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Her happy bubble with Dimitri — a bubble filled with extra touches and hooded gazes and a lot more kissing than they'd been doing before — burst three days later.

From: Marie Conta

To: Rosemarie Hathaway

Cc: HRM Vasilisa Dragomir

Date: January 4 at 11:46

Subject: Project Reports

Guardian Hathaway,

I have reviewed your current submitted reports.

The quality is satisfactory, however they appear to be lacking in substance, contrary to my initial impression. Please submit your next report on Wednesday as usual and then adjust your schedule to submit every three weeks.

Additionally, while you were originally discouraged from conducting formal interviews with the family in an effort to keep your findings in their natural context, it has come up that this may in fact be an appropriate avenue of investigation. More information will be forthcoming.

This is also a reminder that you represent the Royal Council in the course of this assignment and that professionalism is to be maintained at all times.

Regards,

Princess Marie Conta

"Lissa?" Rose demanded when her friend answered the call.

"Rose? What's wrong? Is everything okay?"

"What the fuck is this email?" she asked, phone was pressed tight to her ear.

"What email?" There was another voice in the background and Rose dipped into the bond to see Lissa waving off her office assistant. She pulled herself back and slammed her usual block up, more interested in hearing what Lissa had to say than cheating by seeing it for herself.

"The one from Marie Conta." Rose grit her teeth, eyes scanning the last sentence over and over. "You know, as nice as she is on the surface, I'm really glad you beat her in the election."

The sounds of a keyboard clacking drifted over the line. "The one from—oh. That one."

"Yeah, that one. 'This is a reminder that you represent the Royal Council'? 'Professionalism is be maintained at all times'? Where the fuck is she getting this shit?"

"I was waiting for Council to get back in session before talking to you," Lissa said.

"Talk to me about what?" Rose asked, barely noticing Dimitri enter the room in the top of her peripherals.

"Your reports are shared with the whole Council and Hans Croft, you know that, right?"

"Yeah. What does that have—"

"I know Mia and others joked about it, but I kind of need to know . . . has anything happened with Dimitri Belikov that you aren't sharing in your reports?"

Rose stopped, eyes sliding from her laptop on the bed and up to where Dimitri was ducked in the bottom of his closet.

Should she lie? Tell the truth? What was going on?

"Uh . . . no," she said carefully, the color draining out of her face. Dimitri paused and slowly turned around, his duffel bag opened and clutched tightly in his hands. "Nothing has happened."

"Rose," Lissa warned.

"Nothing has happened," she repeated, this time more firmly.

"Are you telling me the truth?" Lissa asked. Rose didn't need the bond to see Lissa's disapproving look. She had enough memories to call it up in her mind's eye.

"Yes," Rose said, this time a bit more confident. The fight had left her. She'd called the office number per their deal after Lissa's coronation (work phone for work, personal phone for personal) which meant there was a chance the conversation was being recorded — a measure Lissa herself had put in place in the interest of keeping her politics open and accessible to the public. Now Rose was beginning to regret calling Lissa at work, professional policies be damned. "Nothing has occurred between me and Dimitri."

He raised an eyebrow. Rose ignored him.

"Why am I getting the third degree on this?" she asked.

Lissa's pause was long enough to make Rose start to worry. "There's been a . . . shift in your reports," she said.

Panic beginning to seep in, Rose hurriedly pulled up the documents she'd already submitted. "What kind of shift?"

"There's been some concern, from more than one person on the Council, that your objectivity faltered after Dimitri and his sister, Viktoria, came home from St. Basil's on their holiday break. Your last two reports are skewed in favor of whatever he's doing. And, more generally speaking, some have brought up how attached you seem to have become to the family."

Rose was silent as she skimmed through the five reports, heart sinking when she saw what Lissa was talking about. Report four alone had a whole page and a half out of three dedicated to Dimitri, which was particularly impressive given he hadn't even been home for a whole week by the time she wrote it.

"I hadn't even noticed," Rose said eventually, curling her leg against her body and resting her chin on her knee.

"Rufus Ozera called for your removal from the field, but he got shot down almost immediately. Still, he wasn't totally opposed. A lot of the others think his idea had some merit."

Rose's instinct was to defend herself, to say that she could separate herself from her work and that while she missed everyone terribly, she wanted to stay and finished what Lissa asked of her . . . but she didn't. Instead, a wave of heaviness hit her, a longing and a sadness and an itch to scream all wrapped together. She pressed her face against her knee and her phone tighter against her ear until it hurt and took a shuddering breath. Her block against the bond felt weaker than normal; it felt like some of Lissa's stress was slipping through, and it felt more intense than it probably was given the panic Rose was scrambling to quell inside her.

"I understand," she said quietly, picking her head and resolve back up. She glanced at Dimitri who still hadn't moved. "Wednesday's report will fix all that."

"Good. Call me later? I have something to ask you."

"Yeah, I will."

Rose hung up, phone falling onto the bed unceremoniously, and closed out of everything except Facebook, brimming with a fury teasing relentlessly at the edges of her anger.

"What was that about?" Dimitri asked. Rose didn't look up from her feed and took her time answering, liking a photo Christian had put up celebrating his attempt at paella the night before as she pondered how to answer.

"Nothing," she said eventually, forcing herself to take deep breaths. The block still wasn't as strong, no matter how hard she was trying to put extra support behind it. Mental fatigue was rapidly coming over her despite being late morning. "Work stuff."

"Can I ask why I came up?"

"Just drop it, okay?" Rose snapped. Her itch exploded, tearing at her chest. She needed to get out, to run, to scream, something, anything instead of being trapped in a tiny bedroom in a house not big enough for everyone living in it in a country halfway across the world from home.

Her laptop slammed shut as she pushed it away. She started stuffing her feet into the nearest pair of shoes she could find, an extra burst of anger pushing through when she couldn't find her usual tapochki.

"Rose, what's—"

"Can you not?" she asked, wheeling around on him with a glare on her face and her hands on her hips. The sides of her vision were going dark as panic truly began to set in; she'd have to talk to Lissa about upping her meds when she called tonight, but that thought could wait. Getting out and away was more important.

She snatched her phone off the bed. "I just — I don't have time for this." She stormed past him, slamming the door behind her and stomping down the stairs. When she heard Dimitri following only a step behind her, she wasn't surprised.

"Rose, what the hell—"

She wheeled on him at the bottom of the stairs, ignoring the stir her commotion was causing. "I said drop it, Dimitri. You don't get to know everything about me. Can't you tell I just need some space right now?"

And with that, she flung the front door open and pulled it shut hard enough to rattle the windows, the darkness causing her to miss the look of shock and hurt on Dimitri's face.

The thing about January in Siberia was that it snowed (a lot) and it was (really, really) cold. She'd forgotten about that in the haze of her darkness until she was several streets away, her feet carrying her in a direction she'd taken many times but only once before on foot. Her sweater and coat were good at keeping her torso warm, but the cold bit at her face, nipping her cheeks and nose until they numbed into oblivion. She was suddenly grateful for keeping her hair long, a decision made solely because of an offhand joke told by Christian in high school about how she could probably whip her ponytail in the faces of Strigoi as a surprise tactic. Right now, her hair was bunched up in the top of her coat, keeping her neck shielded from the harsh steppe wind sweeping through Baia.

It was the path to the lake she was taking; she didn't realize this until she was halfway there. It'd been the same one Olena had sent her off to not three weeks prior, the one where Dimitri went to get away and clear his head. Every time she'd been here since, he'd driven them. Funny, then, that she ended up in the same place, walking because unlike some people, her dead friend left her with nightmares instead of cars.

The lake had solidly frozen over. It looked thick enough to walk on; cuts from ice skates indicated as much. Now, though, with the sun already beginning to set, nobody was around. Rose couldn't decide if it was because the town's dhampirs were wise enough to not be out when the sun was down to avoid any roaming Strigoi or if she was an idiot for storming out into an environment that was about to go from pretty chilly to dangerously cold very quickly.

She was still worked up when she reached the water's edge, though the physical exertion and crisp air had done a lot for clearing her head. No longer did she want to scream or throw things, but still the urge to run was overwhelming and she realized that she hadn't been running in a while. When she first arrived, she simply hadn't known the town well enough to feel comfortable going for a run on her own; after a while, she'd picked it up, and it had helped mix up her days when it felt like the monotony of small town life might suffocate her. Now, though, she was just too lazy to suit up for the cold weather, despite having run countless laps in similar conditions at school. She was sure if she poked her stomach, there'd be a softness that hadn't been there three months ago. The amount of bread she'd consumed since arriving in Russia probably was the cause of it if the running (or lack thereof) wasn't.

Her boots crunched against the snow, a loud intrusion on the silent landscape, and she took a deep breath, arms wrapped around herself. Taking Lissa's darkness wasn't anything new — the shadows would always be there, they'd learned — but after Lissa had agreed to go on antidepressants for at least the foreseeable future, it hadn't happened nearly as often or with the same intensity. In her current state, she was relieved Lissa had been able to understand her perspective; before they'd figured out the reason for Rose's mood swings, she'd nearly become murderous several times, taking fights too far, and she didn't want to get back to that place. In her saner times, she felt bad about keeping Lissa from her magic, but Lissa insisted she'd rather have both of them be mentally healthy.

Staring out at the frozen lake, she suddenly wished she had ice skates. Christmas of her senior year had been a weird affair — there'd been a Strigoi attack against a large portion of the Badica family, not far from the school, which had soured the whole break, despite the academy whisking everyone away to a ski resort citing safety concerns. Christian's aunt, Tasha, had come to visit, mostly out of worry for her nephew, and she'd snuck Lissa and Christian out to a pond near the edge of campus to go ice skating. The only reason Rose ever knew about it was because she'd seen it through the bond, and she'd unfairly been pissed about not getting invited for the longest time. Years had passed since, but she still thought about it whenever she saw frozen ponds or lakes. She hadn't gotten a chance to ice skate since then; Moroi Queens didn't often drop by local rinks for a fun afternoon.

Tentatively, she stepped onto the ice with her arms low and out to her sides, testing for sturdiness. She slid her feet along, mimicking the motions of skating, and for a second, she could pretend she was actually doing it.

Three feet out, she entertained the thought of how dangerous her situation was for a moment before deciding no, she didn't care. If something happened, it would at least add some flair to her currently dull, repetitive life.

As they always seemed to do lately, her thoughts drifted back to Dimitri. She'd known him for barely a month and already she knew she was in deep. He seemed to understand her in a way nobody else could grasp, let alone see or understand. She couldn't point to one specific thing that drew her to him — his instinct to help others, his gentleness towards her and his family when he got out of his head long enough to enjoy the scenery, even the fire she'd seen only in bed but knew translated to his work — it all knitted together to make up a man she knew everything and nothing about. Around him, she was comfortable, able to joke in a way she hadn't with anyone else since Mason's death.

Which was why the Royal Council sticking their noses into her business was so damn annoying, even if they were right. A relationship with Dimitri explicitly went against the guardian code of ethics.

At the end of the day, she knew her duty was to her assignment above all else. Getting along with the Belikovs was a stroke of luck, and she couldn't imagine how much worse she'd feel in general if she hadn't been able to assimilate so quickly with her host family. And yes, to some extent, it was important she become a friend and source of trust, but getting too enmeshed would compromise any and all of her objectivity. It had already begun to slip through. How could she report the facts when she was quick to defend Olena and her daughters against a stigma society had placed upon them?

Emotions made things complicated. She had an impossible enough time keeping her judgments out of her own personal life that to do the same for a situation in which she was rapidly becoming attached to everyone was a setup for failure. She was mature enough to own up to that, even if she didn't want to accept the realization.

Stray locks of hair whipped around her cheeks; she turned against the wind so it was out of her face. Baia had slipped behind the trees that seemed to encircle the area, set off far back from the lake, the pinpoint patches of darker bark the only color in the landscape. Everywhere she looked, there was white, white, white. Pure, untouched snow. More had started to fall in her walk out onto the lake.

Something ballooned in her chest. Loneliness? Contentment? She couldn't say.

Dimitri was a subject in the field. He couldn't be anything more. Not when approval of her findings would determine the age novices graduated at, nor when said approval would also sway how the entire Moroi world would proceed forward in increasing guardian numbers. She couldn't get involved with someone who could jeopardize the delicate balance Lissa had worked so hard to build in the entire Moroi political sphere over the past four years.

Was she being dramatic? Probably. But it didn't change the fact that she had a career and a people to think about before her own personal needs.

She was a good fifteen feet out when she made up her mind, and by the time she got back to land, she was both mentally and physically exhausted, wanting nothing more than a cup of something warm to drink and her illegal Netflix workaround.

Abe was waiting for her when she hit the main road. His brilliant white coat hid what Rose guessed was just as ridiculous as anything else she'd seen him wear; a bright rainbow scarf was her only indication. Too worn out from her rounds of thinking, she merely flashed him an irritated look and kept walking, knowing he'd keep up.

"Now I'm really starting to think you're stalking me," she said without much feeling, hands stuffed in her pockets to keep them as warm as she could without gloves.

He seemed to sense she wasn't in the mood for banter. "Not stalking, just worried," he said. "You look tired."

"You look like you need a mouth that says better things," she snapped, ignoring the momentary look of surprise on his face. Her usual fire wasn't in her words — the darkness had fizzled long ago, leaving her just as tired as Abe claimed she looked. She was numb from pushing more of her usual blocks against the bond, and she could hardly feel anything from Lissa, just the way she wanted.

"To answer your question from the other night," he said, brushing past her harshness, "I do lots of little things. Odd jobs, if you will."

"That's the oddest job description for a mobster I've ever heard," she quipped, earning her a sharp barking laugh that disturbed the air around them.

"Rose," he said, stopping. She came to a halt, still not looking at him and wanting to get this over with. "Here. You need this more than I do right now." He pulled the scarf from where it hung around the back of his neck and looped it around hers, her cold hair pressing against her skin and sending a shiver down her spine. She finally looked at him, her knit eyebrows deepening in more confusion when she saw genuine concern in his eyes.

"I—thank you," she said awkwardly, knowing that no matter how odd it was for some rich, shady Moroi to be giving her gifts, manners went a long way.

He nodded once and she watched him tuck away his emotions, hardening up so nobody else could see Zmey might feel something beyond smugness and dark satisfaction. "Get home safe. You're no use to me with your neck torn out."

Home. Where was home, exactly?

"I think I can manage a couple of Strigoi," she replied, irritation and gratitude swirling together in a confusing mess, and he while looked grim, he said nothing, instead flashing a look at his guardian and crossing the street without glancing back at her.

She slipped back into the house and was met with a barrage of concerned questions concerning how she was feeling, where she'd been, you're safe now and that's all the matters, yes? The question marks scraped against her skin; her nerves were frayed, sandpaper raw from the intense swirl of the spirit darkness. She begged everyone off, feeling like shit for being so short when all they were was worried about her, and only managed to escape upstairs after reassuring Olena about half a dozen times she was fine and just needed to sleep it off.

Dimitri wasn't in the house — or if he was, he was doing an excellent job of making himself scarce.

She shucked off her boots by the door and crawled into bed with her clothes on, her brain shut off to keep from overthinking. A difficult conversation was on deck now, but she didn't want to deal with it just yet. Sleep sounded a lot nicer. Her body sank into the worn mattress, thick blankets and down comforter fooling her into thinking she was at peace.

Adrian pulled her into a spirit dream before her lingering over Dimitri could turn into a normal dream.

"You look like shit," he said by way of greeting, worry etched on his face. He paused. "Isn't it like three in the afternoon for you?"

They were in the living room of his and Sydney's apartment back at Court. The carpet under her feet was a welcome relief from all the hardwood floors of the Belikov house. She crossed her arms, her tolerance for bullshit sinking even further. "I can nap whenever I want. Why are you asleep? It's about the same for you."

"I'm adopting the siesta lifestyle. Marcus has finally rubbed off on me after all these years."

She tried and failed to raise an eyebrow, cursing herself that she didn't have it down yet.

"I'm in the middle of a manic episode, so I'm up and down at weird hours. I'm not here to talk about me, though."

"Did Lissa send you?" Can I just be left alone? "I thought she would've been against you using any spirit you don't absolutely have to."

"She's more worried that she may have set you off than anything else," Adrian said, eyeing Rose in a way that said he was reading her aura. If she had to guess, there were probably flecks of darkness still wrapped around it. "She notices when you take her shadows, remember?"

It was a recent development, one that had come after years of Lissa working on being self-aware of her emotions. It was a relief for Rose, who no longer got bitched at when her bond-induced mood swings made her snap.

"I . . . managed," she said, flopping on his couch. At least Adrian's spirit dreams came fully furnished. "I always do."

"Don't let the homesickness eat you up too much, Rose," he said. "It's not healthy."

Had it been Dimitri, she would've made some quip about being lectured on mental health by him of all people. Instead, she squinted at Adrian, remembering what Sydney had said recently about Adrian reading her aura. Now he was calling her out on the moods she didn't want to face. "You're off your meds."

"Temporarily. It takes a while to wean off. The stuff I was on stopped working. It's why Declan's still with Sydney's mom."

"And you're doing okay?" She made a mental note to ask Sydney how she was doing. Caregivers tended to be forgotten when the ill were suffering.

He shrugged, his hand flipping something in his jeans pocket without pause. "For the most part, yeah. My money's under lock and key right now so I don't go impulse-buy cigarettes." From the look on his face, she could tell he didn't mind Sydney micromanaging the parts of his life that slipped into bad habits during the intermediary between drugs. Love was funny like that. "You sure you're managing? Spirit's darkness can be just as bad as my bipolar."

Rose opened her mouth and then shut it again, her chest constricting. "I'll be okay. It's . . . lonely, I guess, being out here, but I've always been alone. I'm used to it."

He looked heartbroken for a moment until something caught his attention. "Someone's waking you up," he said as the dream started to fade.

It was Karolina who woke her up, a hand on Rose's shoulder and gently calling her name. The sun had fully set and the bedside lamp was on, muted light warming Rose where she was buried in blankets.

She groaned at the intrusion, pushing herself up in bed despite feeling like she got hit by an emotional trainwreck. She spied a tray with soup, bread, and a steaming mug sitting on the table under the lamp. "What's that?"

"Supper," Karolina said. "Mama makes soup whenever someone's having a rough day."

"It's not borscht, is it?" Rose asked. She'd had it a couple times, mostly because Olena had made it and it would've been rude not to eat, but she wasn't crazy about it. The last time they'd had it, Rose ate half a bowl, feigned lack of appetite, and then convinced Dimitri to take her to McDonald's later that night.

Karolina shook her head. "It's got everything but beets in it, to be perfectly honest with you."

Rose wasn't convinced until her stomach growled. She had a feeling there wouldn't be any more late-night McDonald's trips in her near future, so this was the best she had right now. "Thanks." When Karolina moved to leave, Rose shook her head. It went against her newfound decision to not be as close to the Belikovs, but the thought of eating weird soup by herself was enough to make her throat close up. "Can you . . . stay?" she asked.

"Of course," Karolina said like Rose was one of her own sisters asking the same thing. She settled back down where she'd been by Rose's legs.

It was quiet as Rose ate, wolfing down the soup and black bread like she hadn't eaten all day — which, really, she hadn't since breakfast that morning, now that she had a moment to think about it. Karolina pulled out her phone when it vibrated and after replying to whoever it was, she switched over to an app that looked like Facebook, occasionally squeezing Rose's ankle through the blankets when the younger woman seemed to zone out.

"You're always on that," Rose noted, trading the bowl for the tea, wrapping her hands around the warm mug.

"I guess," Karolina said, like she hadn't realized it before. "My ex-husband always has some bullshit going on that I must be aware of. I'd block his number if he wasn't legally bound to pay child support."

"You were married?" Rose asked. It was news to her; Alex was the only adult male in Karolina's life that ever came up.

Karolina nodded, mouth twisting. "I was seventeen when I had Paul, and I was naive enough to think his father was actually in love with me, despite being way older than me. We got married so he didn't have to constantly rely on visas to visit me." Her phone vibrated, and she scowled at the text. Ignoring it, she locked her phone screen and slid it back into her pocket. "He really only liked the fact that I was so willing to have sex with him. I was twenty by the time I wisened up and got a divorce. Zoya's father, I'm still friends with him, but Paul's father makes me want to shoot myself in the foot."

"Ah," Rose said, thinking back to when she was seventeen. Had some older guy shown interest in her at the time, even just for sex, she probably would've thought he was The One, too.

"But that's the past," Karolina said with an earnest look, grabbing one of Rose's hands between her own. "You're the one having a hard time right now, aren't you?"

Rose crumbled. It was a wonder it had taken so long, but as soon as Karolina asked her about herself — without comment on what she looked like — the floodgates opened. Tears spilled over her eyes, hot and furious, and she scrubbed at them, trying to stop before she really started. Instantly, Karolina scooted closer and pulled Rose into her arms, silent but steady in her comfort.

Her tears turned to loud sobs that wracked her body and she clutched Karolina's shirt like it was her lifeline. Vaguely, she felt Karolina take the mug of tea out of her hands. The sheer loneliness she felt was so magnified, she felt like she might never reach another person. Everyone she knew was almost six thousand miles away; there were people who cared about her maybe ten feet below her, but figuratively, she couldn't have felt any further from them.

Her job, the thing that said she wasn't supposed to get close to said family or else risk failure (and thus failing Lissa's trust in her), came first. Rose cried for a life she desperately craved, a life where she didn't have to operate in one mindset, a life where she could be allowed to choose and nurture her own personal relationships.

The sobs quieted down after a few minutes when she finally pushed out all of her negative energy. The arms around her, while much appreciated in the moment, were too feminine, too thin for her taste. She wanted to be held by much more muscled embrace, one that had held her against his body only a few nights ago. The voice whispering Russian in her ear needed to be deeper; the scent in her nose less flowery, more musky. She wanted Dimitri and the fact that it wasn't him and wouldn't be him if she wanted to be successful only prolonged the end of her crying jag.

Eventually, she felt calm enough to pull away, despite the wetness still in her eyes, and she gave a choked laugh when she saw the tear and snot-stained mess the shoulder of Karolina's dress had become.

"I'm sorry," she said, gesturing to giant wet spot.

"Eto?" Karolina pulled her dress off her collarbone to inspect and then waved her off. "I raised two children through infancy. This is nothing."

Rose slumped back against her pillow, legs curling up in front of her, a shield from the rest of the world. Wiping the last of her tears with the cuff of her sweater, Rose said, "Thank you, for bringing dinner. I needed it, I think."

"You probably did," Karolina agreed. "Negative emotions feed on empty stomachs." She reached forward and tucked a lock of Rose's hair behind her ear. "You'll be okay. This is more than likely just some mix of culture shock and homesickness. We've been waiting for you to experience it."

"I thought that stuff was, like, right away?" Rose started gnawing on the edge of her thumbnail, arms squished between her legs and torso. Her cocoon felt protective. "Not months into it."

"It hits everyone differently," Karolina said. "Vika gets homesick every time she goes back, two weeks in, on the dot. I always went through a spiral of sadness in late September, after everything was settled into a routine. Sonya never got homesick, except the one time she stayed at school over Easter when she was fighting with our mother about a boy."

Karolina didn't mention Dimitri. Part of Rose wanted to hear about him and part of her was grateful she didn't bring him up because it made starting the separation easier.

"How, um—" Rose sniffed. Even if she couldn't be with Dimitri, she was still curious about: "You and Alex. It violates the code of ethics he swore by when he got his promise mark. How do you guys deal with that?"

"We don't," Karolina admitted, face starting to close off. "He hasn't returned to the field for several reasons, but the big one is our relationship."

"So you two—"

"Grandmother added valerian root to your chai," Karolina said abruptly, using the Russian word for tea. She handed the mug to Rose, not quite looking her in the eye. "She sensed you needed it. I'm not sure how much she added for you, but she usually puts in enough to knock out a horse, as you Americans say, so you're safe to assume that you'll be asleep in a few minutes."

Rose nodded her thanks, no longer strong enough to fight against Karolina's sudden switch to all things stoic and impersonal, and chugged half the mug down in one breath. Sleep — the kind without interference from Adrian or other various dreams — sounded wonderful.

"I'm down the hall if you need anything," Karolina said, standing. "Zoya's having a rough day, too, so I'm probably going to be with her and Katya all night." When Rose only nodded again, her focus fixated on something across the room as the tea took its drowsy hold, Karolina smoothed Rose's hair down, took the tray of empty dishes, and left her family's guest to her thoughts.