I drank in the sight of him faster than I had drained my first kill. He was incredibly handsome, more so than my weak Moroi brain had remembered.

"Did you get my gift?" I asked.

"I thought you were dead," he spat. "I thought you were dead all this time and you never bothered to tell me otherwise."

"I sent you a graduation present."

"Heads of the guardians that killed my parents. Happy graduation to me."

"Did you want a watch?" I teased. "I could have gotten you ones with diamond settings. They have many diamond mines here and the prices are quite–"

"I thought you were dead." The rage in his eyes made me smile. He still cared after all.

"I am, in a way. The old Lissa is."

"And who are you now?"

"Powerful." My eyes focused on his neck, considering the taste of his blood in my mouth. "Hungry."

Christian launched his fireball, which I easily sidestepped. Ivan's scream of terror from behind me indicated that he had not been so lucky.

"You can do better than that." He narrowed his eyes and conjured another fireball, this time a soft orange. He was running out of steam.

I carefully continued walking towards him, stepping over broken pieces of furniture, bodies, and shattered vases. Inna would have quite a mess to clean up later.

I had almost reached Christian when I felt a sharp point at my back. A stake.

Without looking backwards, I crouched and kicked the offender's legs out from underneath them. The scrape of the stake across my back made me wince, but I was victorious. A heavy thud and a sharp crack indicated they had hit the ground hard.

"Dimitri!" Christian cried out. I had forgotten Dimitri was even there. I peered over my shoulder to see him struggling to stand again. His over six-foot frame had not served him well; the long fall to the floor had caused the back of his head to start bleeding.

"Christian, I–"

Sasha, who had previously been busy trying to put Ivan out, lunged for Dimitri. He tackled the taller man, slamming Dimitri's head into the marble floor again. Christian cried out once again for Dimitri, who no longer seemed capable of listening. Dimitri attempted to throw Sasha off, but his movements were sluggish and slow. Dimitri's mouth attempted to form Christian's name one more time, looking over with dazed eyes towards him. Tired of the game, Sasha put two hands on Dimitri's neck and twisted.

With a sharp crack, Dimitri's frame stiffened and then slid to the floor. Christian's pained scream echoed off the walls as his fireball grew to a vivid shade of purple. I hit the floor as fast as I could, the searing heat burning my bare back as he unleashed everything he had.

When I was young, my parents had taken Rose, Andre, and me to Cape Canaveral to see a nighttime rocket launch as an "educational experience." We were seated in plastic chairs on the beach to watch, watermelon juice coating our hands. When the countdown had ended, the bright light of the engines had silently grown to a blinding size. Then, the pure blast of a sound wave assaulted our ears. Even Rose, with her less sensitive ears, cowered from the noise. We could feel the vibration of it shaking the ground we stood on.

If I hadn't heard the space shuttle launch all those years ago, I would have said Christian's fireball was the loudest explosion I had ever heard. The tinted windows of the manor blasted outwards, sending chunks of tempered glass spiraling out into the garden. Even the great roof, which had stood for two hundred years, seemed to tremble beneath his rage. Pieces of the priceless chandelier fell to the ground and paintings rattled off the walls, cracking their ornate frames.

Only when there was silence did I dare to look up. Christian was lying face down, the eye in the center of the storm. I was close enough to him to have escaped the worst of it. Wincing, I pulled a particularly large shard of glass from my arm. I had had the foresight to protect my face, but surveying the scene I could see that not everyone was so lucky. Sasha's body was charred and partially decapitated by a jagged shard of glass. Dimitri's body had not fared much better.

I stirred and stood, my flats crunching the glass strewn across the floor. I knelt by Christian, taking his pulse. Alive. Relieved, I rocked back on my heels and gathered his body up in my arms. Staggering slightly under his weight, I carried him to his new room.

His room had been carefully furnished with fireproof and difficult-to-melt materials. His bathroom was marble with brass accents that were impossible to pull out of the wall. The single basket with his towels was wrought-iron and round with no sharp points to be found. It would be nearly impossible to melt.

His bed frame was also made of wrought iron, all curved with no sharp edges. Fire suppression blankets covered the bed. He had shelves and a built-in TV, but not even a scrap of paper to burn. Even his napkins for his meals would be carefully cut out of fire suppression blankets and collected at the end of mealtimes. He would be safe, even from himself.

Placing him gently on the bed, I removed his dirty sneakers and socks before tucking him under the blanket. Smiling a bit at his messy hair sticking up in every direction, I smoothed the front part of his hair down. I sent a quick text and left the room, the locks turning with a heavy click.