I think amongst the hardest moments of a guardian's life were moments like these: being in the middle of a party, yet not being part of it. It was the birthday of one of Lissa's more friendly royal associates, Marie Conta. She turned forty – there were no people our age in Lissa's job – and she was especially honored by the queen's presence at her birthday party. Lissa was out there enjoying herself in the throng, and I was lining the walls along with a multitude of other guardians. At least Dimitri was here with me, standing about five feet to my left.

It being a friend's birthday, Lissa did actually enjoy herself. She didn't like many of her royal advisors and Council members, but she liked Marie and that made the party worthwhile for her. Also, now that everyone looked up to her and admired her, there was less social pressure on her – when you were the standard of fashionable society, there was not much you could do wrong.

Christian was at the party, too, though much less enthusiastic about it. He didn't play out his own royal status, and I think he didn't like sharing Lissa with so many others. I still had the feeling that he was holding back on a lot of feelings on occasions like these, when the sociable masses crowded around Lissa; he could hardly complain about her being a popular queen when he had assisted in making her queen. And he was proud as punch of her, no matter what.

Tim was there too, very stiff and nervous. Lissa had made him come so that he could get to know important people. He had refused, initially, but one pleading look from Lissa had overrun his resolve. He and Christian weren't exactly company for each other, though. They hadn't warmed up to each other yet.

After watching the party for about an hour or two – Lissa drifting from here to there, surrounded by her admirers, Christian sulking in her vicinity, then more and more in the distance, Tim taking everything in with large eyes, always startled when someone talked to him – I was starting to get bored. My feet started to hurt, I was thirsty and all the drinks in those fancy glasses looked really enticing. But that was nothing that could bother me. I had been a guardian for half a year now, and I knew the drill. No own personal needs until the party was over. Or until I was on break.

Every now and then, Lissa would check on Tim and me. She swirled by like a cloud of laughter, and disappeared into the crowd again. It was nice watching her thrive in her element. There had been times when all her social grace couldn't help the strain that royal parties put on her.

"It's nice to watch her," I said to Dimitri.

"It is," he agreed in an indulgent tone. Ever since Lissa had brought him back from being Strigoi, he kind of had a soft spot for her.

"I wish Christian would take to socializing a little more. He's just making his own life hell by closing himself off at these events."

"What is he doing?" Dimitri asked.

"Well, nothing."

"No, I mean now. Look."

I searched for Christian in the crowd; he'd been standing at the far wall, leaning against the windows. Now he was approaching a woman, some Badica of minor importance. His expression was spooky. He looked as if he'd just seen a ghost.

"Maybe he wants to talk to her?" I said. That would be a good idea, in my view. But maybe he should lay off the spooky-face.

"He's not," Dimitri stated. Christian had walked up to the woman and was staring at her. She was drawing back from him, probably weirded out.

"He's trying to make a new antisocial-behavior-record," I suggested with a groan. Really, he should make a little more effort. That people didn't talk to him was largely due to his abrasive attitude, not to their lack of interest. He was noticed, what with being the queen's boyfriend and a pioneer defensive magic user. Especially after the battle, his social standing had soared.

"Something's wrong," Dimitri said. Christian was still standing where the woman had left him, staring after her with wide eyes. When she was out of his view, he scanned the room, erratically. He paused when he noticed us staring at him. Then, he dropped his gaze, and went back to leaning against the window. There was a tension in his body that hadn't been there before.

That was where he stayed most of the night. He'd talk to people when they approached him; but mostly, they avoided him, which was no wonder with the expression he was wearing. After another hour or so, Tim showed up beside us.

"Hey guys. Aren't you bored out of your mind?" He greeted us.

"Oh, it's alright – it's just a different kind of soap opera if you see it in the right angle," I retorted lightly.

"I, um, I don't want to bother you. Is it permitted to talk to you at all?" Tim stammered. "Or am I endangering the queen by distracting her guardians?"

We both laughed softly at that. "You're not bothering us," I said. "And you're perfectly allowed to talk to us. In fact, you're very welcome."

"Right," he said, relieved. "So, um, I was just wondering… if a person asks me what my 'royal affiliation' is, what do I say?"

"You're what now?" I blurted.

"Good suggestion, but that's about what I said the first time, and it didn't go too well with them," he replied sheepishly.

"They mean your connection to Lissa, I guess," Dimitri offered helpfully. "How you got to know her or got close to her."

"Oh," I said stupidly. "Yeah, they're really into knowing things about Lissa. Knowledge about the queen has become a fashionable thing."

"Okay," Tim said. "And, what exactly do I say? 'Cause I imagine it being kind of awkward, saying, Her guardian picked me up from the street and since then she's been tutoring me in magic."

I laughed again. "Sounds legit. Though you might want to formulate it more grandly. Maybe try, I am a spirit user, connected to her by the bonds of magic and an equal mind."

"How poetic," Dimitri commented.

"I'll try that," Tim said gravely. "But I guess I'll be leaving soon, anyway. I already met so many people my head is swimming."

"Royalty can have that effect."

"Well, good night, you guys."

We watched Tim disappear back into the crowd. He was taken in by the Lissa-bubble on his way to the doors, which probably prolonged his stay considerably with goodbyes and further introductions. A while later, Lissa picked up Christian and prepared to leave. She never stayed until the end of a party. She usually gave whoever was throwing the party some queen-free time to go wild, and she liked to get a decent night's sleep even when going out.

Dimitri and I pushed off the wall when they were ready to leave. When our charges left, so would we. Along with me, a few other queen's guardians left their respective positions.

"You know, sometimes, I really wish I could stay longer," Lissa sighed, once outside. "But it would be mean to you guys, anyway."

No one of us said anything to that. It was true that neither of us enjoyed these events enough to encourage her to stay longer.

I studied Christian as we walked over the soggy lawn towards the palace. He looked pretty pale in the wintry sunlight, and not at all disappointed to leave. Relieved was more like it.

"Did something happen, Christian?" I asked him quietly. He looked up in alarm.

"No," he said curtly. No embellishments.

….

The reason why Lissa had wanted a good night's rest lay in the duties of the following day. She had an unpleasant item on her agenda today: a court hearing.

Some time ago, a trio of Moroi water users had staged an attack on her, trying to drown her in the middle of a busy Court lawn. They hadn't had their hearings and trials yet, because too much had come in the way of it. Today was the day. Lissa had to preside over the hearing. She didn't have to say anything to the proceedings, but her presence was required. She hated this business. So did I.

"Under the witness of her Royal Majesty, Queen Vasilisa, and the royal Council of the Moroi, I hereby declare the hearing concerning the attack on her Royal Majesty, Queen Vasilisa, to be opened. The subjects of investigation may be brought in."

The announcer's voice was filling the big justice hall easily. From where I stood, I could only see the back of his bald head. The whole room was opening up in front of me. Next to me, Lissa was fidgeting slightly on her grand wooden chair.

The three Moroi were walked in, guarded heavily. I recognized the small, stout woman with the dull black hair and watery, panicked eyes. I had seen her immediately after the attack. She looked as panicky now.

I had heard the preliminaries of a hearing before; every accused had to state their names and personal details and such. The evidence was read, which was pretty condemning. They had been caught on the spot, weak from magic use. I let my eyes wander over the audience while the judge and the lawyers kept talking. The hall was filled up pretty well. People took an interest in anyone who attempted to hurt their beloved queen. I was glad Lissa was so popular with the majority. However, it was the disagreeing minority that I had to worry about.

I stopped when my eyes fell on Christian. There was something about him again that alarmed me. He was staring blindly ahead of him, gripping the back of the chair in front of him tightly.

What was wrong with the boy? He wasn't suddenly afraid of big accumulations of people, was he? I had learned in one of Lissa's classes that that was possible. In any case, he was anything but relaxed. He looked like he might snap in half if one of his neighbors made the mistake of coughing.

Dimitri had noticed, too. He looked after Christian more like a brother than a guardian, sometimes. It was actually really cute. Now, he was slowly approaching Christian, trying not to draw too much attention. When he put a hand on his shoulder, Christian jumped about two feet in the air. A few heads turned towards him, but only those in the vicinity. I could see him and Dimitri exchanging a few words. Christian obstinately kept his head turned to the front, not looking at Dimitri. He shook his head; Dimitri drew back and resumed his spot on the wall. He kept watching Christian, though.

The judge had now progressed to the accused's motives for the attack. This proved to be a little tough, because they were all saying the same thing: they had no idea why they did it.

"Withholding information from court is a serious offense," the judge said, not for the first time. He was losing his patience a bit with those three. "I ask for the last time. Why. Did you. Do it?"

The small, watery-eyed woman was close to tears by now. She was whimpering, and no longer sounded very coherent. In fact, she didn't manage to get any understandable words out. She just started crying in earnest. The judge sighed.

"We'll postpone this hearing until further notice. Until then, there will be some more private interrogations. The hearing is dissolved."

Lissa stood up. I followed in her wake, keeping close to her and watching her surroundings. On more formal occasions, there would have been people making the crowd stay seated until she had completely left, but Lissa didn't enforce this usually. All the people from the audience who now got up and started to file out of the room created a chaos that was difficult to monitor, but since we were taking another way out, at least Lissa didn't have to go through the throng. Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed Dimitri, fighting his way through the masses; he was going the wrong direction, so he had to squeeze past everyone. He was going to where Christian had sat earlier.

That was all I could see, then the side door closed behind us.

Lissa was shaking her head disbelievingly. "How can they be so adamant in claiming that they don't know?" She frowned. "How do they interrogate them, Rose? Are they using any.. disagreeable methods?"

"They're not torturing them, if that's what you mean," I immediately told her. "We don't live in the Middle Ages, even though Court life sometimes makes you think so."

"Well, they're remarkably stubborn," Lissa continued. "Unless they really don't know."

"How can they not know?" I asked her skeptically. "You don't just move a fountain full of water and envelop someone by accident. They had a motive. They're just hard to break."

"Maybe." Lissa looked at me questioningly. "But maybe…" She stopped herself. "We should wait until we're in my room."

She kept her secretive silence until we were up at her apartment. We made ourselves at home in her living room.

"Now, talk. What's your big idea?"

There was still a big crease on her forehead. It was a miracle the girl's skin was as smooth as it was, what with all the worrying she was doing. "Well, what if they really don't remember? What if someone made them forget?"

"Made them forget? That sounds like… "

"A twisted way of compulsion. I should have thought of this before. It would be possible for someone with good compulsion skills to make a Moroi do something and then forget about it. It's not so different from what I used to do with compulsion. Only, this is much stronger. They would have been compelled to do something remarkable, not just to overlook something like I used to do. And there were three targets… "

"Lissa, the kind of power that would require… it would have to be a spirit user. Earth users are okay at compulsion, but no earth user could pull off a large-scale compulsion like that. Even you would have difficulties."

"You're right," Lissa said. "There's a lot of power behind it. Either this was an incredibly powerful spirit user, or there were more than one. I think that's more likely."

This was crazy. Dangerously so. "You're saying that there are spirit users out there who not only know how to harness their powers, but target you with it. Do you know how dangerous that would be?"

"Yes, I know," she said seriously. "They tried to kill me. I haven't forgotten."

"Ugh. I don't like this idea," I said. "I don't like this one bit. Especially since it sounds plausible."

The door opened and we immediately stopped talking. But it was just Dimitri and Christian.

"Sit down, the two of you." I let them no time to say anything. "Lissa just had a very dangerous notion." While Lissa filled them in on her suspicion, I gave Christian a quick once-over. He looked tired. And he seemed to have difficulties concentrating on what Lissa said. I noticed Dimitri giving him worried glances. I would ask him later what had happened. This was more important.

"One or more spirit users who compelled water users into attacking you?" Dimitri summed it up. "I don't like the sound if it."

"It would make sense. They had no hope of escaping, whether they were successful in the murder or not. There was no chance the guardians would let them slip away. All of Court was locked down for half a day following the attack," I mused. "Why would they attempt such a thing with that little hope of success and no way of getting away? Unless they didn't do it voluntarily."

"Would that mean they're innocent?" Dimitri asked.

"If they've been compelled, it could have been completely against their will. Of course, there's the possibility that they consented to the compulsion – maybe it was to erase the memory of anyone else who might be compromised when they were taken." Lissa was turning out to be quite the detective here.

"Tim's a spirit user," Christian said slowly.

"Don't be ridiculous," Lissa scoffed. "He can hardly compel anyone into looking the other way. If the water users we have captured are innocent, we have to find out. They could be sentenced to death for attempted murder. We can't let that happen if they're innocent!"

"I'd worry much more that the people who pulled the strings are still out there. They could try again," I said. Typical Lissa. It was her life that had been threatened, but the first thing she did was to worry about others.

"Did anything come up in your spirit user search?" Dimitri inquired.

"No," Lissa said. "But these ones wouldn't make themselves known, would they? With malicious intentions, they would stay in the dark."

"We should inform Hans," I said. "It would change his investigations drastically if he'd look for spirit users."

Suddenly, Lissa didn't seem so sure. "I don't know," she said uncertainly. "Wouldn't it appear fairly hostile for me to suggest other spirit users might be involved?"

"What do you mean, hostile?"

"I don't know. It would definitely mean admitting how much experience I have with compulsion."

"True."

"And will it help Hans any? He is already looking for anyone associated with the three captured Moroi. The information that the person he's looking for might be a spirit user who doesn't let on that he's a spirit user probably wouldn't help him any."

"I think you're right," Dimitri said. "There's no reason to tell Hans what might implicate Lissa and help nothing. But we should keep our eyes open. It might happen again."

Back in our own apartment, I was still mulling this new angle over. I so hoped that Lissa was wrong. A hostile spirit user was a huge threat. Worse than a few wayward water users.

However, it really was plausible. Especially with the insanity issues spirit users were facing, it wasn't far off to imagine one being too carried away by spirit's darkness to care much about the water users they were leaving to their doom. The pictures of Robert Doru came back to me, how unfocused he'd been…

"Robert Doru," I exclaimed, suddenly.

"What?" Dimitri had been about to fix us dinner. He was tossing a bowl of salad and shot me a glance over some bottles of olive oil and vinegar.

"Robert Doru. He has a motive. He could do it. He's crazy enough to do it. Yet he might have learned too much from his brother to do it himself."

Dimitri stared at me for a moment. Then he turned back to the salad. "Could be," he said after a long deliberation. "Could be any other spirit user, too. Robert Doru has more cause to take revenge on us, not on Lissa. He doesn't even know her."

He has cause to take revenge on me, because I killed his brother, I corrected Dimitri mentally. Out loud, I said: "Who knows what goes on in this jumbled brain of his?"

"Rose." Dimitri walked over to the table with the salad bowl. He put it down on the table and then wrapped his arms around me. "For him, we can't start an official search."

I knew this. We couldn't just out of the blue accuse this guy who was a completely unknown number for guardian headquarters. What we had experienced with him was kept under wrap. Because he had been involved in my breaking in a Moroi high-security prison. Because he had seen me kill his brother. If I wanted the guardians to look for this guy, I would have to tell them why. Why I knew him.

"So, we just do nothing."

"We keep our eyes open."

I enjoyed his warm embrace for a moment.

"Do we have more problems than that?" I asked him eventually. "Christian. What was wrong with him?"

Dimitri's face darkened. "I don't know, but something was."

"What spooked him so much?"

Dimitri sighed. "Obviously, he doesn't want anybody to know. He didn't want to tell me, either. But he kind of couldn't hide it."

"What?"

Dimitri looked really serious. "He… it seemed to me that for a few moments, he couldn't see."

I stared at him in horror. "He was blind?"

"Temporarily. It went away. But I think that is what scared him during the hearing."

"He has to see a doctor!"

"I told him that, too. But he refused to admit that anything had happened. He won't go."

"The idiot!" I groaned. "He sure won't let Lissa know anything, either."

"We'll have to watch him. And Lissa. And anything that looks dangerous," Dimitri said.

"Yes," I agreed. "As if it's not enough that we have to protect them from the whole world. They're a danger to themselves to boot."

….

The next morning, a call from Lissa had me meet with her abnormally early. She was pacing the room nervously when I came in.

"Rose," she opened. "I decided something."

"Well, come right out with it," I said. I wasn't up to guessing games this early in the morning.

"I will stop taking the pills for a while."

"What?" That had me awake in an instant. "Jeez, Lissa, that only serves to complicate things! What do you want to achieve with that?"

"I want to be able to investigate a little myself," she said firmly, unfazed by my reaction. "I want to take a look at those water users. I might be able to see something of the compulsion if there's been one."

"Why not ask Sonya to do it?" I groaned.

"I don't want to get anyone involved," Lissa said defensively. "It's a far-fetched assumption. And we decided not to tell Hans, so we shouldn't tell anyone else either."

"Sounds sketchy to me. Are you sure you don't just want an excuse to stop taking the pills so you can reach out to spirit again?"

"I don't, Rose!" She stopped pacing and stared at me desperately. "I made you come this early because I want your advice. My usual time for taking the pill would be in fifteen minutes. I wanted to know what you thought about it before I did it. Or didn't. Nothing's done yet."

"Okay, okay, Liss, calm down. You have my advice. I'm against you stopping to take your medication. You doing fine with it. You're better than without, and you know it. Why do you want to stop?"

"That's just the thing, Rose. I feel good with them. I don't want to stop. I mean, yes, it's hard not be able to reach spirit, but the advantages outweigh this by far. I don't want to stop. But if there's something I can do to find out what happened to those water users, I have to do it. We might kill them for something they couldn't help doing, and I couldn't accept that. I don't want to let that happen, Rose."

She looked heartbroken. Here she was, always trying to tear herself in half to get everyone what they needed. I had been unjust to her.

"I'm sorry, Lissa," I said quietly. "Really. I think… You're just too-" You're just too important to risk you just to find out whether someone was compelled, was what I had meant to say. On second thoughts, I realized just how egocentric that sounded. Justice was important. And if you couldn't look to the queen to uphold it, then who was there to say anyone needed to heed it?

"You're right," I finally said. "If you're sure it's the right thing to do, then I won't give you a hard time. I can't really support you in doing it, you understand that, don't you?"

She nodded. With her mind more at ease, she sat down on the sofa with me. "I'm just not sure whether I'll be to start taking them again after… well, after whatever happens next. I will need your help with that."

"I'll be there. I promise."

Hello readers :) This story has been kind of slow going so far... I need a one or two more chapters to prepare, and then things will pick up speed. And then, the real action will start!

Until then, a few more reviews would be really welcome! Tell me what you think!