Your concern for my lack of assignment doing is touching. So I read the assessment outline, and now I think I deserve a break. Here's a chapter.

The next three days passed quietly, a blur of boring shifts, patrols, and Dimitri-less nights. We'd been rostered on opposing shifts almost consistently, and our overlapping free time was mostly brief lunch breaks or in the wee hours of the morning.

We'd managed to get in one morning spar in which Dimitri had put me to shame. Admittedly, I was coming off the end of a six hour night patrol around the Moroi dorms, and he was refreshed from a full night of restful sleep, but my pride didn't seem to know that.

Thankfully, on the Friday, I was assigned to be Lissa's guard, and I sank into my casual role at her side with a sigh of gratitude. Night patrols were really no better than classes, and the shifts were long and dull. I'd never truly appreciated the amount of work academy Guardians put into not falling asleep during their fifth calculus class of the day.

Lissa was on her laptop typing away at an e-mail to Adrian, who was off somewhere in the world exploring or painting things, with Sydney by his side. Not surprisingly, Lissa had been pretty busy in her time here – I knew she made at least three conference calls a day to her aides at Court, rattling off lists, instructions, and answers to their thousand and one questions.

It was a busy life, being the Queen.

Thankfully, in six months she would complete her political science degree at Lehigh, and then she'd hopefully have some more spare time.

I watched her brow furrow as she deleted some text, muttering to herself angrily. I hoped that she would at least be less stressed. I knew one thing that might reduce her workload, however.

"You know, I've been thinking," I began carefully, pretending to browse through some gossip magazine from the coffee table.

"Hmm?" Lissa answered, not looking up from her laptop.

"There really haven't been any… incidences since we got here. With the Mana." She stopped typing and watched me curiously. I flipped a page casually. "Dimitri and I were thinking that it might be time to head back to Court. You and Christian are really safer there, and the Academy is about two weeks away from Christmas break, so there won't be much to do here."

Lissa smiled wearily, and closed her laptop without bothering to send her email. "You know I can't do that," she answered softly. "The Mana may be quiet for now, but until Alberta is satisfied – which I know she isn't – I'm not going anywhere."

My brow furrowed in irritation. "What do you think you can do about it? The presence of the Queen on campus isn't exactly helping the situation. It's just stressing you out more, and we're not fixing anything."

"Are you sure this about me being stressed, and not about the fact that you're sick of being celibate?" she ribbed playfully.

I frowned and put down the magazine. "This is serious, Lissa. I'm being serious. I think you would be better off heading back to Court. I know you came here to satisfy all those idiots saying this was your fault, but you've done that now. What more do you want to do here?"

Lissa pursed her lips, but her eyes were fixed resolutely on mine. "I'm staying."

I narrowed my eyes as I gauged her reaction. "What's going on?" I demanded, wishing for the thousandth time since the bond had been broken that I could still read her mind. "What are you up to?"

"Nothing!" she exclaimed, reopening her computer. "I'm not up to anything!"

"Oh come on, Lissa, I'm your best friend. And you're a terrible liar." I added after a moment of deliberation.

She pointedly ignored me, her fingers tapping away slowly at the keyboard.

"If you don't tell me, I'll get the entire Royal Guard behind me and we'll force you back to Court," I warned her. My threats were relatively empty, but Dimitri's suggestion of hog-tying the two royals was still sitting pretty in the back of my mind.

"You wouldn't do that," Lissa replied indignantly, her fingers pausing. "And besides, you wouldn't be allowed to."

"I wasn't allowed to sneak you out of this Academy when we were fifteen either, but I managed that." She stared blankly at her screen for a moment without responding, and I made my way over to her, perching myself on the edge of the desk. "I care, Liss. And I want to keep you safe. If you have a good reason for staying here, I'll support you. I just want to know what's going on."

She looked up at me uncertainly. "I'm not sure you'll think it's a good enough reason," she answered slowly. "It's pure speculation at the moment."

I nodded encouragingly.

With a deep breath, she plunged into it. "Christian and I were going over the incident reports regarding the suspected Mana activity, looking for some answers. When we got to the interviews conducted with the kids that had been beaten, we both thought it was a little strange that they couldn't remember what had happened."

I shrugged. "Compulsion."

"That would have to be some pretty strong compulsion," she said dubiously. It took me a moment to figure out what she was hinting at.

"You think there's a Spirit user involved?" I asked incredulously. "Lissa, I know it's strong compulsion, but it's not Spirit level compulsion. A regular Moroi with a bit of skill could have pulled it off as well. It's not out of the realm of possibility that it was just a kid that had a knack for it."

"I agree, but it's also possible that there is a Spirit user involved," she said imploringly, searching my face for some sign of concession. Her shoulders dropped with disappointment as she muttered her next words. "It's been a year since we found the last one, and he had no interest in learning about Spirit."

I didn't say it out loud, but I thought maybe that was a good thing. Peter had been a good, sane kid. Messing around with Spirit would have thrown him right off balance. He'd opted to start anti-depressants to repress his abilities rather than travel to Court and learn how to wield his weird and frankly terrifying magic.

"There's a chance that there's a Spirit user here, and they might be in charge of the Mana," Lissa pushed.

"I suppose," I answered dubiously. "But the teachers have been monitoring students that don't specialise for two years now. If there was a potential Spirit user in St Vlads, we'd know about them."

Lissa shook her head. "What if they'd just transferred? If they'd come from a small school that didn't bother reporting things?"

I didn't want to disappoint her, but I couldn't stop the slow shake of my head. "They would have to choose their advanced element course when they got here."

"But what if they're young? What it they're still in general classes?"

I let out a short, harsh laugh. "You think a twelve year old is in charge of the Mana?" Lissa crossed her arms defensively and glared up at me. "Liss, I know you want to think there are more Spirit users out there, but even if you're right, do you really want to be associated with one that's going around arranging beatings?"

"I might be able to help them," she answered stubbornly. I threw my hands up in surrender, and hopped off the desk. I knew how important it was to Lissa to find Spirit users. Despite her overwhelming responsibilities and overburdened schedule, she always found time to look through any reports on potential users across the country. I truly didn't want to disappoint her this time, but I really doubted that she was on the right track here.

"If you want to stay until Christmas break to see if you can find this Spirit user, that's fine by me. But don't get your hopes up – I still think there's a better chance of it being a kid that specialised who knows how to compel people." Lissa stuck her tongue out at me as I made my way back to the magazine. I paused at the divan, looking back pointedly. "And if you don't find them, and there are no more Mana incidences, we head back to Court in two weeks. Deal?"

Lissa hesitated for only a moment. "Deal."

The afternoon was at my leisure, and though I would ordinarily have spent it hanging out with Lissa, her afternoon was filled with conference calls and queenly duties.

Instead of the nostalgic stroll around campus that I'd planned with my best friend, I found myself down in the gym. It was after school hours, but there were about thirty Moroi students of different ages milling around the practice mats.

I glanced a second time at the text from Christian that had brought me down here. It was short and simple; Come to the gym. Should be interesting.

I scanned the large room for any sign of Christian and caught sight of him sitting casually on a balancing beam that someone had pushed unceremoniously against far the wall, watching the Moroi critically. With a shake of my head, I made my way over to him, offering nods of acknowledgement to the on duty Guardians hovering at the edges of the gym.

"Took your time getting here," Christian commented as I got closer.

"I was on shift," I explained, taking a seat beside him. "Your wife has been emailing and conferencing all day."

"Well, you haven't missed anything," he muttered. He was scanning the students carefully.

"What's going on here?" I asked, although I thought I could hazard a guess.

"One of the Moroi offensive magic classes. It's only taught two days a week, after school." He appraised me quickly then offered me the brown paper bag he was holding in his right hand. "Cookie?"

"Hell yes." I was a little disappointed that they were raisin, but I wasn't going to decline free food. Especially since I hadn't eaten since this morning. "I thought you were looking at making classes a part of the curriculum. Like, properly."

He made a face, and delicately nibbled at a raisin on the edge of his biscuit. I grabbed another one from the bag. "Yeah, we wanted to integrate them into advanced elemental classes, but the teachers put up a fight."

"So what are we doing here?" I asked, as I polished off my third cookie. Christian gave up and handed me the whole bag.

"We're observing."

I rolled my eyes and plundered the bag. "I thought you said this was going to be interesting."

There was a serious air about him that was suppressing his usual snark. "We're watching them," he said, nodding to the students. "If the Mana is using the things they're being taught here, we need to know."

I thought back on my discussion with Liss. "If you think the leader might be a Spirit user, they wouldn't be participating in these classes," I murmured.

A few Moroi teachers that I recognised as the advanced elemental staff had entered the gym, and were moving among the students. There were a few pinched faces, and I didn't have to wonder which ones were opposed to offensive magic.

Christian shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Some members of the Mana are probably taking these classes. Their whole ideology is about how they're entitled to use their magic however they want. I don't think they'd pass up the opportunity to learn how to do that."

Our conversation died as the Moroi teachers called for quiet. The students were instructed to write their names down on the paper provided, and separate into their respective elements. There were only two excited youngsters that stayed milling aimlessly in the centre of the room, and they were quickly dismissed.

"Why did they get rid of those kids?" I whispered to Christian.

"They haven't specialised," he hissed back. "They can't teach them anything."

I raised my eyebrows. "But they could learn the theory. Learn how to use their magic responsibly."

But as it turned out, none of these kids were learning how to use magic responsibly.

There was a brief introduction from one of the teachers with a pinched face, in which he drawled through a compulsory reading on safety and responsibility. His disdain for the whole procedure was obvious, and it set a few of the students to tittering amongst themselves. There were entire groups of students whispering excitedly to each other, and not one of the teachers made a move to refocus them.

The teacher concluded his reading and folded the paper carelessly before tucking it away in his pocket. One bland look at the students and he must have known none of them had heard a word of it. He shrugged and gestured to the other teachers to begin.

Christian's fists clenched tightly over his knees, and he drew in a sharp hiss of air.

The rest of the class would have been called chaos, if anything of substance had even been happening. The teachers seemed disinterested in actually teaching any kind of finesse or control, and they allowed their students to fling elemental magic at allocated targets – a practice dummy, or bullet traps that had been propped carelessly against the walls.

Most of the students seemed to be revelling in the opportunity to use their magic so carelessly, or were taking the opportunity to engage in casual conversations, but there were a few faces screwed up in concentration.

I doubted that anything they were doing would ever actually do any damage.

Christian seemed to have the same idea. "What are they doing?" he hissed. "They're not learning anything but how to be reckless!"

"Well, at least you don't have to worry about your offensive magic classes aiding the Mana," I whispered back, watching wide eyed as one senior sent a target paper flapping off to the ceiling.

"The teachers are just standing there, talking!"

As they were. They'd all abandoned their students and were gathered around the door of the gym, through which a tall dhampir had just entered.

I don't know what they were saying to him, but Dimitri was shaking his head. He lifted a hand and calmly pointed out Christian and I, sitting on our balancing beam in the far corner. The head teacher turned to follow Dimitri's gesture, and when his eyes settled on Christian, all the blood seemed to drain from his sour face.

Christian offered him a jaunty wave that was at odds with his murderous expression, and the teacher spun back on his heel, spitting out instructions to the other teachers.

Dimitri seemed amused, and he carefully picked his way through the mayhem of students towards our seat.

"I take it they didn't know we were watching?" I asked him as he sat beside me. He was careful to leave a few inches of space, and I smiled at the fact that I was sitting closer to Christian than he was to me.

"They had no idea," he confirmed. "They're trying to pull it together now, though."

"I think I'm going to take over this class," Christian muttered angrily. I put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to stay seated.

"Give them a chance to show you what they know," I urged him.

The teachers turned out to have a disappointingly small amount of knowledge on offensive magic. They'd gathered the students into small groups, and stood, papers in hand, reading out instructions to the students that were still paying attention.

Christian dropped his head into his hands. "They don't know what they're talking about," he groaned. "They haven't even read the suggested class plans. They were just letting the students do whatever they wanted and sending attendance reports back to Court."

Even I was struck by how irresponsible it all was. Regardless of how they felt about engaging in offensive magic, they should have taken their roles as teachers more seriously. But then again, I mused, eyeing the target paper that had gotten caught in the rafters, it wasn't like these kids were going to do any damage.

"This is ridiculous," Christian snapped. A click of his fingers sent a line of fire across the floor, ringing around the different groups of Moroi like he was corralling cattle. One student let out an embarrassing shriek that rang through the gym, and the Guardians at the back of the room pulled their stakes, ready to spring into action.

Just as quickly as they'd appeared, the flames vanished, the only evidence that they'd been there were the smoking scorch marks that lined the wooden floor.

"Christian Ozera!" one teacher scolded. She looked like she was a breath away from sending him to the principal's office. Christian eyed her coldly, and she reconsidered.

"Come on," he said to us. "We're wasting our time here."

Dimitri and I followed Christian through the stunned students and blustering teachers, and the door of the gym slammed behind us.

I laughed into the cool night air. "Now that was an exit."

And really, thank you for all the reviews.