The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

Seneca.

Chapter 1 – Let it hurt.

"This isn't over. I won't give up on you."

"I've given up on you." Voice soft, he delivered the lethal blow. "Love fades. Mine has."

Time seemed to stop at that moment.

My heart dropped. I stared at him in disbelief, holding my breath.

All this time, his protests had always been about the greater good, about the guilt and remorse he felt for his actions as a Strigoi. It frustrated me; all the same, I understood. He was once again the Dimitri I had known and loved, the man whose sense of honor and justice was his guiding force. That he fought my attempts to comfort him had hurt but I had gone on and on thinking that if I could just break through the barriers he had erected around him – to keep the world safe from him, or himself safe from the world –, if I could just reach him, then everything would be all right. His trauma was deep, and it would take him long to work through, but I would be beside him every step of the way – showing him, reminding him, that the man I loved wasn't a monster. That there was nothing to forgive because he had been a victim. We would be together once again. We could build a life together like we had dreamed about before everything went to hell.

I hadn't realized I had been fighting a lost battle.

I hadn't realized my love for him wasn't reciprocated anymore.

Then again, why should he love me?

I had failed to save him in the caves. I had failed to release him from his torment that night on the bridge. I couldn't even help him now. I couldn't stop him from torturing himself, drowning in the horror of these past few months.

I took a step back. My heartbeat in my ears, my breathing shallow, I looked at the man who held my heart in his hands. Something shifted in his features – I wondered if he knew how much he had hurt me – but he didn't move. I wished he would take his words back and dissipate the reality he had conjured with two simple sentences – one in which I had given my everything, my heart and my soul, to someone who so easily destroyed them.

But he didn't.

I watched his gaze drop to the floor, his hands clenching into fists by his sides. I mentally willed him to take it back, a knot forming in my throat as the seconds went by.

Dimitri sat down again, his clenching fists – almost white with the pressure – together on his lap, his shoulders tense. He looked straight ahead, ignoring me.

I backed up.

I couldn't hold my tears anymore, so I pushed my way out of the aisle and ran out the doors in the back of the church, terrified that if I stayed any longer everyone there would hear me sob. Afraid and ashamed that everyone would know how stupid I had been.

Stupid, so stupid. To believe you could have him.

Foolish girl.

I ran to my room, ignoring everything that crossed my path. I didn't flinch when my shoulder crashed against the entrance gate to the Guardian dorms. I didn't react to the puzzled looks I got. His words played in my head, over and over.

Love fades. Mine has.

I somehow managed to open my door, my hands shaking so strongly that I could only close it behind me, unable to stick the key inside the bolt again to lock it.

I've given up on you.

I was sobbing so strongly that I could hardly breathe. I stood in the middle of my room – the bare white walls, the old window that wouldn't close completely, my clothes strung all over the floor – with my hands covering my mouth. I didn't want to cry.

I loved Dimitri with my entire being, but he didn't love me.

Maybe he hadn't even loved me back then. He had been attracted to me, yes, he had liked me. I knew that. The lust charm wouldn't have worked without there being attraction on both sides. He had refuted Tasha's offer, but I had doubted he would have accepted even if he and I had never crossed paths – he was a man of honor, leading Tasha on and starting a family with her when his feelings didn't go further than those of friendship wouldn't be noble. He had told me, anyways, that he wouldn't do it because of me.

Because he had feelings for me.

I took refuge in the thought, but it didn't last very long.

Because I then remembered how I was the one that always pushed him, the one that fought for us, for him to admit he loved me. I had never doubted that he felt for me what I felt for him, but maybe I should have.

I had always been a persistent and convincing girl, knowing exactly how to get what I wanted.

Perhaps I had become so blinded by my desire to be loved by him, the man that had taken my heart, that I somehow created a fantasy in which he was as devoted to me as I was to him.

And even if he had at least loved me then, why would he keep loving me now? I had failed him in every way. I left him behind in the caves, running away instead of fighting to save him; I had failed to free his soul in Russia and now he was stuck in his Dhampir state again, incapable of reconciling with his actions as Strigoi. I hadn't even been successful in helping him here at Court, hounding him and upsetting him when he was surrounded by people who would condemn him as the monster he used to be if he ever even stepped a bit out of line.

I had always been reckless and stubborn. I had done horrible things – God, I had freed Victor from Tarasov, when I knew well the monster he was – and I had betrayed him most terribly. I never felt for Adrian what I did for him, and I had agreed to date him as means to fund my suicide trip to Russia, but Dimitri had been brought back to life to find me in a relationship with another man mere months after his death. What would he have thought of that?

What would he think of the fact that I was stuck in a filing job at Guardian headquarters, wasting away the training and opportunities he had fought to give me?

It was no wonder that his love faded, that he who had always been on my corner, had given up on me.

I wasn't worth it.

That thought broke me.

I curled in on myself, having somehow found my way to my bed, and felt my body deflate. I closed my eyes and let the tears fall freely.

.

Sometime later – it could have been minutes, or it could have been hours – someone began knocking persistently on my door, shaking me out of the daze I had fallen into. I found I couldn't move. I was paralyzed, laying down in a fetal position, tears still running down my cheeks. Still, I wouldn't have gotten up to open the door even if I had been able to.

Whoever was out there didn't care though. They kept on knocking and when they called my name, I shuddered.

It was Lissa.

Hesitantly checking the bond, I flinched slightly. She was angry, coming here to chew me out for my behavior at the church. I didn't have the energy to search around in her mind, but it didn't seem like she knew what Dimitri had said to me – only that I had gone to him, upsetting him again, and everybody had noticed. She was determined to make me understand that I needed to stop.

I hoped she didn't check the door handle, vaguely remembering that I hadn't locked the door on my way in, but it was in vain. She had tired of me ignoring her and pushed the door open, her purposeful step faltering once she took in the sight in front of her.

I didn't open my eyes, but through the bond I could see what she did.

I was curled in on myself, laying in rumpled clothes on the side of my bed, clutching the stake Dimitri had sent me. I kept it in its box inside the bedside table drawer but couldn't remember when I had grabbed it. My hair was a tangled halo around my head, spilling on my pillow, back, and tear-stained face. But it was my eyes, wide open, unfocused, and staring unblinkingly at the wall in front of me, that made her annoyance be substituted by worry.

"Oh, Rose."

She closed the door behind her and hurried towards me, kneeling in front of me and trying to catch my gaze.

"Everything will be okay Rose, you'll see. He just needs time." She raised a hand hesitantly and pushed the fallen strands of hair away from my face.

I didn't answer, didn't move. But when she tried to gently pry the stake away from my hand, my grip on it tightened aggressively, pulling it back towards me, my thumb caressing the small geometric pattern.

"Rose, please, give it to me." She was scared, I realized, that I would try to harm myself like she used to do when Spirit's effects became too much for her to handle. I wanted to laugh – although it wasn't funny at all – because it seemed that only now the thought that I really wasn't alright was crossing her mind. Distantly, in some remote part of my brain, I recognized to myself that I was struggling. The darkness I pulled from her on top of my trauma might have become too much for me to handle.

"Please talk to me." She was getting desperate, stopping her gentle strokes in my hair, and moving her head to try and lock eyes with me. But it was a futile attempt, my gaze unfocused and motionless. I felt like I wasn't in my body, only registering what was happening through the bond – I tried to pull away, but her fear was increasing so strongly that it had me trapped inside her head.

She pulled out her phone and called someone, her eyes jumping from my face to the stake I held close to my chest. She thought I was in danger of hurting myself, whereas I felt like an unstable child cuddling a very messed-up version of a comforting teddy bear.

I might be losing my mind.

"She's catatonic. I can't get her to answer me." There was an edge of panic in her voice. I didn't know who was on the other side of the line, but I wanted to strangle Lissa for calling them. The last thing I needed was someone else seeing me like this. "I don't know what to do."

You could leave me alone, I thought. And then, you do that so well.

The bitterness in my thoughts surprised me. The resentment against her – for her easy life and her freedom, for always taking me for granted, for calling me her sister but not loving me as much as she said, as I loved her – had been building up for so long, that I couldn't pretend I didn't feel it anymore.

"Leave." I whispered.

Almost dropping the phone in surprise, she turned quickly towards me.

"What?"

"Get out." I said again. My voice was broken and raspy, filled with anger. She gaped, frowning in confusion. I turned my eyes, looking directly into hers. "I said, get out."

"Rose, what are you saying? I'm not going to leave you like this."

"I want you to leave. You don't care about me." My voice sounded strange even to my ears, distant and unlike my own. "You never cared about me as much as I care about you. You are selfish."

She pulled back, shaking her head as if I had slapped her. I supposed that, in a way, I had. I had never been fully honest when I was angry with her, always softening my words so as not to upset her.

"How can you say that?" She sounded genuinely hurt, but that was the thing. She never fully realized how her actions affected others, even those she loved and wanted to help, because she was completely blinded by her own privilege. It was incredibly ironic that someone who was so selfless in many aspects of her life could be so egotistical when it came to those closest to her.

"It's the truth." I was despondent, telling her what I thought. Lissa, however, was getting more and more cross by the minute.

"How can you say that, Rose? I have always supported you, always!"

"Have you?" My eyes moved slowly back to hers again, watching her open her mouth – ready to retort – before closing it when she remembered the night I left the Academy. She hadn't been by my side when I grieved the man I loved; thinking only about herself, not wanting me to leave her, and had had no qualms about using compulsion on me. She hadn't been the selfless Princess Dragomir back then. Once I came back from Russia, she thanked me for all that business with Avery, but she had never apologized.

I could get into her head.

She thought there was nothing to apologize for.

"You always take me for granted, Liss. I'm tired of it."

"Rose, I'm sorry." Guilt and embarrassment filled the bond. She wasn't a bad person, really, but she could be terribly self-centered. I guess part of it was my fault too, in a way. I loved her so much that I never voiced my annoyance, always finding excuses for her behavior. But all my resentment had built up to a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.

"I know."

"I'm sorry that I made you feel like I don't appreciate you because I do."

"I'm inside your head, Lissa. I know you better than you know yourself." I could tell that she expected me to be angry, almost wished for it, because she didn't know how to deal with this apathetic, crestfallen version of myself that told her things she didn't want to hear.

"I'm sorry."

Looking at her, I could tell that she really was. But at that moment, after everything that happened, I had reached my limits and couldn't bring myself to comfort her as I would normally do. So, I closed my eyes again and turned, my back to her.

"I'm sorry." She repeated.

I ignored her.

.

I spent an entire day laying motionless on my bed, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Lissa remained by my side the entire time, trying to get me to eat or drink every few hours or attempting to strike a conversation. I would block the sound of her voice when she began talking to me, but also when she spoke in whispers to whoever had come to try and get a reaction out of me. Eddie, Christian, Adrian. Even Mia had come. I didn't care.

I laid completely still, feeling like I was being drowned by a wave of sorrow that would pull me under after giving me a few seconds of respite to breathe, prolonging the torture, feeding on my heartache, and my feelings of worthlessness.

I realized that I had finally snapped.

All that pain I had been carrying constantly, like a heavy weight on my back, had, at last, become too much for me.

I didn't want to move, I couldn't. I only wanted to keep my eyes closed and drift away.

This idea got stuck in my head and I couldn't let it go. I'm aiming for regular monthly updates, but my priority will be "This world is made of secrets". I'd love to hear your thoughts on this (I realize this trope has been used a lot, but this will be going in a different direction).