Firstly I want to apologise for the delayed chapter, I was struggling with inspiration and ideas. Others call it writers block, but I'm no where near good enough to be called a writer so I wont diminish the idea of that. Secondly again with gramma, spelling mistakes, mistakes in general. It's been a while since I flicked through my VA books (I know, let the flogging begin) and its been forever since I read through any of my writing, so I apologise for those too. Anyways please as always, review and hopefully enjoy!
The notion of mind over matter had been drilled into me from the very beginning; mastering concentration and control was at the core of guardian training. But how do you translate guardian 101 to magic wielding Moroi students? You don't. I had been blindsided by the nineteen Moroi students who had decided to gate crash my one on one training session with my former nemesis Mia Rinaldi. I should have had a twelve step plan – I should have had any kind of plan, but I didn't. For the past two and half hours I had completed winged the supposed training session with my so called students. Doing the typical Rose-Hathaway-see-how-it-goes method wasn't going to fly here. Damn.
The other students began to vacate the pool, half of them grumbling about how they had wanted to continue the training session which left me dazed and confused. The two and a half hour session had consisted of me basically trying to distract them while they used their magic. I had noted that it was easier to distract those who could manipulate water like Mia – all I had to do was hose each of them down while they were trying to raise the water out of the pool. That had been the only successful test.
"Rose"
I climbed the three step metal ladder and stepped out of the pool, carefully manoeuvring my way around the wet concrete floor. Looking up I saw my best friend, her loser ass boyfriend, her stalking unrelated 'cousin' and little porcelain doll Mia all waiting for me in front of the double doors which led back out onto the quad.
"This was a disaster." My eyes met Lissa's light blue topaz coloured eyes and I sighed, stretching my arms out instantly feeling the burn from yesterdays fight with the new Psycho guardian. "And I blame you." Walking across the floor, I opted to just carry the clothes that I had discarded earlier. I would just have to brave the mid January Montana freezing cold.
"I think it went really well," Both her voice and the emotion she was sending me through our blood bond was encouraging. Bless her; she really did think this so called training session had gone well.
Christian rolled his eyes, obviously not sharing his girlfriend's sentiments. "Liss…" He rubbed her arm gently and eyed me with an evil glare. Ass.
"Liss…" I mimicked his tone and walked closer to the four of them. "All night you've been giving me the evil eye glare you must have inherited from your parents," Hitting bellow the belt, Rose. "Why did you even bother coming?"
"It's not often I get to see the infamous Rose Hathaway fall flat on her ass. I just wanted to savour the moment." Sure he had the ability to create and manipulate fire but he could also be a cold hearted bastard.
And I wanted to kick his ass and savour the moment of him begging me to stop, but I wouldn't, not with witnesses around. "Aw and here was me thinking we were on route to braiding each others hair and painting each others toenails…you know the kind of things BFF's do." True, I had thought our once turbulent mutual dislike for one another was melting away, obviously I was wrong.
"I'd be willing to be your BFF," my eyes glanced over at Adrian who was smirking away like the Cheshire cat; leaning against the wall cross armed, looking like he owned the place. "Pillow fights, cloth-less sleepovers." He winked at me, typical.
"Sure, I'll show you mine if you show me yours." I joked playfully, a little of the old Rose love-them and leave-them wanting more Hathaway.
"I think the next time that it should just be the four of us," Mia interjected, though I wasn't exactly sure which four she was talking about as there were currently five of us standing in the room. It was a safe bet that she wasn't including the charming Ivashkov into our supposed future meeting.
"Next time?" I shook my head, "There isn't going to be a next time." There was one thing I wasn't good at and that was failing at something. It was right there at the top of the list with being picked last for team sports, which only ever happened once when no one had realised this girl was a walking piece of muscle.
"Rose…" Lissa's soothing voice was meant to try and persuade me, without her usual compulsion party trick it wouldn't work. "Think of all the good you could do, how many people you could help."
"What a bunch of acne prone, oversexed, underfed, Moroi brats? If it's all the same I think I'll pass." Walking past the four of them, I looked at Mia's puppy dog eyes and sighed. I wouldn't be any good to her – I didn't have a clue as to what the hell I was doing. Adrian stepped away from the wall and rested a hand on my arm to stop me from walking. His hand felt slightly warm against my cold, wet skin. And while it didn't send chills down my spine the same way Dimitri's touch did, it still did something to me.
"Do you wanna lose a hand?" I asked, looking down at his pale strong hand touching my skin. No, I refused to feel anything for him. It must have been my encounter with Dimitri earlier, I must have been still reeling from the almost sex that took place. There was no way I was feeling anything for Adrian. None what's so ever.
"Depends on how I lose it," His breath brushed against my skin and tickled at my nose. As always I could smell the clove cigarettes and some sort of alcohol bouncing from him. His face leaned in closer, so that his lips pressed against my ear lobe. "Aren't you the least bit curious?" His eyes once again met mine and while I did a silent, unnoticeable swallowing of the trapped air inside my throat, he licked his mouth, biting down on his bottom lip. A little treacle of blood oozed out from the little puncture wounds he had made in his lip.
"Not in the slightest." The other three made their way past us, leaving me to fend for myself. Ha, so much for friendship.
"Yes you are," He grinned placing his mouth once again at the side of my ear. "If I remember correctly, you like older guys."
And suddenly in my mind it was Dimitri standing beside me, his hot breathing pulsing against my skin with his tall, lean muscular body leaning over me. Dominating me. Looking into a pair of blue coloured eyes instead of warm, mysterious brown ones was the only thing stopping me from pretending that the guy standing beside me was the guy I wanted to be standing beside me.
"I do," I admitted. There was no point playing dumb. He knew that my feelings for Dimitri weren't just the usual admiring the guardian kind. It was a two way street, Dimitri liked me, I loved him, and Adrian knew. I turned into his body and slowly tipped on my toes, eluding to the fact that at any point I could give in and give him exactly what he wanted. My lips pressed against his cool lobe, "But I like them sane." Grinning I fell back onto my bare heels and smiled up at him. "Not to mention un-medicated and sober!"
Pushing on the set of double doors and found myself greeted by a frosty chill in the early morning air, one very pissed off looking headmistress and over looking her shoulder was a frowning six foot seven badass guardian aka my would be lover in less than two months.
Opps.
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So I was ninety nine point nine percent sure that not only had old battleaxe Kirova witnessed a part of my so called training session with the other Moroi students but that Dimitri had witnessed the last part of my exchange with Adrian Ivashkov in the swimming pool. The double doors which led into the swimming pool were glass framed by old wooden oak and while I was still an unobservant novice, my tall, dark and handsome man candy was very, very observant. I pondered his interpretation of the scene in my head while Kirova continued on with one of her usual Tolstoy long tirades to me and half of the Moroi senior class.
"This is not acceptable." Her rants were unimaginative and unanimated but today she was shouting and finger pointing at the 'unruly children' sitting before her.
I glanced around the food hall where we had been gathered to listen to the old hag's rant, the majority of the students were half falling asleep in their chairs while the other half were listening intently to Kirova. The guardians were standing up straight against the walls watching both her and us. Dimitri broke his usual composed self and was staring straight at me or more through me, his mouth forming an almost unrecognisable frown. Great, this wasn't going to help me with my quest to be with him.
"Miss Hathaway…"
Kirova calling out my name was the only thing to bring me out of my own world. I turned and looked at her. Fuck. Usually she saved the verbal lashings for more private settings, where no one could hear her lose her cool. Oh well, she was breaking her own rules tonight, why wouldn't she break one more?
"It's very unsurprising to find you at the center of this catastrophe." She folded her arms across her chest and stared me down. "Breaking rules is one of your fortes but endangering the lives of those whom you are training to protect…" She paused mid rant and shook her head, "Well you've out down yourself."
"Endangering?" How the hell had I been endangering them? "Are you fricken kiddin' me?" That familiar rage was burning inside of me; the rage which I now suspected was a form of the dark clouds which I according to Adrian took from Lissa. Standing up in outrage, I stared her down defiantly. "I was trying to help them!" I yelled across the room back at my headmistress whom most likely going to expel me from the academy. "You're preparing them for a life where they will be protected twenty four seven by two possibly more trained guardians, but what happens when a ward gets broken and their guardians are killed? They die!! And all because they don't know how to protect themselves with the magic they inherited." I had seen as much just before Christmas when I had been due to take my Qualifier's exam. Only instead of undergoing my qualifier with the legendary Arthur Schoenberg, I was watching a clean up crew pick up after his bloodied remains. It was all too real for me, maybe she needed it to be a little to real for her too. "Or what if your ward protected, heavily guarded school gets broken into and a girl nearly gets her throat ripped out by a Strigoi?"
Lissa, unlike I wasn't reliving the moment. The vibes radiating through our bond weren't ones from fear but from confidence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stand from her chair, her long pretty blonde hair falling down at her shoulders. "Headmistress Kirova, Rose had no idea that we were all going to be there."
"But it doesn't change the fact that you were there." Kirova spoke through her teeth, undoubtedly trying to reel herself back from her outburst.
"Yes we were," Lissa nodded in agreement. "But can't you see why?" Lissa raised her hands in the air and motioned to the rest of the senior class. "What is the point of practicing element control when we don't know how to protect ourselves with our abilities? And Rose is right," She turned and regarded me with kind eyes, "Without our guardians protecting us, without this knowledge… we die." She turned back and gazed at Kirova. "I know this, because I almost did."
I swallowed remembering all too graphically how close I had been to losing her. The Strigoi had been so close to taking her life when I had shown up and gone all Rambo, kicking doors down and throwing myself in-between my best friend and those deadly razor sharp fangs which threatened her. And suddenly I found our roles reversed. Lissa had always been the weak one relying on my strength to pull her through the darkness but now it was different. She was different.
Headmistress Kirova unfolded her arms from across her chest and asked Lissa and I both to sit down. She let out a deep sigh and then informed us that after the attack at the school had prompted the council to put forward the notion that both Moroi students and other Moroi who wished to learn should be able to practice offensive elemental control. "The council and the Queen have yet to reach a decision on that matter…however it has been decided that Moroi students should be allowed the option to practice defensive elemental control under the guidance of a Moroi who has mastered this control."
I was confused. Was there a difference between defensive and offensive elemental control? Surely defensive could easily be turned into offensive? And what the hell did she mean under the guidance of a Moroi who had mastered defensive elemental control? Wasn't that illegal?
"From Monday, Moroi students will be given the opportunity to learn control under Miss Ozera."
I looked up from the floor and turned instantly to meet his dark awaiting eyes. What a reunion, little 'Dimka' and Tasha back together again, I thought bitterly to myself.
After Kirova dismissed the rest of the senior class, she privately informed that while I wasn't expelled, hallelujah, I was back on probation. It was harsh considering that I hadn't been the ringleader in this little circus.
"Rose," Dimitri called to me in front of others which meant that I couldn't very well pretend that I hadn't heard him. Stupid hierarchy, if I weren't obliged to follow him and his rules I would have high tailed it out of the food hall. Lissa half waved in my direction before following Christian out of the room.
Watching as the room slowly emptied, I turned and faced my mentor hoping that my less than impressed glare would outweigh my droopy sleepy eyes. I hadn't been given the chance to change into something more comfortable or warmer before Kirova's bitch fest but I had put my hooded top on to cover some of my modesty. The top reached over my waist and was resting happily between my waist and knees.
"What were you thinking?" His tone suggested that he wasn't angry. Surely he should have been finding me whispering what could have been sweet nothings into Adrian Ivashkov ear. No, he was probably too excited thinking about the return of his sweet Tasha.
I shrugged, deciding not to answer his question. Instead I met his question with one of my own. "Did you know?"
"Did I know what?" He asked confused.
"Did you know she was coming?" I usually avoided his eyes when I didn't want to hear his answer, but this time I was staring straight into them, waiting. Dimitri had been given the opportunity to be Tasha's guardian, among other things only a few weeks back.
"Yes." It was a good thing that he was a man of few words, because he could have put himself in hotter water than he was already in.
"Right…and you didn't tell me because?" I knew why of course but I couldn't help myself.
He just stared at me, ignoring my question.
"Well it'll be just like old times, right Dimka?" I said his name the same way Tasha used to, mocking her, though she was undeserving of my cruelty as she had been nothing but nice to me.
He sighed frustrated, once again breaking his cool guardian composure. I was the only person who knew that Dimitri hadn't mastered his control completely, at least not like others thought he had. "You're acting like a child." It seemed to be his thing, to call me a child whenever we were having a heated debate. Sure enough I was acting like one, but I couldn't help myself.
I was angry at him for not telling me that she was coming back, I was angry at Kirova for letting this 'amazing' woman teach Lissa and everyone else elemental control but more importantly I was jealous. And heck, jealousy was apparently one of my stronger emotions…one that overrode everything else, common sense, good judgement, sanity…"Well according to you I am so while I'm off acting like a child and being one for the next month and eight days, why don't have a little R rated fun with your girlfriend!" I spat the words at him before skulking away out of the room like a selfish, jealous girlfriend.
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