Dimitri POV

It had been two days since the meeting with Vasilisa. Two days since Christian had told me to defy the Queen and go after Roza anyway. Two days since I'd returned home to find an empty apartment and Roza's belongings missing. Two days since I'd found the note that she'd left for me.
I'd had to read it three times to make sense of it, to try and pick it apart and see if there was something else that she was trying to tell me. I couldn't find anything though. My eyes kept coming back to that one line - A long time ago you told me that love fades. Well, ours has.
I remembered the day that I'd said those words to her, not long after I'd been restored to myself. I was no longer a strigoi but I felt an incredible amount of guilt for the things I'd done and honestly believed that my Roza would be better off if she didn't love me. I was an echo of the man that I'd been before, incapable of loving someone like her.
Except I had loved her. Since the day that she'd tried to defend Vasilisa in Portland I'd loved her. Even when we couldn't be together, even when I'd been turned, even when I'd been restored. Thanks to Adrian's secret call, I knew that she knew this. I knew that she knew that I'd loved her, that I'd wanted her to be with me, that I'd wanted her to choose. It didn't make what I'd done okay, and I was glad that she'd managed to escape and restore me before I'd succeeded.
Perhaps she was saying the same thing to me. Perhaps she was trying to hurt me, to throw the words back at me so that I wouldn't go after her. Or, perhaps I was holding on to a hope that was useless.
Still, I folded the note up and slipped it in to the inside pocket of my duster before picking up my bag and going to Vegas, all the while hoping that my Roza would be okay.
I drove to the airport in one of Court's cars, grateful to Christian for putting me on the 'allowed to leave' list. It had taken a couple of days but it was the only way that I was leaving Court without the Queen being notified. She'd find out sooner or later but I'd be far enough away from Court that she wouldn't be able to order me to go back straight away. Technically she wasn't my Queen, only the Queen of the Moroi, but when I was given a direct order I had little choice but to obey it.
I was hoping that by that point, Christian would be able to convince her that going after Roza and Eddie was the right thing to do.

I arrived at the airport and went through the check in with two hours to spare before my flight, so I wandered around the shops for a while, buying a new Western novel to read on the flight and large cup of hot chocolate. It wasn't how I liked it, doubled up so that it was rich, but I was hot and gave me something to do as I scanned the area.
It was hard someone like me to blend in, being so tall and intimidating, so I found that hiding in plain sight was the best option. People would look once or twice at me and then avert their eyes, usually deciding that they didn't want any trouble. But then there were the ones that didn't have the same sense of self-preservation.
"Look, Mommy, a giant!" A little girl said, tugging on her mother's sleeve. "Mommy. Mommy, look!"
"Not now, Lauren." The woman said, batting her child's hand away as she tried to pay for their tray of food. The girl continue staring at me, brushing her too long fringe out of her eyes. I gave a smile and then walked away, slowly heading towards my boarding gate.
I still had an hour or so before they would be calling my flight, so I went to sit down. I only managed to sit for a few minutes before the nervous energy took over. Thoughts of Roza took over in my mind and all I could do was wonder how things had ended up in such a sorry state.
When I'd first met her, she'd been strong and fierce even though she was suffering from blood loss after allowing Vasilisa to drink from her. She'd attempted to protect her friend and continued to do so even when I'd taken them back to St. Vladimir's Academy. She'd fought bravely to save her from Victor Dashkov's clutches. She'd done her best to protect her friends when they'd been taken by strigoi in Spokan – the loss of her friend, Mason, had hurt her deeply but she'd survived it. She fought as well as any guardian when the academy had been attacked by strigoi, she'd gone to Russia to stake me when I'd become one of them. She was a wonderful, brave woman.
Any person who had been through what she had would break eventually, but what Nathan had done to her was beyond comprehension. Still, I knew Roza well enough to know that she would go back to him to save her friends. He had Eddie and she would trade herself for him. It was one of the many things that I both loved and hated about her.

"Mommy, look. It's the giant." A familiar voice said loudly. She was further up the plane, watching me make my way towards her. And her row. And my seat.
"Lauren, don't be rude." Her mother said as I put my bag in the overhead storage.
I gave the mother a polite smile and then sat next to Lauren, pulling the book I'd purchased out of my duster pocket. The plane hadn't even taken off before I was bombarded with questions.
"Why are you so tall?" Lauren asked, craning her neck to look at me even though we were both sitting.
"My mother made me eat all of my vegetables." I said, knowing which answer were appropriate and which weren't. Explaining about dhampirs and Moroi was not one of the appropriate ones. Being raised with sisters and having nieces and nephews had given me enough experience to answer the questions in the right way.
"If I eat all of my vegetables, will I be as big as you?" She asked with the innocence that only children possesed.
"Possibly."
"You're the biggest man that I've ever, ever seen. Ever."
I smiled at her. "Are you going on holiday?"
"No. My aunt loped with Chip and Mommy isn't happy. We're going to talk to Ruby and make her see..." She turned to her mother. "What are we doing, Mommy?"
"I'm sure the nice man doesn't want to hear about Aunt Ruby and Chip, Lauren." She said, clearly embarrassed that Lauren was telling a complete stranger their business.
"But-"
"Lauren." The woman said the girl's name through gritted teeth.
"Fine." She mumbled, turning back to me. "Are you going on holiday?"
"No. I'm going to see my... girlfriend." I'd never liked using such a juevenile term to describe my relationship with Roza. She wasn't a 'girl', she was a woman and our relationship, even whilst it had been secretive, was far from childish. I had loved Roza from the beginning and I'd come to respect her over the years. No, Roza wasn't my girlfriend, she was my partner. Someone that I wanted to spend my life with.
"Is she pretty?"
"No. She's beautiful." I said, smiling at the little girl. "Would you like to see a picture of her?"
She nodded, so I pulled my wallet out of my pocket. Behind a piece of clear plastic was my Roza, laughing at something out of the frame. Her hair was long and loose, hanging half way down her back in waves. She was wearing one of my sweaters that was ten times too big for, the sleeves rolled over four times so that he hands were visible. It was a picture that Christian had taken and given to me and it had been in my wallet ever since.
"You're a lucky man." Lauren's mother said, peering over at the picture.
"Yes." I said, staring at my Roza. "I am."