Author's Note: What's up y'all!? Big apologies that this chapter has been so long in the making, real life and my real job (where I live outside and study forests with no internet access for the summer) caught up to me! Regardless, I'm back and hoping to churn out weekly updates until this story is done. Thanks for bearing with me in the meantime, I'm sorry to keep you waiting on this one.


Until Victor's party returned to campus for a debrief, or Lissa somehow, miraculously, woke up, we were at a standstill.

Dimitri tried his best to comfort me, but it was fruitless. With my bondmate still out cold, feeling more distant to me every moment that I couldn't reach her, I was restless.

So, I paced. Back and forth, wearing a trail into the carpet as I made the boys go cross-eyed, watching me from across the room.

"Do you want to go for a run?" Dimitri asked softly, bringing me to pause. "It might get your mind off everything."

I shook my head adamantly, "No. I need to be here when they're ready."

Alberta had agreed to let us be a part of the debrief when Victor arrived. Working with Alexei, who turned out to have quite the technological skills up his sleeve, they set up a video connection between Ivan's computer and what I guessed was a large screen in a guardian conference room.

Not long after Dimitri's offer, we heard a commotion from the other side. I raced over to the table and we crowded around the screen, Ivan and I in the center flanked by Alexei and Dimitri.

One by one, the members of Victor's travelling party filed around the long table. They arranged facing us, Victor and Natalie at the center. The former looked worse for wear, worse than he had even just months earlier. His sickness, which had come on so slowly just years before, seemed to have kicked into overdrive.

"Is the connection still fine?" Alberta asked, taking a seat in the last remaining chair at the head of the table.

"Yes," Ivan responded, straightening into the formality so often required of Royal Moroi. "Thank you so much for allowing us to be part of your debrief. We hope we can be of assistance in helping to locate the Princess."

Victor's head whipped up towards us, squinting at our images. The stress of the attack must have thrown him off, what with the delayed recognition of our, albeit virtual, presence. "Ah, Rose. It's been so long, how is life on the other side of the world?"

I huffed, annoyed by his statement. This was anything but the time to catch up.

"Prince Dashkov," Alberta started, obviously intent to steer the conversation towards its intended purpose. "We need you, and your team, to tell us everything you remember from the attack. No detail is too small."

"With all due respect," one of Victor's guardians spoke up. "And I beg everyone's pardon, but… it's highly unlikely that the Princess is still alive. The Strigoi-"

"It wasn't a Strigoi attack," I said weakly.

"Excuse me?" The guardian responded, Victor perking up beside him.

"It wasn't a Strigoi attack," I repeated, stronger this time.

"And how are you supposed to-"

"They have a bond," Victor spoke up, staring into the camera and, seemingly, stonily into my soul.

Seeing the confusion on my face, Natalie perked up beside him. "Lissa told me about it."

I cocked my head slightly. Surely Lissa would have told me if she were going to confide in anyone, considering all the trouble we'd gone to in order to keep it a secret.

Alberta commanded attention back to her. "We're hoping that your timelines, along with Rose's interpretation er- through Lissa, will help us to put together what happened tonight. That's the only way we'll be able to recover the Princess."

"Do you really think you will be able to use your bond to help?" Victor asked.

I nodded, "I saw everything. Those weren't Strigoi you were fighting."

What followed was nearly an hour of dead ends. Verbal repetition of events that I'd already spent the prior hour rolling over in my head.

The more we spoke, the less anything made sense.

How did Victor's guardians not realize that they weren't fighting Strigoi?

After almost an hour, Alberta called the meeting, ordering everyone get some rest and reconvene in the morning, once the rest of the team that had been left at the scene returned.

We were wasting precious time but, according to Alberta, we had to think of the welfare of the ailing Prince. Our best chance would be to get some rest. Lest Lissa wake up anytime soon.

"I do need a run," I stammered out, moving to get my sweatshirt for the bitter night.

"No," Dimitri countered, grabbing me by the shoulders and pushing me towards the hall. "You need to rest. Alexei has already agreed to keep an eye on any communications from Guardian Petrov."

"No," I pushed, both verbally and physically. Nevertheless, I felt myself sway, exhaustion sinking into me now that my adrenaline had crashed.

He chuckled in my ear, pushing me back through my bedroom door. A sense of déjà vu swept over me, and we both froze. My shirt was still laid out on the comforter, Dimitri's duster strewn across the floor, opposite the room from my winter parka.

Dimitri recovered faster, pulling the comforter down and causing me to pause again in shock as he climbed in first, settling under the covers and opening his arms for me to join him.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" I asked, as flirtily as I could considering the current weight of the world. I wrapped myself in his arms, chests coming together through more layers than they had only hours before.

"Hopefully I'm not alone in saying that I'm not getting any rest if you're out of my sight."

I snuggled closer to him in response, slipping easily into sleep.

In dreams, I was greeted by the familiar sight of the apartment Lissa and I shared in Portland. For Vlad's sake… even in dreams, I was haunted.

"Rose?"

I spun around, searching for the meek voice that rang out behind me. There, slumped against the kitchen table, I found Lissa. Gasping, I rushed over to her. Eerily, her forehead sported the same kind of bruising I would expect from the nasty whack she'd received in the struggle.

"Lissa, are you alright?"

"Rose, where are we?" The question hung heavy in the room.

"Portland," I answered simply.

She shook her head vehemently, rising from the table and gripping my arms. A glittering silver necklace, one I'd never seen before and surely one that wasn't her own taste, hung from her neck. More insistently this time, "No, Rose. Where are we?"

I considered her question, and thought, for once, the obvious would suffice. "We're in a dream, Lissa."

Her jaw quirked, and I noticed her eyes were unfocused. She had a concussion, to say the least "I was attacked."

Suddenly, everything felt eerie again. "I know… I'm doing everything I can to find you. Can you-can you remember anything?"

"Familiar. Their eyes… they seemed so familiar."

Frustrated, Lissa fiddled with the chain around her neck. I caught her hand, examining the pendent closely. It seemed so familiar, but I just couldn't place it. Until I could.

I awoke with a gasp.

The boys and I found ourselves, like countless times before, circled up around the table.

"To accuse a Moroi of something like that, let alone a Moroi of such high standing as Prince Dashkov is career suicide, Roza," Dimitri cautioned.

"Maybe to you," I reasoned. "But, bearing in mind that I was sent to Russia as a last ditch effort to ever even have one, Lissa is my charge. She comes first."

"Where is your proof?" Ivan pushed.

I paused, unsure of whether anyone would follow my loose tendrils of proof. "Natalie said that Lissa told her about the bond, right?"

They nodded, no recognition in their eyes.

"Lissa and I promised each other that, bar a good reason, we would never reveal that secret to anybody."

"Friendship pacts are hardly-"

I cut Alexei off. "Lissa would never break that promise, not with the pressure of all the threat she was receiving. Whoever took Lissa is the same person that's been threatening her all this time. They've been watching her since before we left, Dimitri. Years. Victor has been a family friend for as long and basically took over as her guardian after the accident. That's access.

"What's more, in my dream, Lissa was wearing a silver necklace. It wasn't hers, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it on Natalie before. In your class, Ivan, we talked about strong earth magic practitioners being able to charm silver in many different ways. A knock on the head might not be enough to keep Lissa out this long, but a sleeping charm could! And guess who practices earth?"

"Even so, Roza. A dream isn't enough proof to accuse a dying man of treason."

"I'm telling you, it wasn't a normal dream…" Silence overtook us. There had to be a missing link here. "In our tutoring classes, you guys said you've heard of Spirit users being able to walk in dreams, right?"

Ivan nodded, catching on to my insinuation. "Adrian Ivashkov, the great nephew of the Queen, brought it to our attention."

"So, somehow, in her forced dream state, Lissa triggered the power," I argued. "She said the eyes of her attackers looked familiar, and she's been spending a lot of time with Natalie and Victor since she returned. Surely, she's grown familiar with his guardians. What I just don't understand is why, of all people, the last man Lissa thought of as family would do this to her…"

"A dying man would do anything to live," Alexei whispered under his breath, inserting himself into the conversation. "Including-"

"Kidnapping a girl he's seen bring back the dead," we said in unison.

I slammed my hand down on the table, pushing myself out of my seat. "He thinks Lissa can heal his illness."

"Is that even possible?" I heard Ivan question.

"We don't know," I answered. "Lissa has never been able to control her power. It's taken big moments of tragic incidents, ie. her best friend dying in a car accident, for it to be brought out."

Dimitri cringed at my brazen talk of my previous death. "Why-"

It was Ivan who answered for him, "Prince Dashkov was next in line for the throne, everyone knew it. The Queen had basically picked him out for herself, no one would have ever challenged him for it. When he got sick, she pulled out her backing of his succession, she was looking at the Voda family next."

"Look," I started. "It doesn't matter to me if you guys don't back me up. You don't have to put your lives on the line, but mine is already all up in this mess. Please, just give me your phone."

I held my hand out to none of them in particular. With a sigh, Alexei deposited his cell into my hand. "What are you going to use it for?"

"Call someone who can help."

The phone had barely rung once before he picked up. "Alexei? How is Rose?"

"It's me, dad," I pressed, desperation bleeding into my voice. "I need your help."

My father easily stood at attention. "Kiz? What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No, not me," I reassured him, hearing a thankful gasp from the other side of the phone. "It's Lissa."

"Princess Dragomir? What-"

"She's been kidnapped, Dad. And before you ask, no it wasn't Strigoi. It was Victor Dashkov."

I expected protests from the other line, but my father was silent, weighing my words. He growled, "That dirty piç. I knew there was something I didn't like about him. What happened?"

"They were attacked in the middle of the night, open light, while they were shopping in Missoula. Lissa was taken and they brought Victor in to talk about the attack. He played all coy, but I know it's him, dad. Is there any way you can track him down? Any places he might be hiding her?"

I could hear movement rising around him. "Pull up everything you can find on Victor Dashkov," he ordered someone on his end. "I need properties surrounding St Vladimir's."

A soft answer responded, not a minute later.

"Keep searching. Check under his guardians. They're the perfect pseudonym, no one would expect him to own property."

"Nothing, Sir."

"That's not good enough," my father growled, as menacing as I'd ever heard him.

"Check under-" Ivan interrupted, thoughtful. "Well, this is a long shot, but check under Robert Dashkov."

"Genius, Ivan," my father praised.

I turned to Dimitri in confusion.

"Viktor's half-brother. He's, as far as we know, one of the world's most elusive Spirit users."

Now, that was something.

"We've got him, kız. The dirty bastard."

"What's the address?" Alexei asked, pen at the ready. He took it down, ever the supporter of my lead.

Ivan, beside him, picked up his phone, dialing Alberta.

"Thanks Dad."

"Call me when you find the bastard," he responded, hanging up the phone.

Alberta had barely gotten her own greeting out when I ripped the phone from Ivan's hand, intent to put myself on the line before them. "Alberta, you need to listen to me. Where is Victor?"

She huffed, obviously tired and exasperated "Well, he left when the meeting ajourned. His party is staying off campus, but he'll be back-"

I slammed my fist onto the table in frustration. He had an hour long head start on us. Ivan gave Dimitri a meaningful look, and I felt a hand enclose around my arm, gently leading me away as the Moroi brought the phone closer to himself.

I let Dimitri pull me outside. Shivering against the cold, he draped a coat around my shoulders. It did nothing to calm the terror sinking into me.

"Everything feels like it's been turned upside down, Dimitri," I whispered into the night. "I'm so lost without the bond."

Suddenly, I felt a jolt pull me away from myself. Lissa was awake.