Hey guys! It's been a while already, but I have this chapter for you in Dimitri's and Adrian's POVs. I'm sorry in advance if Dimitri is too OOC-ish, it's the first time I have ver written his POV, and hope I at least got a bit of the essence.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. :)

HAVE YOU READ THE FIERY HEART ALREADY? I HAVEN'T, BUT I DO HAVE IT, I'M NERVOUS AND AFRAID TO OPEN IT, I'LL JUST START RE-READING BLOODLINES AGAIN TO HAVE THE MEMORIES FRESH AND READY FOR WHEN I START TFH. I'M SO SCARED.

Also, three cheers for my lovely beta for being the most patient and amazing BETA ever: CherrySlushLover :DDD

DISCLAIMER: VA AND BL ALL BELONG TO THE GODDESS RICHELLE MEAD.

DIMITRI'S POV

It was pandemonium in a matter of seconds. Even if we had the element of surprise by knowing beforehand that something was off, we were still overpowered. There were shards of glass raining all over the room.

As soon as the windows blew out, every abled guardian in the room made a ring around Lissa, I ran towards Christian. Eddie ran to Jill, and Adrian covered Sydney.

It shocked us all to see who were the ones attacking. It was a combination of humans and strigoi working together. A faint pain resurfaced as I relived my days as an undead, but I quickly brushed it aside; I had to focus. I quickly managed to get Christian inside the guardian ring with Lissa and stepped in front to fend some of the strigoi closer to us. In the short seconds I had to assess the situation, I figured the humans were in charge, as they commanded the strigoi around. It was a surprise to see they didn't target Lissa, but instead Jill... and Sydney.

I didn't have time for any more reasoning, I had to kill these strigoi, or as many as I could. I recognized some of that dark spark igniting in me when I fought strigoi. I was closer to forgetting it, but it still wasn't that easy to push aside those horrifying memories.

I punched a female strigoi, and quickly pinned her to the ground as she lost balance. I managed to break her neck, but it wouldn't kill her. However, it gave me a chance to knock over another strigoi sprinting toward us as I ducked and grabbed his foot. He fell over and a guardian a few feet away saw the chance and staked the strigoi. I grabbed my stake from my belt and staked the strigoi whose neck I had broken.

Rose was a few meters away. She cleanly staked a tall strigoi who had sprinted towards her. It seemed like a beautiful and deathly dance. Eddie was off defending Jill, but suddenly a strigoi grabbed his foot and made him fall. Both Rose and I ran to where he was, but Rose got there first and staked it, as another strigoi got in my way. In that moment of distraction, he managed to get a few blows on me, actually making me bleed, and pinned me to the ground. He was close enough that I could notice that their eyes weren't red, they were black.

I struggled to throw him off of me, but I finally did it. He staggered and I had a fragment of a second to stake him as he left an open spot.

The room was almost strigoi-free, except for the one attacking Rose. My heart leapt out as I saw him with his hands around Rose's throat. They were too far away, and I wouldn't make it in time if I decided to run for it. He would break her neck before I killed him.

All guardians have the choice of carrying a stake as a weapon or a gun with charmed bullets. I recently decided to have both, just in case. The bullets guardians carried were now charmed in the same way as stakes, though they were still being tested. They had all four elements, supposedly making them as deadly as stakes to strigoi (and any other living creature as well) as long as it was shot in the heart. If it was shot in any other place it would still hurt, but it wouldn't kill them.

I raised my gun and aimed at the strigoi's heart, it was now or never. Luckily Rose wasn't in the line of fire, so I shot several times and cleanly made the kill. At my right, I saw the last of the human trespassers grinning at the scene as he jumped out.

The bullet had worked, he instantly fell down, freeing Rose. However, I didn't notice Sydney was standing exactly behind the strigoi and I didn't see her before firing. How didn't I see her?

A bullet pierced the strigoi's heart, but another also went straight through, and into Sydney.

The next thing I knew, she plummeted against the wall and emptily stared straight ahead, as the bullet wound slowly grew into a darker red, the blood spreading. I felt how the life left her body immediately. She was dead.

And it was my fault.

ADRIAN'S POV

"No, no, no," I frantically whispered as I caught her before she fell forward, and then cupped her face. "Earth to Sage?" She didn't reply. I laughed slightly, surely she was just unconscious. "Wake up, Sage, this isn't funny. WAKE UP!"

I just remember hearing the gun being fired, and then Sage falling. Blood had splattered on the wall she was supporting herself on. And then I was crawling to where she was. She was in a position where she was still sitting up right, with her back supported by the wall.

Her eyes were empty, the ghost of a scream on her lips, her hands lazily on her sides. She was still warm, but there was no aura around her.

She couldn't be dead. She just couldn't. She was so strong, so strong. This isn't how she was supposed to die, and it wasn't the time either.

In the back of my mind, I focused on her and the few moments I had been with her. I saw her as the strong person she was... no, is—I refused to acknowledge she was dead—and imagined her so full of life, cheerful, and when she laughed—God, when she laughed at the tiniest things I said or did.

It took me just a moment to know exactly what she meant to me, although it has been just a few days, It felt like it has been months, even years—hell, a life-time. And I was sure as hell I didn't want to lose that even if she didn't feel the same way. I just didn't want to—even if it was selfish of me.

Without me realising, I was using my magic. It was a whole lot different to anything I had ever done. It felt warm, and full of life. It felt as if everything wonderful in the world was taking place right here, right now. I felt euphoric, happy, but mostly confused. I could only focus on how I wanted her to smile again, how I wanted her to live.

Then the tiniest of movements in her eyelids got my attention. I noticed she was breathing—barely, but she was.

"Sage, Sage... it's okay. You're alive. You're alive. I got you, I got you, Sage." I felt a strange pull in spirit. Maybe this was it, I was rambling and I was going crazy, or maybe I was crazy already.

I held her closer to me. I then noticed everyone else in the room. Seconds may have passed, or for all I knew, hours. She stared straight at me and gripped my shirt, then closed her eyes, and I got paranoid for a second, but she was still breathing, still gripping my shirt. And her wound—her wound wasn't bleeding anymore, it was still there, but it wasn't bleeding.

'It's a miracle.' I thought and then contradicted myself. 'No, I healed her so it makes sense.'

"She's alive," I whispered to no one in particular. I couldn't stop staring at her, afraid that her life would slip away if I looked somewhere else. "She's alive."

Someone was speaking to me and I doubt it was their first attempt at doing so. It was Lissa who knelt beside me. I could barely figure out what was going on. I couldn't use spirit right now. It wasn't gone, I could still feel it, but I couldn't use it. I couldn't see anyone's aura, I was spirit blinded. Healing her had taken its toll on me. It felt as if it was fried up. I didn't want to end up like Avery Lazar. She was a spirit user that ended up insane because she was bonded to two other people, and her spirit got fried up in a spirit battle, mostly staring the hell out of each other.

"Adrian, we must take her to the hospital. You've got to rest," Lissa spoke softly, "Your aura, it is still gold, but it's... it's dim. You've got to—"

"I'm not resting until I know she's fine."

"She's breathing, that counts as being fine." She placed a hand on my arm and I recognized the tiniest hint of calming compulsion coming from her. "Plus, she probably won't wake up in a long time, she must be exhausted. Please Adrian, take this time to rest, so you can be at your best when she does wake up."

Even without compulsion what she said was reasonable, but I still wanted to make sure she was safe.

"I'll rest as soon as I see her on the hospital, and there is no way am I going somewhere else and leaving her alone."

Lissa decided it was the closest she was to getting me off to rest, and didn't struggle further.

I didn't let anyone near Sage, I refused to let anybody else touch her or carry her. I carried her to the hospital myself, accompanied by a handful of guardians. I was on automatic mode, I didn't even know where the strength to carry her came from, even though I was exhausted and the hospital wasn't anywhere near the palace.

Once she was admitted, she was placed on a room on the fifth floor. I felt confident that it would be harder for a strigoi to get to the fifth floor in case they decided to attack again. I was dozing off in one of the chairs in the hall, but then a Moroi woman exited Sydney's room—it was the doctor. She was surprised that Sydney survived at all, she shouldn't have, especially when the bullet went through her lung, and was supposed to have internal bleeding. But instead, she was 100% fine physically. There were no wounds or trauma in her according to the doctor, but they did find a bullet in her clothes.

The doctor assumed Lissa or me had healed her and brought her just to make sure she was fine, but she still asked a few questions. It made no sense though, as I had seen the open wound before. There was no way she could have healed it in a matter of just minutes.

I asked to see her, but the doctor denied my entrance, and instead sent me for a medical check-up. I didn't have the strength or the will to fight back, so I complied. There were four guardians with us, so I asked two to stay behind to guard Sydney just in case. The other two went with me to the check-up. I ended up in a room on the fourth floor. The check-up showed I didn't have a concussion, but it still would hurt and be bruised for some time. I called back the rest of the gang and updated them on the diagnostics.

After the call, I decided to call it a night, even if it was technically the Moroi morning.

Do you think Sydney will be spirit-bonded, or did Adrian made it in time to save her before she died? Try out and guess.

Next chapter will probably be out on the first week of December.

Thank you all so much for taking your time to read this fanfic (my first ever), you don't know how happy it makes me. :D

Please don't forget to review and share it around, and tell me your opinion so far.