Nothing changed about Lissa during the next days, which we spent at Lehigh. She didn't turn crazy. A reassuring start to the discontinuation. Nothing further happened with Christian either; Dimitri and I kept each other posted on our respective charge's well-being.
"Feels like we're nurses now," I told him on the phone. "How's your patient doing today? Oh, he's fine, how's yours?"
Dimitri didn't feel like joking about it, apparently. "This is serious. Both of them."
"And they're keeping it a secret from each other," I commented dryly. "Great."
"Lissa just didn't get to tell Christian and didn't want to break the news on the phone," Dimitri said.
I scoffed. "And what is Christian's excuse?"
"That he's creeped out himself?"
"Let's just hope it doesn't happen again."
"Yes," Dimitri agreed.
We had to end the call then, because Lissa arrived and she probably wouldn't take kindly to Dimitri and me gossiping about her and her boyfriend.
"Are you ready?" she asked. We were about to depart for Court once again.
"Good to go," I said. When we were in the car, I asked: "Are you ready to execute you plan yet?"
She glanced to our guardian driver, but I had phrased my question inconspicuously on purpose.
"Not quite yet," she answered. "But it can't be long now. Maybe as soon as tomorrow."
Christian and Dimitri awaited us in front of the palace when we arrived. Lissa and Christian went straight to their apartment in the palace while Dimitri and I went to our place; Lissa had wanted the rest of the day for some quiet time with Christian.
"Let's hope they talk it all out," I said to Dimitri, dropping the small bag with those belongings that always travelled with me on the floor.
"Let's also hope they take their sweet time," Dimitri said with an unexpected glint in his eyes. "So that we can, too."
"What have you planned, comrade?"
"Oh, nothing out of the ordinary," he said candidly. "In fact, something I think we should do a lot more often."
His small nod directed my attention to the bedroom door. Were those rose petals on the floor?
"How can we do that more often than we're already doing it?" I asked pointedly.
"I don't mean the frequency," he said, pulling me into his arms. "I mean the quality."
"I see. You mean the romance."
"Exactly."
"I thought that's what you did when the relationship isn't going well."
"Yes, I guess they say that. But I thought, since that's never going to happen with us, why should we miss out? We can just skip the relationship trouble bit and do it now."
"I like your thinking, comrade. And your timing, especially. Evil spirit users out to get our queen… your charge with freaky vision problems…"
"If you think there's a better time in the future, I'm ready to wait," Dimitri said mischievously.
"Now's just fine," I quickly said when Dimitri made to break our embrace.
"That's what I thought."
He kissed me, and all coherent thought fled my mind. I don't know how we managed to move to the bedroom without breaking the kiss for even one second, but we did. The subtle scent in the air told me that there were indeed rose petals strewn on the floor. Dimitri's hands cupped my face, and he left a cold spot when he stretched out his arm to turn off the light. It didn't go dark; he had lightened a multitude of candles all around the room.
"Where has the romantic been hiding in you all this time?" I murmured when we came up for air.
"Always been there," he smiled. His breath was a sweet caress where it brushed my face.
"There wouldn't happen to be a cook hidden somewhere inside you, too, would there?"
"All this romantic atmosphere and you're thinking about food?" He pulled me on the bed with him. "Seems like I have to make even more of an effort to make your mind stay with me."
He pulled my face down to kiss me again, and, well… there were not more stray thoughts.
….
The next day, when hunger overwhelmed us and made us leave the bed again – that was what usually made us get up on days when we could sleep in – I called Lissa. She had intended to call me when she was ready, but it was already past the time she usually went about her business. She had turned off her phone.
"They are taking their time. I hope they are okay," I said.
When we heard a knock on the door, the first thing we both did was to check whether our clothes were all decent and properly into place. Then I opened to see that we had let the queen wait. Lissa immediately rushed in, apparently having told her other guardians to wait outside. I immediately picked up on her agitation. Christian followed her closely, face unreadable. He was getting really good at that.
"I can access spirit again," she announced, sitting down on our couch and made an effort to collect herself.
"Good," I replied, trying to sound supportive. "So you can take a look at those water users."
She took a breath. "Already did." Her face was pleading with me not to be angry at her for not taking me.
I fought the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her while screaming how dangerous this had been. She just went into jail to face people who didn't need to get out from behind the bars in order to harm her. But I was no longer her only guardian. Or, dhampir friend. There had been guardians with her. And, by the look of it, Christian, who had proven he was capable of protecting her from magical attacks. She had been well guarded. So, instead of flying off the handle, I sat down opposite her so as to be able to look her closely in the eye. I had found out that without the bond, I had to resort to such measures to be able to read her emotions.
"Don't analyze me, Rose, I'm going to tell you."
"Ah." I drew back a little. "Sorry. So tell me. What did you find out?"
"Let's wait for Christian and Dimitri, okay?"
I turned, surprised. Christian had kind of disappeared out of my focus. I have to say, I was surprised to see them: they were working side by side in the kitchen. Christian had joined Dimitri wordlessly and assisted his breakfast efforts in making coffee, while Dimitri piled some plates and stuff from the fridge onto a tray.
The picture was kind of… nice. Peaceful. A not so peaceful part of me was feeling a small pang at seeing Christian get on so well with my boyfriend. In a weird and very non-sexual way, this reminded me of the beginning of his relationship with Lissa, when it had felt to me like he was taking her away from me.
Lissa started talking when we were all sitting together with coffee in our hands.
"I was right," she opened, leaving a little pause for us to protest. "But it's…" She frowned pensively. "It's different from what I thought. I found a tiny speck of spirit in them. Kind of like an implant… as if someone had pressed a little cloud of spirit into them. They are on their forearms. Right where my tattoo is."
She took a pause to look at her arm. The tiny black dot had been given to her when she was going through the trials to test the candidates that ran for the throne. It prevented her from disclosing any information regarding the trials.
"Do you mean someone tattooed them with a compulsion tattoo that made them attack you?" That would be the most complex compulsion in a tattoo so far, even exceeding the Alchemist tattoos.
"No," she said. "I think tattoos are much like the charms I make; they can work simple magic, nothing as complex as this. They must have been compelled into the attack by normal means, eye contact and such. What I could find out is that they really could not remember why they did it. I compelled them into telling the truth, but I got the same answers. They don't know."
"But how can there still be spirit in them?" I asked. "Spirit's too volatile to stay. We've seen this with Olive's blood."
"Adrian contained the magic with silver," Dimitri interjected.
"You're saying they have silver implanted into their arms? Why?"
"Maybe the silver contains the compulsion charm," Christian suggested. "To keep the memory from resurfacing?"
"Or to make the compulsion stronger and longer lasting," Lissa said, her eyes suddenly lightning up. "In order to send them to Court by themselves to execute the attack, and then made them forget why they did it, the spirit user would have to use a massive amount of spirit on each one of them. Implanting a charmed piece of silver would take some of the strain off him or her. It would allow them to keep a distance, because they could have worked the magic beforehand, and activate it shortly before sending them off."
"Cowardly and sick," Christian remarked with a disgusted grimace.
"We need to find out if the speck of spirit you saw really is silver. That would support your theory," I said. Turning to Dimitri, I asked: "Can we have them x-rayed?"
"Without telling them why? That will require some persuasion. But Hans has come to trust in weird ideas when they come from you. You should ask him."
"Ask him now," Lissa demanded. "Even contained in silver, the spirit will eventually fade. I need Sonya to second my results. Then we will have to hope that this is enough evidence for guardian headquarters and the judge to let them go. I can't track the magic back to its caster."
The others continued to drink their coffee while I called Hans and offered probably the hundredth crazy idea he'd heard from me so far.
The inevitable had happened when I came back.
"There's only one doughnut left," I stated accusingly, looking at the almost empty plate. Before I could scrutinize the others' faces for traces of powdered sugar, Dimitri said in an innocent voice: "There were only three to start with."
Before we could go into it, Lissa and Christian interrupted us impatiently. I told them about the call. Hans had agreed to let one of the three water users be taken to the Court hospital to be x-rayed, strict security measures provided.
They wouldn't have Lissa anywhere near the water users – for the hearing, they had been withheld blood so as to make them weak and harmless. We waited until Hans called me back with the news that a doctor was ready to show us the x-ray pictures.
"Last time we were here, we were frantically searching for you two and didn't know whether we would find you dead or alive," Lissa said in a small voice when we were standing in the hospital's entrance hall. The same memories came flooding back to me, too; they belonged to the worst moments in my life.
Lissa pressed closer to Christian's side. I locked eyes with Dimitri, both of us telling the other mutely that it was over, that we had survived. Then we all shook the remembrance and went to the reception desk.
This time, the receptionist did recognize Lissa. Her eyes went wide. She grabbed her phone hectically and after a few short words, told us breathlessly that the doctor would be ready for us in a few minutes.
We drew back to the sides to be out of the way of the normal busy hospital buzz.
"What do we do next?" I asked in a low voice.
"It seems like we have little chance of finding the spirit user that's behind this," Dimitri said. "If Lissa can't detect a hint as to the magic's origins…"
"I can't," Lissa said apologetically. "I don't even know whether there is a way."
Christian drew in a sharp breath. We all turned to him.
"What is it?" Lissa asked him anxiously. Dimitri and I eyed him carefully. He blinked and stared at Lissa intensely.
"Nothing. So, you… um… there's really no chance you can track it back?"
"I just said, I can't do it. But my priority is to prove that the water users are innocent, not to capture the real culprit."
"Lissa, they are not innocent," I countered her, still fixing Christian attentively. "They were the ones who did the thing. They tried to kill you."
"Yes, but they were forced to do it. That makes them innocent."
"You're only assuming that," Christian interjected. He eyes were still trained on Lissa. He was breathing deeply, as if to calm himself, his hands pressed against his legs. "All you can tell is that they were compelled into forgetting why they tried to kill you. That doesn't mean they were also compelled into doing it."
"But why else would they need compulsion?" Lissa flared up. "The fact remains, we can't convict them as long as we don't know."
"Christian is right," Dimitri said calmly. "You only proved that a spirit user is involved. Letting them go free would still mean setting three magic users loose who are skilled at offensive magic and ready to use it. That would be too dangerous."
"But at least they should-"
Lissa was interrupted by the receptionist, who had come over and stood a few feet away, afraid to interrupt us.
"I will lead you to the briefing room," she said nervously. "If you'd follow me, please."
She let us to a small room with backlit x-ray monitors on a wall. A tall bespectacled doctor was putting some pictures into them.
"Oh, hello," he greeted us, totally unfazed by Lissa's presence. "Your majesty. Guardian Belikov, how are you?"
"Very well, thank you, doctor," Dimitri said with a smile. He introduced the doctor as the one who had treated him after the Court attack.
"You are refreshingly normal in the face of royalty, doctor," I said when introductions were done. Lissa made a noise of agreement.
He smiled. "You know, when you're in the business of life and death, a person's earthly status begins to cease to be important. Sickness and injury do not stop at royalty, so I do not differentiate."
"Please, can you be my doctor if I ever happen to land in here?" Lissa said. "I wish more people would think like that."
"It would be an honor. Now, to those scans you demanded."
"Our hunch was right, wasn't it?" One look at the depiction of a forearm told me what we came here to learn. The small dot was a sharp white contrast in the otherwise grayish parts that were the flesh and muscle around the bone.
"There is a foreign body imbedded into the flesh of the forearm," confirmed the doctor. "It is a metal, though which I cannot tell from the scan. It must have been there for a long time, because the entry wound is completely healed. There were no apparent infections or complications."
"Or, a spirit user healed it in," I muttered under my breath.
The doctor raised an eyebrow at that. "Why would anybody do that?"
"That's what we don't know," I replied.
I was surprised when Lissa told me we wouldn't be going to any meetings today. We were going straight to her rooms in the palace from the hospital. Christian and Dimitri were still with us.
"I used spirit today. I don't want to be in the middle of a Council session when I have a crazy fit."
"Oh. Right."
"Well, you'll have to monitor me," she said. Then she hesitated. "I, um… It might not come to any problems. Maybe. I… Well, I took a pill after I used spirit. Just one. But I thought, maybe it reduced the aftereffects."
I nodded. "It's certainly worth a try."
"Look… Don't tell anybody I'm off the pills, okay? Everyone always looks so serious when I talk about the pills. It sucks."
"Alright, no problem," I said. "Are you going back on now you found out what you wanted?"
"Not immediately. I'm not sure there isn't more to look into later. And I want to test this after-spirit-use pill thing out."
"Right," I said, again. "What's the plan for today?"
"I'm going to get some paperwork done, and I invited Tim to come over later."
"Good."
"Not good," Christian growled.
I looked at him in surprise, while Lissa hissed angrily. "Don't start this again, Christian."
"What, what did he start?" I asked.
"I won't, because you won't listen anyway," Christian retorted testily.
"I listened to you, and you're talking crazy!" Lissa had raised her voice. We had reached the door to the apartment. The guardians were keeping their face stonily turned up front, but both Lissa and Christian waited to continue their argument inside.
I used the brief respite. "What are you arguing about?"
"Christian is convinced that Tim is up to now good."
"I'm saying you don't know the guy and you're way too trustful about him."
"You were saying that he's using spirit against you! That's no light accusation!"
"I know, but-"
"Christian, setting aside the fact that Tim is a nice guy and wouldn't even dream of doing what you're saying, he would also be totally incapable of it!"
"But I'm telling you, he's not what you think!"
"You won't even say what you think he did, you're just taking about attacking!"
"Hey! Guys!" I shouted over their clamor. "We're still in the room."
Lissa looked at us apologetically, but Christian still fumed.
"What makes you think Tim attacked you?" Dimitri asked calmly.
"I… I'm sure he did," Christian said vaguely.
"Look, I'm going to have to second Lissa in this. Tim is way too weak and unskilled a spirit user to do much in the way of attacking," I told him carefully.
"Not to mention that he is a nice guy and there's no reason he'd do something like this," Lissa claimed.
Christian gave us a bitter smile. "Of course he is."
"If you have the feeling you are being attacked, you should tell us your suspicions," Dimitri said. He wasn't doing it intentionally, but he had something of the tone you'd use when calming down a deranged person.
"Look, forget about it," Christian said tiredly "It's nothing." He seemed to be torn between the doors to the bedroom and exit; he chose the exit.
A brief silenced reined when the door had closed.
"Are you guys okay?" I asked Lissa eventually.
Lissa sighed. "He'll come around. I'm sorry. We shouldn't take it out on each other in front of you. I didn't mean to put you into an embarrassing situation."
"Do you think there's anything to what he says?" Dimitri asked.
"Of course not! Rose, you know what he was like when Adrian came along. He has a jealousy issue. It will pass."
I couldn't fail to notice the jealousy thing was true, but when I met Dimitri's eyes, I knew he thought the same as I did: Something's wrong here.
….
Could I be any more stupid? How did I get the stupid idea of practicing my knife-throwing skills anyways? I guess I wanted to show off when I met Tim and he asked me just how many kinds of fighting a dhampir could do. Luckily for me, he followed me into the gym to watch me; so, when I stupidly cut my shoulder by swinging out with my throwing knife, he welcomed the opportunity to practice some skills of his own: healing. He'd become much better at it, it seems; the cut was gone in a heartbeat. He caught my eyes briefly when he happily said that apparently, he wasn't hopeless after all.
Really. Knife throwing. I'm probably the only guardian on Court who actually does that.