sensing this, Dimitri stayed silent on the other side, but never moved away.
After a few minutes, my tears lightened up and I moved to open the door, avoiding my own reflection. I knew what I looked like; red and puffy. Not the ideal way to interact with a man you had a crush on, but I had nothing to lose at this point. It's not like that was ever going to happen.
"Oh Roza," Dimitri whispered, taking in my appearance. "Are you okay?"
It was the most ridiculous question someone could ask at the current moment, but it still made me crack a smile. "Never better," I quipped, returning to old habits of sarcasm first and feelings never.
"Come on," he said, gesturing behind him to a door leading outside.
I followed him blindly into the large garden surrounding Mark and Oksana's home. The sun had long since set and, remembering that I had woken up a whole sunset before, I suddenly felt extremely tired. The crying hadn't helped.
Wordlessly, Dimitri handed me his cell phone. I stared at it, puzzled for a moment, before I realized what he was offering: the chance to talk to Lissa. With no warning, I launched myself into his arms, feeling the fatigue that had sunken into my bones lift minutely.
"Thank you thank you thank you," I breathed into his shoulder. He hesitated before wrapping both of his arms around me, enveloping me in his comforting scent and providing the physical comfort I seriously needed right now. Dimitri was a good hugger.
He let me go, lingering just long enough to make me hope the hug would never end, and passed the phone into my hands.
I'd made a point to memorize the telephone number for Lissa's dorm as soon as she'd given it to me in her initial email, so it was easy enough to remember.
The same dorm matron who presided over the desk the last time I'd called answered, putting me on hold when I requested Lissa, and transferring the call to her room once she'd confirmed they were awake. I'd known as much with only a quick check of the bond – Lissa was still rattled by what had happened.
"Hello?" She asked timidly.
"Lissa."
"Rose, is that you?" She let out of soft choke, covering up as a sob as relief flooded through the bond. "Rose, it's horrible."
"I know, Liss. I saw."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean-"
"Don't you dare apologize," I scolded her. I knew she felt bad for all the times she pulled me into her head in a panic, for the sleepless nights and worry they caused me, but it was far from something she could control – especially in the case of this rabbit, where outside forces were definitely at play. I told her as much.
"Did you see the note?" She asked timidly.
"Yeah," I confirmed softly. That note would be etched into my mind forever. "I swear, Lissa. If I knew what was going on here, I would be back on a flight in a heartbeat to take you away from that place. You could come stay with me in Baia and I would keep you safe."
Lissa laughed half-heartedly at my rambling attempts to reassure her. She stopped. "I can't unsee it, Rose."
"Me neither."
"It was like it… exploded."
We both knew as much, and I didn't need to confirm the details with her.
"Lissa… Why did you try to heal it?"
She was silent on the other side for a moment. "I swear, I didn't mean to. Some part of me knew that it was too far gone. But, some part of me also hoped I could help it. I thought-"
"You can't try to do that, Lissa. The way it made you try and hurt yourself. You have to stop-"
Lissa gasped on the other side. "That was you- how?"
I knew what she was referring to – the incident in the shower where, through Oksana and Mark's coaching, I had been able to take the darkness welling up inside of her.
"It's a long story…"
"Well, I'm not going to sleep any time soon, and I miss your stories," she said.
"I've met another bonded pair here, Lissa."
She gasped, intrigue and excitement flooding the bond. It was a welcome change in emotion. "Who? Where?"
"They live in Dimitri's hometown, Baia."
Lissa already knew, from my emails, about my trip to Baia, so it saved me some of the courser details of explaining how we'd gotten to their place. I told her all about what had happened in the brief time I'd been here, down to Yeva's weird premonitions that had gotten me to Mark and Oksana in the most uncanny timing. Maybe, I could believe there was some truth to the old woman's ramblings.
Lissa seemed thankful for the distraction, warm feelings rolling through the bond especially when it came to knowing that I was accompanied by my hot mentor on this holiday. Some things, like Rose Hathaway having a crush, never got old to her. For once, among recent events, she was happy to encounter even the smallest bits of normalcy.
"Anyway, Oksana is a Moroi woman and Mark is her shadow-kissed guardian, he's a dhampir and they're married."
She gasped, marveling in the fact just as I had; Moroi-dhampir marriages were a rarity of our world of traditions and status.
"Oksana has all these unique abilities," I continued. "She can heal like you, but she can also read minds and see auras."
"What are those?" Lissa asked from the other side.
I tried to explain the rings of light that everyone carried around themselves the best I could.
Dimitri, keeping quiet to himself before that moment, spoke up from beside me. "Oksana has told us before that she just needs to concentrate on a person, opening herself up to the idea of seeing them, before they start to become clearer around you."
"Did you hear that?" I asked Lissa, knowing very well she would with her enhanced hearing.
"Yes! Do you know anything else?"
"She said that it was one of her first abilities, but it still required a lot of patience and focus," he continued. "Don't get discouraged if it takes you time, Princess."
I rolled my eyes at his formality. "She also said that someone who is shadow-kissed has a ring of darkness around their aura."
"Yours and any other spirit user would have gold," Dimitri supplied.
On the other side, I could hear Lissa scribbling notes, ever the scholar.
"What does it mean that you have darkness?" She asked.
I hesitated. I had no right keeping this from Lissa, and maybe having the knowledge would be enough to serve as a self-supplied limitation on her use of magic.
"Well, because I technically had to die to become bonded to you… I've touched darkness, so I maintain a connection to it." We'd talked about as much over email before. "Part of being bonded is that, beyond being able to feel your emotions, like the darkness that welled up inside of you and made you want to hurt yourself, I can also take them away from you… into myself."
"No!" Lissa exclaimed, easily picking up on the implications of my words.
"Don't worry, Lissa. Mark and Oksana also taught me how I could deal with that. You can heal darkness out of me just like any other ailment."
"But I- I'm not there Rose."
Desperate to keep her heart from breaking, I fumbled for more explanation. I swiveled my eyes frantically to Dimitri's and he grabbed my hand, pointing at and fumbling with the ring. I understood his point.
"There are other ways! Doesn't your Uncle Victor make earth magic charms?"
"Yeah, he used to help with charming stakes before he got sick," she confirmed.
"Well, evidently, you can charm silver with spirit just the same. It becomes something like a healing spell for the person wearing it, like in a ring… it wears off after a while, but it can be effective in the meantime and provide protection."
"Ivan has written a few things about the uses of magic charms outside of stakes. I can give his manuscripts to Rose to send to you," Dimitri said for both of us to hear. Since he had picked up my hand to indicate the ring, he hadn't let go. Instead, he was studying it with peculiar interest, his forehead knotted together thoughtfully.
"Yes, thank you Guardian Belikov."
Two could play at the game of over-the-top titles, I laughed to myself.
"So that's what you did?" Lissa continued, directing her words to me this time. I'd almost forgot how we'd gotten on this train of thought in the first place.
"Yeah, Lissa… I didn't want you hurting yourself again."
She sighed. "I know. I've been doing well, I swear. Haven't even thought about it since I got back…. But something about… when I saw it… I just couldn't take it, Rose. It was too much and I felt like I would, I don't know, EXPLODE if I didn't get it out of me. I had to let it out."
"I know. I know." I knew, but I didn't understand, and I couldn't pretend to. "Luckily, we have a way of dealing with that now." Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Dimitri frown, maybe thinking of the time. "Anyway, it's getting late and I think we should be getting back to our rental soon."
"Okay," she said on the other line. "Thanks for talking to me, Rose."
"Anytime," I responded, meaning it. "This week we're even on the same schedule, how about that?"
She laughed, a truly joyful sound distracting from the present troubles. "Thanks Rose, have a good night."
"You too."
Dimitri and I sat in silence for a few moments, the air around us lighter than it had been when we first got out here.
"You shouldn't make promises like that, Roza," Dimitri said after a moment.
"Hmm?"
"Promising that you can just heal it all away," he clarified. "That's fair to you."
I shrugged it off, reaching out to hand him his phone back. He caught my hand again, studying my fingers with scrupulous eyes.
"When I was looking at your hands earlier, I realized that they were chapped from all of our work outside. I also-" he shook his head, as if he didn't believe what he was saying. "Well, I thought that I could see them healing in front of my eyes. I think the ring is doing it."
He took both of my hands. It was true, if you compared them, the hand with the ring on it was far less chapped than the other, far less chapped than it had been earlier that day. I stared at them in wonder, unwilling to take them from Dimitri's warm grasp.
Dimitri swore under his breath, a word I had come to know as "dammit".
"What?"
"We should have gotten you gloves," he scolded, more at himself than me.
"I guess I just figured this was the beginning of it," I sighed.
He quirked a single eyebrow at me, a skill I was beginning to grow jealous of.
"You know…" I said vaguely. "All guardians are so hard and grizzled, even the females. They're all leathery and… well, they just aren't as feminine as I guess I hoped I could be. This life… it destroys that part of us."
He hesitated, cocking his head before shaking it furiously. "That won't happen to you. You're too…" The way his eyes look at me, surveyed me, had something fluttering inside of me. Not the time, Rose. He sighed. "You won't get like that."
"I sure will," I countered. "First the hair comes off and then… well, I become my mother. Secretive and siring a daughter she couldn't care less about," I muttered.
"You don't care much for your mother?"
I scoffed. "I'm not sure how she and Abe really add up, but I spent more quality time with him last month than I ever had with her, probably in all my years combined."
"That's not her fault."
"She didn't have to abandon me."
Dimitri, having never let go of my hands, absentmindedly rubbed soothing circles into them with his thumbs. "You, of all people, should understand being dedicated to the job."
"Am I a hypocrite?"
"Maybe you shouldn't be so hard on her," he offered calmly. In another life, I would have fought him hard on it. Knowing my feelings towards my mother, especially when she sent Abe to my rescue and this was his grand solution, well maybe it was only my sleep deprivation holding me back.
"Doesn't change my initial argument. I don't want to get old," I punctuated.
Dimitri let the conversation drop at that, leaning in to cradle my hands against the cold. Gingerly, he pulled the ring off my finger and slipped it on the other hand.
"It'll heal your hands up nicely," he pointed out. "Then, we can get you some gloves and prevent that from ever happening again."
I laughed just as the door to the house swung open, revealing Ivan. I jolted pulling my hands from Dimitri's, knowing the smile of my face reflected my uneasy feeling of being caught in the act.
"Dimitri let me borrow his phone to call Lissa," I blurted out.
"He's nice like that," Ivan smiled softly, pausing a moment. "Why don't you both come in? We want to get headed home soon for some rest. We've all had a long day."
