Chapter 19.
I woke up next to Adrian the next morning, my alarm blaring at me. I threw it under the bed, but that only muffled the beeping.
Adrian had a bruise forming on his jaw, and one on the side of his body. "Adrian." I said, shaking him.
He groaned. "Five more minutes."
"Nope. You said you wanted to be up when I got up. So get your ass out of bed."
"Rose! Five more minutes… no, make that ten."
"Fine. I must resort to plan B." I sat down on his side of the bed, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
Still, he wasn't out of bed, though he was awake now. I got up and pulled my pajama shirt slowly over my head. He hadn't noticed, his eyes closed. I tossed it over to the bed, where it landed on his face. His eyes opened, and he saw me standing there, shirtless, my hands on my hips. He sat up in bed, coming over to pull me close.
"Nope. You didn't get up!" I hit him lightly and pulled away.
"Tease." He muttered.
I grabbed my clothes and changed in the walk in closet.
When I walked out, Adrian was looking through the contents of his dresser, trying to find something. He looked up at me, and I could see his eyes run over my black wedges and jeans to my green halter-top.
"Can't you stay here today?" He asked, grabbing me by the waist and kissing my lips softly.
"I have school." He groaned as I pulled away from him. "I'll be back later." I told him.
"I'll see you tonight baby."
"If you're lucky." I was about to turn when he caught my waist.
He brought his lips to my ear, "I'm feeling very lucky." he whispered.
* * *
I didn't see Dimitri anywhere. Maybe he'd left with Tasha, maybe he'd gotten in trouble with the guardians. I didn't really care.
Lissa slipped her arm through mine. "Hey." Her smile was brilliant. "What's up?" She asked.
"Nothing much. Adrian is still alive." Her grin slowly got smaller.
"Rose," She paused. "He's at the royal court right now, talking to the guardian council. Word spreads fast." She was talking about Dimitri.
I stopped dead. "Really?" I paused. "Already?"
"He's in a hell of a lot of trouble. Hurting a Moroi is a crime worthy of at least a year of jail time."
"Ahh… serves him right to be in trouble, though he shouldn't be in jail for that."
"You never told me why it happened." She muttered, pulling her hair into a ponytail.
"Dimitri kissed me." I muttered under my breath.
"What?" She said, disbelieving.
"He kissed me. I told Adrian, and he was really pissed off."
"Really pissed off." She repeated slowly. "I'm just glad you got there in time. If Dimitri had done anything major, or… well if anything happened to Adrian, things would be worse off for Dimitri than they already are."
I understood her point. She didn't want anything to happen to Dimitri. They were friends, and she didn't want to see him in pain or discomfort. In a way, you could say she loved him as she loved everything and everyone.
And as much as I resented him for past events, I couldn't help but feel the same way.
* * *
Sitting in class later, I was completely zoning out. I didn't have a clue what she was talking about… At all. So when she said. "Your trials have been scheduled for tomorrow." I only noticed because the room suddenly became really nervous. They always told us last minute so it would be more like real life; and we still had some time to practice. "There will be two parts. The physical fighting part, and the written test section." Oh god. Come on!
I leaned over to Eddie, who was sitting next to me. "How unfair is that?" I asked.
"That's bad." He responded. "I'm not good at written tests. They really should have told us."
"Definitely."
The teacher gave up on teaching for the end of class and let us out five minutes early. "This means everyone will be so nervous tonight… no practice space in the gym." I considered, "I'm gonna get to a practice room early. I'll save it, so bring a few other people, we can all practice." I told Eddie and some of his friends that came up next to him.
"Thanks Rose." Eddie said. "I'll see you later."
Today was the one day of the week where I missed last period (I had a study hall) to train with Dimitri. Obviously, this would not be happening today, so I stopped by Alberta's office to see what I should do.
"Well Rose." She said "Because of yesterday's incident, guardian Belikov is at the royal court. Jut go and do solo training in the gym. It should be full later, so you can get a head start."
"Ok, sure." I changed and went outside to start running my laps. By the time I was done, there were a few people running laps too. I slipped into a practice room, and flipped on the light switch. Grabbing my gloves (I'd cut my knuckles so many times, I'd started to remember to bring them) and started staking practice dummies. I'd killed about three when Eddie and his friends came in. I remembered one was named Connor, another was named Alex. I didn't know the other two, but he introduced them as Luke and Scott.
"April and Violet are coming." He told me. They were two other girl novices, twins, who had transferred here from another school a couple of months ago, along with Luke and Scott. It was some weird exchange program. They were all pretty good gaurdians.
Luke and Alex began to fight each other at one side of the room, and Scott and Connor closer to us. Scott won, and challenged me. I quickly pulled up my hair, and we started to fight. With two punches and one kick under his legs, I had him on the ground. He had really underestimated me. My hand was poised over his heart, as if I was going to stake him, and He tried to get out of my grasp, but couldn't.
I pulled back after a moment, and helped him up. I then fought Connor, who knew how I fought better than Scott did. Connor was good, and it took me a little while before I could take the offence and kick him. By then time I had him pinned, April and Violet had come in. They greeted us, and started with the practice dummies.
"Ok Eddie, you ready?" I asked him as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
"As ready as I'll ever be." He muttered, but he took his position across from me. He was the first one to land a blow, and it was hard. I stumbled back several feet before I got my balance back and went on the offence. We were a good match for fighting. I managed to pull him to the ground, but I couldn't hold him long enough to get my 'stake' in my hand to his heart.
By the time he pinned me down, I was getting frustrated with myself. I pushed up, hard, and managed to throw him off me and put my stake over his heart, and teeth over his neck. "You're dead." I said as I stood up.
"Oh come on! Rematch?"
"Rose Hathaway doesn't play rematches."
"You do when you loose…" He mumbled. I pushed him, and we fought again.