Dimitri's POV

The questions came as soon as we were back in Rose's car. She'd begrudgingly agreed to let me drive after I'd given her a choice – she could either drive or ask questions. It wasn't a surprise that she picked the latter though I had hoped she wouldn't start her assault right away. Nevertheless, I kept my promise and answered all her questions truthfully.

I told her about our first encounter with a group of Strigoi over two years ago. We'd been on our way home from a feeder when three of them had attacked us. Christian had been shocked, of course, but sprung into action quickly. Together, we had been able to take care of them, but not before the last one had managed to say something to Christian. To this day, I still didn't know what he'd said, but it'd had something to do with Lissa.

I recounted the weeks that followed – Christian's obsession with finding more of these Strigoi, my refusal to go on the hunt with him and, finally, the time he had run away from me to go off on his own. That last part was hard for me to admit, and I had to pause for a moment.

"But you found him again." She didn't seem fazed at all by the monumental revelation that my charge had managed to escape me.

"I did. Luckily, he didn't run into any Strigoi by himself, but after that…"

"You knew there was no way to stop him, so you had to go with him," she concluded.

I nodded gravely. "It took a little while for me to agree, but yes. When I found him in Charlottesville, I realised he was getting far too close to the royal court, and if he had tracked the Strigoi there—"

Rose gasped. "Then the Strigoi who talked to him must have known something. About Lissa."

"Exactly. We… don't know much at this point, but from what we could gather on our hunt, we're pretty sure someone at court is working with Strigoi to take Lissa down."

"That's impossible!" Rose exclaimed. "I've come to terms with Strigoi working with humans, but Moroi? No."

It had seemed impossible at first, but I'd had to face that it wasn't. "Whoever is working against the Queen is going to great lengths to finish the job. Strigoi can't cross the wards, but there's other things they can do. Believe me, I've had a hard time accepting it, too, but…"

"But nothing is impossible. Yeah, I get that." She slumped back in her seat. "I always thought Moroi and dhampirs working with the evil undead was the one thing we'd never have to worry about."

"So did I," I admitted. Or at least I had thought so until I'd become one of these 'evil undead' myself. I knew very well that the only things they cared about were Moroi blood and themselves, but it wasn't impossible for them to control themselves around Moroi. Certainly not with the promise of the blood of a Dragomir to entice them. I'd wondered, too, if my transformation might have had something to do with the fact that Moroi would be willing to work with Strigoi. I'd proven that, while they were definitely soulless monsters, they weren't necessarily lost forever. What if someone had interpreted that as proof that they could be worked with? I shuddered at the thought. "But that's what it looks like."

"Anything else you found out?" she asked. "Maybe something about the academy?"

Perceptive as ever, my Roza. "Yes, but I don't know what any of it means just yet."

"Maybe I can help," she offered immediately. "I've spent more time there than you."

"I don't know. At our final encounter, one of them told me that if I was looking for answers, I should start here."

"And you believed that?"

I remembered the terrified look in those red-rimmed eyes when I'd driven the stake through her heart. Oh, yes, I believed her. "Without a doubt."

Rose regarded me carefully, and I was ready for her to call me an idiot again. She didn't. "Okay. So. Answers at the academy, got it. Any clue what you're looking for?"

"Not yet."

"So, you've spent two months here and found… nothing is what I'm hearing."

"Looks like it," I said through gritted teeth. How was this the thing she was judging me over after she heard that I'd put a Moroi's life in danger? Something was wrong with her priorities. Then again, she hadn't heard the worst part yet.

Of course, that was exactly what she asked about next. "Was that final encounter when Christian got hurt?"

"Yes. We were working one of them when another ambushed us. She got to Christian first, and I had no way to stop her." I'd replayed the scene over and over again in my mind. No, no matter how I acted, it always played out the same way – with Christian's body broken and bruised, and me unable to find out whether he was even alive until I had disposed of the threat.

I'd done more than that, though. Christian and I had had our methods to make the Strigoi talk, but that day, I'd taken a page straight out of Rose Hathaway's book for Strigoi torture. It had done nothing to help the bleeding Moroi in the room, of course, but it had yielded some valuable information. She would have never told me about the academy otherwise, I was sure of it.

"I didn't know where to go next, so I called my family in Russia," I went on to explain, trying to shake the memories. "We couldn't transport him in his condition, of course, but Viktoria had been talking about travelling, and while she may not be a guardian, she's had the same education as I've had. My mother didn't want to let her come, of course, but Viktoria has always had a mind of her own. Besides, my grandmother has foreseen it."

I didn't have to look at Rose to know she was rolling her eyes right now. "And what Yeva says goes, as always."

"Christian might not have recovered if it wasn't for her," I reminded her, and that shut her up. It shut me up, too. I didn't even want to think of that possibility.

"Hey. It's not your fault, you know that, right?" Rose said gently, taking me by surprise.

I took my eyes off the road for longer than I should have, trying to find any clue that she didn't mean it. That she was only saying it to make me feel better. She wasn't. "He was my responsibility. I shouldn't have—"

"Watch your words, comrade. I did it first," she said. "I know what he's capable of. I've fought beside him. And I sure as hell know there is no way he wouldn't have just run away again if you'd continued to refuse him."

Rose was right, but she must have known how guilty I felt despite it. "Yes, but—"

"But nothing. He's alive. That's what matters." She hesitated for a moment. "I'm still mad that you didn't tell me, but I don't blame you for what happened."

Once again, there wasn't a trace of a lie in her voice or her expression, and I wondered how I could have ever possibly thought I couldn't trust her. If anyone understood, it was her. She'd recognised it from the start, but now I did, too – I was an idiot. "I should have told you."

"Damn right, you should have. I'm sure we could've made decent progress on finding out what that Strigoi freak meant about the academy if we hadn't been so busy fighting about this these past few days!"

So she wasn't going to leave. We were being civil right now, but I knew that peace would be short-lived. In fact, I was making sure of it. "I don't think you should stay."

"Excuse me?!"

Her reaction wasn't a surprise, and I managed not to drive the car into a ditch at her exclamation. "Lissa's daughter is only safe so long as no one realises who she is. You know that."

"I can't leave her alone."

"You wouldn't," I assured her. "I'll still be here."

"I may trust you more than I did this morning, but she won't."

I doubted that. Sunshine was smart enough not to trust just any random person, but ever since she'd asked me about the molnija marks, I'd felt like we had a pretty good connection. "Why would you say that?"

Rose looked down at her hands in her lap. "I might have told her to stay the hell away from you."

Of course she would. That was undoubtedly the reason I hadn't seen the child since Friday morning. "You could tell her you were wrong about me."

"I could. I won't."

"Rose!"

"If you think I'm going anywhere after that bomb you dropped about Moroi working with Strigoi, you don't know me as well as I thought you did." She shook her head in disbelief. "And if St. Vlad's is the place to find answers, then all the better."

Arguing with her was pointless, and even if I'd had any inclination to spend another hour talking to a wall, we had reached the location where I'd left the academy car that I'd taken to follow Rose. I couldn't very well just leave it here.

"We'll talk about this later," I told her before I got out of her car. "Don't think this is over."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she said with a smile whose meaning I couldn't decipher. "See you later, comrade."

Later turned out to be a lot sooner than I'd expected. We'd arrived at the academy a while after midnight, and I'd thought Rose might go back to her room to get some sleep. After all, she would have another shift at ten and she'd had a stressful day. Instead, she was in my office only minutes after I'd sat down in my chair.

"The whole week? Really?" she asked, and I could guess what she was talking about.

I'd put her on nighttime duty at the gate for the entirety of the coming week, and she clearly wasn't happy with that. "What do you want me to tell you? That schedule takes effect tomorrow, it's not my fault you didn't care to look at it until now."

"So? I'll do the shift tomorrow, then, but you can change the rest. I know you had your reasons, but those are void now. I'll have a lot more time to help you with this mystery if I get the nights off."

Yet another reason for me not to change the schedule. Apart from the obvious reason – it would be a huge inconvenience for the other guardians. I'd already had to change it to accommodate for Rose's presence, and I was not going to change it again. "No. I'm sorry, Rose. We can talk about it for the next week, but this is what you get for this one."

"It's like you don't want me to help you!" she exclaimed. "I thought we were over this."

"You're right," I said. "I don't want you here. I want you to get out and leave and never turn back. I'm not dragging you into this, Roza. I can't."

She gave a bitter laugh at that. "As if I'm not already in this. I've spent the last eight years away from my best fucking friend because I made a promise to protect her daughter, who is growing up to look more and more like her with every passing day. I've had to leave her behind, and I wake up every single day hoping, no, praying that I don't have to read about another royal assassination."

I hated seeing her this way, the tears forming in her eyes were too much. "Roza, I—"

"No. Don't," she snapped. "I'm not done. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to stay out of this? How many times I've wondered if it wouldn't have been better if I'd stayed? Someone is trying to kill Lissa, and I can't be there to protect her nor can I help her find who is behind it. But now you're telling me the answer might lie buried here, and you expect me to just… leave? I can't, Dimitri. I have to do this."

I could understand what she was saying, and I knew I would have felt the same way in her position. But couldn't she understand my point of view? I'd left her behind, and it had hurt me every day since. Unlike with Lissa, I couldn't just check the news to find out whether she was alive or dead. I'd half accepted the fact that I might never see Roza again before she had turned up here. Couldn't she understand that I wasn't going to put her in harm's way again?

She should have been safe here, behind the wards, but we knew we couldn't count on that. It was safer for her to be far, far away from Moroi society. Hell, if she left the child here with me, she could abandon all connections to this world. She could travel and visit all the places she had always dreamt of, and she would be safe.

But Rose would never do that. As much as I wanted it for her, I knew it wasn't going to happen.

"All I want is for you to be safe," I said. It was a weak argument, but against all odds, I hoped it would convince her.

Rose only shook her head. "If you won't do this with me, I'll just go and do it alone."

"And where would you start?" I asked. Did she really think she would get further than I had? "I've been here for two months, and I've come up with nothing. You just got here."

She huffed. "You forget that I grew up in this place. Face it, comrade, when it comes to the secrets of this academy, I've got a hell of a lot more experience."

"So? I'm listening."

Rose opened her mouth to speak, and I wondered if she really did have some helpful information, but then she thought better of it. "You know what? No. I'm not telling you. Clearly, you don't want me here, and that's fine. But I'm not going to tell you shit."

With that, she turned around and made for the door. I was out of my chair in an instant, and had crossed the distance between us before she could even reach for the door knob. I grabbed her arm, forcing her to look at me. "What do you know?"

"Nothing," she admitted, trying to free herself of my grasp. "Not yet, but I know where to start."

"Then tell me."

She contemplated that for a second, then shook her head. "Give me your phone."

"Excuse me?"

"I need to contact someone," she told me, finally able to free herself after surprising me with her demand. "I'll tell you what I find if you agree not to shut me out."

"Why don't you use your own?"

She huffed. "The one I've used to talk to Sunshine? Yeah, I don't think so."

It was time for me to contemplate her offer now. She did know something, and she was right about her knowledge of the territory. With a sigh and a silent prayer that this would not be a repeat of my situation with Christian, I finally agreed. "Okay. No more secrets. We'll work together, but the moment I call this off, it's off."

"Sure," she said, and I knew she didn't mean it for a second.

Regardless, I handed her my phone. I'd expected her to call someone, but she only typed a quick text message, then gave the device back. When she was done, she turned around, opened the door and stepped into the corridor. "Oh, and one more thing – change that damn schedule."

The door was shut before I could tell her that wasn't going to happen. Alone again, I looked down at my phone to read the text she had sent.

Come visit me tonight.
- R.

Visit her? Tonight? I couldn't stop the wave of jealousy that washed over me at the thought of another man in her room tonight. Granted, I had no idea who she had texted, but this sounded more like a booty call than a request for information. Where did she get the nerve to use my phone for it? Was she trying to toy with me? If so, I wasn't going to play along.

I quickly typed another message to that same number.

Never mind, wrong number.

My phone chimed a few seconds later.

Good morning to you too, Belikov.

I furrowed my brow. Who was this? How did he know who I was?

I didn't have to wonder for long. The message that followed moments later all but confirmed the sender's identity, and it did nothing to ease my jealousy.

And don't you worry. Unlike you, I'd never take advantage of her :-)