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Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Academy or any of its characters.
If nothing else came out of our talk, Lissa had been making more time to spend with me. She always smiled when she saw Dimitri and I together, even if we were simply training, and had heavily hinted to Dimitri that she knew about us. However, I was nervous about telling him that I had told her. I knew he didn't want people to know about our relationship, and I was unsure of how he would react to the news that yet another one of my friends knew about it. He must have suspected that it would be a matter of time before I told her, seeing as though we were so close, but I had resolved to myself that I wasn't going to tell her until I absolutely had to, but at the time, it was a necessary action to take, and I felt so much better knowing that she knew.
I hadn't spoken to Adrian since he kissed me. I was still pissed off at him, and wasn't ready to forgive him yet. I had told Dimitri about it, and he told me that if he was the person I wanted to be with, he would let me go, although he would find it extremely difficult. I didn't verbalise my reply to him, but our mouths and hands were a bit – scratch that, VERY busy for the next hour or so. However, the fact that I didn't want to speak to him yet didn't register with Adrian, and he continuously tried to chat to me like nothing had happened. I understand that he lived for the motto, 'forgive and forget,' but I just wasn't like that. I was the queen of grudges, and if he didn't know that about me by now, his vision must be seriously impaired.
On Tuesday morning, however, Adrian made it very obvious that he was sick of waiting for me to forgive him. I had just headed back to my room after training, and Adrian was standing in front of the door. I glared at him and told him to move, but it was obvious that he just wasn't going to budge until I spoke to him. "Adrian, what do you want?" I asked him, narrowing my eyes. I could have just pushed him to the side, but I was fatigued and secretly, a part of me wanted to make it up with Adrian.
"I want to say sorry," he replied, causing my mouth to fall open. I had honestly expected him to start telling me about how we were a match made in heaven, and how I should 'dump' Dimitri and have a realistic relationship with him instead. You know, the usual Adrian arguments.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he continued when I made no sign of replying. Even the way he used my real name rather than 'Little Dhampir' meant that he was grovelling. "I shouldn't have done what I did. I understand that you are loyal to Dimitri, and I respect that. It's just that I lose control easily, and although I know what I do isn't right, I simply can't stop myself. I would hate for us to fall out over something like this. Please, accept my apology?" He finished, looking up through his long eyelashes for the last part of his statement. He had the look of a young puppy who had done something naughty; the type of look that is simply impossible to resist. I sighed, and clasped my hands together.
"Fine!" I sighed again. "I forgive you. Just don't do it again. And Adrian?" I asked, smiling slightly when he looked up at me again. "Please move out of my doorframe," I finished sweetly, pulling him into the corridor and slamming the wooden door in his face.
Lissa would be happy to hear that we'd made up. She had been hassling me for ages, just as Dimitri had, but Lissa wasn't so subtle about it. Numerous times she had straight up and told me I was being immature and stupid. I blamed Christian. Lissa used to be so sweet, but now she had a reckless side to her too. I didn't like it. I was the reckless one; it was my job to keep her safe. Liss used to respect that, and although it was naturally in her personality, she did her best to keep out of trouble. However, ever since she'd been actively involved with Christian, she'd started the decent into loss of self-control. I wasn't sure if she was drinking yet, but she was good at blocking things from me, and I knew if she continued with her close contact with Adrian, it was almost inevitable.
After training the next day, I headed back downstairs to grab an apple. In typical Rose Hathaway style, I was running 15 minutes, and in typical Rose Hathaway luck, my first class of the day was Stan's class. However, as I was hurrying to class, I was interrupted by a giant, dark figure in my way. "Jesus, Dimitri, fancy giving a girl a bit or warning?" I exclaimed as I crashed into him, rubbing my nose. His chest, although perfectly sculpted, was HARD. I looked up in frustration, but there was something about his expression that made me shut up. It was a mixture of solemnness and wariness, but underneath, I could swear there was a look of sympathy in his eyes. "What? What's happened?" I asked him slowly, interpreting the look to be one of bad news. I was right.
"Rose, you need to come with me," he told me, looking like he wanted to take my hand. As a compromise, he pressed the palm of his hand onto my lower back, a gesture that could be taken as a friendly one, but meant so much more to the two of us.
Carefully, he steered me towards Kirova's office. There was nobody sitting outside, and when I walked in, realised there was nobody inside either, except for Kirova. This was a bad sign. I was either in trouble, or something bad had happened. Like, really bad. Seeing as though I hadn't really done anything wrong recently (except for being with Dimitri, obviously), and by the look on Kirova's face, I was pretty sure something bad had happened. She stood as I entered, and shook my hand gingerly before indicating that I should take a seat. I sunk into one of the chairs, wishing that I was in trouble. I could deal with lectures, I could deal with rants… but I couldn't deal with all of these sympathetic looks and noises.
"Rose," Kirova began, and even that was a bad sign. She never, ever called me Rose unless she as trying to be nice, which was never. Her tone was soft and gentle, like she was trying to avoid an outburst from me. I was aware of Dimitri's hand placed comfortingly on my shoulder, and if he was trying to restrain and relax me at the same time. When I made no sign of replying, she continued. "Rose, there's been an accident," she said gently, carefully scanning my face and body to make sure I wasn't going to jump up and attempt anything crazy. To be honest, doing something crazy was one of the last things on my mind. Immediately I checked into Lissa's brain, and exhaled a huge sigh of relief when I found out she was sitting next to Christian in her Slavic Arts class, which meant it wasn't either of them. Lissa wasn't emitting any signs of distress, which meant that either the accident didn't affect her in any way, or she didn't know about it yet. Dimitri was with me, so he was okay. That only left two people…
"Adrian Ivashkov and Edison Castille have been off premises all morning. They had written permission from me, and they had taken two school guardians with them. However, I have just been informed by Guardian Petrov that the guardians' monitors have disappeared, and we traced the car lying on its side by the edge of a forest approximately 100 miles away. We can't organise a search party for another few hours, but I know that the guardians are deliberating over holding a search party at all. We may lose more lives than we can save," she finished, now avoiding eye contact with me. Her voice had begun to waver towards the end of her speech, but I had stopped listening properly. I was in shock, and only had one thought in my mind. I rose to my feet, shrugging Dimitri's clammy hand off my shoulder, vaguely seeing him move to my side.
"We have to save them. If you don't organise it, I will go out myself. And so help me God, you know I can," I told her, trying to sound strong and defiant, but only really managing a hoarse mumble. Shock did that to you. I couldn't get my thoughts in order. All I knew was that I had to save them, before something terrible happened.