"Rose? It's time to wake up, sweetie."

The voice was soft, and it startled me. I wasn't used to being woken up so gently. I was used to my dad banging on my door, always nearly making me fall out of bed.

"Mrs. Dragomir?" My words came out slurred, still half-asleep. "What are you doing here?"

She gave me a concerned look, brushing the back of her hand across my forehead. "Rose, you've been staying with us since the accident. Are you feeling okay?"

The accident.

I remembered it all too vividly, like it was yesterday, not six months ago.

"Oh," was all that I could say.

"Honey, I know you don't like going to see Dr. Bethel, but I think we still need to get you some help," Mrs. Dragomir said. "You're still having nightmares, and you're still dissociated every morning when I wake you up."

"No!" I said, crossing my arms. "I hate him."

"Hate is a strong word, Rosemarie," she said. "We don't use that word in this house."

"Well, this isn't my house, and my dad let me use that word!"

"But your dad isn't here anymore, Rose. And you live under our roof now, so you need to listen to our rules."

I rolled my eyes and climbed out of the bed to get dressed.

"I'm going to go wake up Lissa, but when I come back, I expect you dressed, understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, opening my closet.

My outfit for today was already on a hanger, planned out by Mrs. Dragomir, but I decided that I didn't want to wear that. Instead, I pulled one of the dresses my mother made me off a hanger and put that on instead.

When Mrs. Dragomir came back, having sent a dressed Lissa to the bathroom, she frowned.

"Rose, that's not what we picked out for today."

"I don't want to wear jeans! I want to wear this. It's from my mom," I said, pleading with my eyes, knowing that she would cave to my demands.

"Okay, honey. You can wear the dress, but next time, let's stick to what we picked out. We pick our clothes the night before for a reason."

I nodded, not intending to actually do that. I walked down the hall ahead of Mrs. Dragomir and was the first to notice that something was wrong since Lissa was still in the bathroom and the water was running continuously.

Mrs. Dragomir knocked. "Lissa? Are you okay?"

The water shut off abruptly.

"I'm fine!"

"Lissa, I'm coming in," Mrs. Dragomir said before opening the door.

Lissa turned, her eyes wide, a washcloth pressed to her arm.

"What happened?" Mrs. Dragomir said, slight panic in her voice.

Lissa took the washcloth off her arm, revealing a small white square.

"Vasilisa! What are you doing?" Mrs. Dragomir scolded, peeling the paper from the temporary tattoo off Lissa's arm. "You know better than to put these on yourself without permission."

Lissa's lower lip quivered. "But I just wanted to have dragon tattoos like you and Daddy," she said, tears in her eyes.

Mrs. Dragomir's voice turned cold. "No, Vasilisa. You will never have a tattoo like ours if I have any say in the matter."

"A dragon tattoo?" I asked. "Why dragons?"

Mrs. Dragomir's face softened, and her voice lost the frigid quality to it when she kneeled to speak to me. "It's for our last name. The Dragomir emblem is a dragon; it's practically in the name."

"So why can't Lissa have one? She's a Dragomir too," I said.

"Because I said so," Mrs. Dragomir said, ending the conversation. "C'mon, you girls need to eat before I take you to school. Vasilisa, you stay for a moment so I can wash that off you."

In the kitchen, Mr. Dragomir was making eggs, and he put some on a plate as I sat down and slid them in front of me.

"Mr. Dragomir, can I see your dragon tattoo?"

He froze. "Rose, how do you know about that?"

"Lissa was putting a temporary dragon tattoo on her arm in the bathroom because she wanted one like yours and Mrs. Dragomir's. I just wanted to see what it looked like. My dad had tattoos, and he always told me the stories behind them."

"I'm sorry, Rose, but my tattoo is personal. I didn't realize Lissa knew that we had them."

Mrs. Dragomir and Lissa entered the kitchen then, with Lissa sulking as she made her way to the table where her eggs were waiting. Mrs. Dragomir dragged Mr. Dragomir into the living room, where we could faintly hear them arguing.

"What does their tattoo look like?" I whispered to Lissa.

She glanced at the living room before leaning closer. "It's a flying dragon. It's so cool."

"Oh," I said. "My dad had a tattoo of a flying eagle. He said it had to do with work but wouldn't explain further as he did with all of his other tattoos."

"I want one," Lissa declared. "As soon as I'm old enough, I'm going to get a badass tattoo like theirs.

"Rose?" A voice broke through the memory. "Can you hear me?"

A bright light shined in my eyes, and I attempted to close them as pain pounded through my skull.

"She's coming to," a female said.

My chest became tight as I realized that it was getting harder to breathe.

"Let's get her breathing tube out and get her some ice chips."

I felt a slight pain in my throat along with a weird sensation similar to gagging before I could finally breathe normally again.

My eyes slowly fluttered open, squinting against the bright lights of the hospital room. I wanted to just close them again and go back to sleep, but the pain radiating throughout my entire body made it impossible to do so.

"Rose? Can you hear me?" the voice questioned again, shining that bright light in my eyes again.

I tried to swat at the light, but my arms were impossibly heavy, and I couldn't move them.

"Stop," I whispered, barely forcing the word out. "Bright."

The light flicked off, and I heard soft voices as the voice moved away to talk to someone else.

"Let them know she's waking up," the voice said, sounding further away. "Give her a small dose of pain medication to ease her transition back to the land of the living."

My throat was dry, and I tried to ask for water, but I couldn't get my voice to cooperate again.

"Rose?" the female said. "Is your throat dry? Do you want some ice chips?"

I tried to nod but was barely able to move my head without that pounding pain coming back. The female must have understood me anyway because the next thing I knew, a small piece of ice was being pushed past my lips, faintly tasting like latex. The ice felt amazing in my mouth, and it soothed my throat, and I tried to open my mouth for another piece. The female kept giving me small pieces until someone else intervened.

"I've got it," the familiar male voice said. "I'm sure you have other patients to attend to."

When the next ice chip came, there was no taste of latex, just bare fingers feeding me the chips. I tried to open my eyes again and found that they had turned off the big light, leaving only a small one on by the room's door.

My eyes met brown ones, and I flinched. He pulled back, concerned.

"Roza?"

"You're dead," I said. Or rather, tried to say. My voice and mouth still weren't fully cooperating.

"No," Dimitri said. "I'm not. I'm right here. I'm alive, you're alive, we're both alive."

"They killed you," I said again.

"They? Do you remember who?"

"Lissa. Where's Lissa?" I murmured.

Dimitri glanced over his shoulder. "She hasn't been by. I'm sorry, Rose."

"No. Bad."

I could feel whatever drug they had given me kicking back in, the pain fading.

"Roza, what do you mean 'bad'?"

I didn't have enough strength left in me to answer Dimitri and fell asleep once again.

When I woke up, I was still groggy but not nearly as groggy as before, and I was propped up in the bed a little bit. I looked around the hospital room at the machinery and saw Dimitri fast asleep next to the bed in a green recliner. I shifted in the bed, not wanting to wake him, but the bed creaked when I moved, making Dimitri jolt awake.

"Roza," he said, seeing me look at him.

"How long have I been out?"

Dimitri glanced down at his watch. "Three days."

He stretched before standing up and sitting on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," I said. "Everything hurts. My wrists feel like they're on fire."

"They got rubbed very raw from you trying to escape. The doctors managed to bandage you up, but they had to do a skin graft because of how damaged they were from last time and this time. Your ankles weren't bad, and you'll have the same scars as before, maybe a little more pronounced, but they'll heal without any additional procedures. Your back is going to scar for sure. It's cut up pretty bad, and there are lash marks on top of the blade cuts. And you'll have scars elsewhere were the various cuts and lashes," Dimitri said.

"Lashes?"

"You don't remember?"

"I remember everything. I remember seeing them kill you," I said. "Are you a ghost?"

Dimitri laughed. "No, Roza, I'm alive and completely real."

He reached out and took my hand, squeezing it.

"The drugs," I said. "It was a hallucination. They stabbed you, and I thought it was real."

My chest got tight remembering seeing the blade plunge into Dimitri's stomach. I felt tears running down my cheeks.

"Roza, it's okay. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

He used his thumbs to wipe away my tears and leaned forward to kiss me softly.

"You remember everything except for the lashes?"

"I think so," I said. "But if I don't remember them hitting me with a fucking whip, then who knows what else I'm forgetting."

"Do you remember who they were?"

"As if I could forget," I scoffed. "It was that asshole Gallagher."

"And?" Dimitri prompted, but the look in his eye told me he already knew.

"You found her there, didn't you?"

Dimitri shook his head. "We only found Gallagher. But earlier you asked for Lissa—"

"No! I didn't ask for her. I never want to see her again, or else I'm going kill her with my bare hands," I snarled.

"But why Lissa? What caused her to do this?"

"Her parents were a part of the Dragons," I said. "They had tattoos. I never thought anything of it until Gallagher mentioned that they were a part of them, and that's how he roped Lissa in. They have something against her, forcing her to join them."

"Roza—"

"But she deserves what she's going to get. I hope she rots in jail."

"Now surely you don't mean that, Rose," Lissa said from the doorway, looking impeccable as she walked into the room, shutting the door. "We've been best friends for thirteen years; you could never hurt me."