Chapter 3

After breakfast and hammering out a few more details with Lissa, I made my way back to my room to change into workout clothes. The gym and workout area here was much better than the raggedy one that was at the academy. And even better, there was rarely anyone in the gym when I went there.

I slung my gym bag down to the side and began my warm-up stretches.

"Hello, again." Dimitri Belikov walked through the door in a loose-fitting t-shirt and track pants. I looked up at him from where I was sitting on the mat. I ran a hand through my hair and swiftly stood up. I bent down, grabbed my bag, and made my way to the door that I had just come through not four minutes ago.

"Don't be like that." Dimitri caught my arm and stopped me from leaving the gym. His hand was warm on my elbow as he held me there.

"I'm sorry about last night, I didn't mean to insult you." He let my arm go but kept speaking.

"I thought that-"

"What? You thought that I was just some power-hungry dhampir woman looking for an easy meal ticket?" I crossed my arms over my chest and fixed my stance. Looking up at him I saw that he had recently shaved. If I thought that his cologne was overwhelming yesterday the smell of his aftershave today was ten times that.

"No, that's not what I thought." he shook his head and dropped his gym bag. He grabbed mine from my shoulder and sat it down next to his.

"Let's start over. Hi, Dimitri Belikov, head guard for Lord Zeklos." He outstretched his hand. I took a few moments to think if I should slap it out of my way or shake it. I decided to do the latter.

"Rose Hathaway, guard to Queen Vasilisa Dragomir." We shook hands. His hand felt nice in mine, the rough calluses from years of training and work contraindicated the softness of his fingers.

"Nice to meet you, Rose."

"Nice to meet you, Dimitri." We both pulled away from one another and just stood there.

"Spar with me?" He offered.

"I've not sparred in a while. I'm a little rusty." I answered honestly. It had been a while. For most of my workouts, I stuck to weight training and cardio. Mason and Eddie were good sparring partners, but our work schedules rarely allowed us to see each other.

"Teach me some American techniques." He grabbed his sparring gloves from his gym bag, and I reached for mine. We stood opposite of each other and bowed before we began. One minute in the ring with him and I knew that this man was a god. The way he moved, the swiftness of his jabs and kicks, the sure ability that oozed out of him. I didn't last a full five-minute round with him before I was sweaty and bruised.

"Fuck me," I whispered, bracing my hands on my knees, and tried to catch my breath.

"You, okay?" Dimitri took a drink from a water bottle and asked.

"I'm fine." I had never been beaten that badly. There were always close calls, but I was never humiliated in a sparring match like that.

"That was humiliating, what do they teach you in Russia?" I wiped some of the sweat off my forehead and placed my hands on my hips as I continued to do some controlled breathing.

"What didn't they teach you?" He shot back. I laid down on the mat and laughed.

"That was humiliating. You wiped the floor with my ass."

"It wasn't that bad; you got a few good hits in on me." He replied rubbing out his bicep. I had landed quite a few good blows on him, but it was nothing compared to the ass kicking he'd just given me.

"Not enough." I snorted.

"Aren't you and Lord Zeklos supposed to be meeting with the queen? Why are you here?" I sat up and redone my ponytail.

"He is meeting with her." He started rewrapping his left glove.

"Then shouldn't his head guardian be with him?" I asked.

"You would think that wouldn't you?" his tone was hostile. Touchy subject.

"Lissa made me take the next two days off, and then switched me from days to nights so I wouldn't stop her from doing anything dangerous while Lord Zeklos was here. That's why I wasn't in uniform last night. She wanted me there as a friend." I thought that maybe if I offered my misfortune, it would make him feel better about his.

"Ivan did the same thing to me. He thinks I worry too much." Dimitris's voice was controlled. And I envied the amount of control that he seemed to have. If Ivan was a spirit user, I wondered what the chances were that Dimitri was bonded to him in the same way that I was bonded to Lissa. Looking over to him now, I took a moment to admire the dedication that he had given his body. Strong, thick thighs held him up. While his arms were thick as tree trunks they grooved down into those large, long, delicate hands and fingers. His forearms and biceps were easily the size of my legs. Strength, not just physical strength, oozed from him.

"Is Lord Zeklos, does he have…" I struggled to find the words that I was looking for.

"He's a spirit user if that's what you're asking. Ivan has never been able to declare a magic, but once word of your queen spread, Ivan knew that he was the same as she was." Dimitri sat down on the mat and in one fluid motion crossed his legs and rested his elbows on his knees. For someone so tall it seemed impossible for him to be so graceful.

"Lissa can, um, she can heal things, cuts, scratches. And she's been learning how to read people's auras. Can Lord Zeklos do any of those?" I asked.

"Ivan can't heal anything. But he can read auras and he has a particular gift for compulsion. It used to be used as a party gag, but it didn't agree with him when he did it." He seemed uncomfortable about this. Maybe he never talked to anyone other than Ivan about it.

"Lissa has a strong grip on compulsion too. She doesn't react well whenever she uses it either." He wasn't giving me any details about Lord Zeklos, I was weary to give him any on Lissa. Not until I knew their true intentions.

"Well, that's three things that they have in common." he assessed. I didn't want to admit it, but talking to him was easy, when silence fell between the two of us, I didn't feel the need to fill it with pointless conversation or just chit-chat. He stayed with me for the rest of my workout. Through my running, my weight training, and my cool-down stretches. We didn't speak again until I went to grab my bag.

"Do you come here at the same time every day"? He asked.

"Normally." I nodded my head. The subtle hint of his accent made me wonder where he spent most of his time. He had to of traveled to lose some of it.

"Would you care if I joined you?" He walked over to the door and place a still-gloved hand on the handle. His eyes held mine with such intensity I started to squirm under his gaze.

"Only if you can keep up." I slung my bag over my shoulder and sauntered out the door.

Having time off was new to me. For the most part of the past two years my time off was when I slept. And even then, I was still sharing a dorm room with Lissa. Looking back on how far Lissa and I have come, it seemed like a lifetime ago. We had been outside of the academy walls for two years, the first real taste of freedom that we had before she waw summoned by the queen. Had Lissa known what the queen wanted I doubted that she would've answered her call. Sophomore year of college her world stopped, and she was thrown unto a route that she had never pictured for herself. If I was being honest, I hadn't pictured our life's turning out either. I knew that Lissa wanted to make a difference with her life, but being queen wasn't part of the plan. The major change in plans and the move from college back into the court was something. Lissa wasn't lying when she said all her and Christian had done so far was fight. I got caught in quite a few of them and had walked in on a handful more. The spotlight did not agree with Christian or the way he handled himself. Walking back to my room I took a quick shower and sat down on the sofa. I ran my fingers threw my wet hair and pressed it with a towel to try to get out some of the leftover water. I had Thomas drop off the folders that Hans had received over Lord Zeklos and his team. Thumbing through the pages I saw that he was here with four guardians, including Dimitri just as I had thought. Papers and papers of the guardians' trainings, ranks, background, and positions could've all been boiled down to the very last page.

Name: Dimitri Belikov

Occupation: Head guard to Lord Ivan Zeklos.

Age: 27

Blood Master Level: 7

Name: Josef Greene

Occupation: Guard to Lord Ivan Zeklos

Age: 31

Blood Master Level: 4

Name: Max Suplee

Occupation: Guard to Lord Ivan Zeklos

Age: 34

Blood Master Level: 4

Name: Alexi Volkov

Occupation: Guard to Lord Ivan Zeklos

Age: 28

Blood Master Level: 5

"Level seven? Are you shitting me?" I gripped the paper tight as I ran back through to the section with his trainings and recorded kills.

Dimitri Belikov, head guard to Lord Ivan Zeklos. Studied at St. Basils Academy, mentored by Galina Golubeva.

Ranked top of his class, obtained a Blood Master Level 7 by age 24. Trained in various forms of martial arts. Kill log updated as of 2023, is recorded at 8 Strigoi kills.

Received a Zvezda in the year 2019 during an outbreak in Istanbul.

Current enlisting location: Istanbul, Turkey.

I ran my fingers over each sentence as I flipped from the three pages that covered the basics on Dimitri's trainings and background. I slumped back on the sofa as I finished reading. The Lord Zeklos must have been staying in Istanbul, that would explain how Dimitri had lost some of his Russian accent. The man was seven years older than me and had already accomplished more than most guardians done their entire lives by the time he was only twenty-four.

He really is a god. I thought to myself as I sat the folder back on the coffee table and closed my eyes as I leaned my head back on the sofa. I was only a blood level four. Dimitri had asked if he would join me in my workouts, and it was untelling how long they would be here. If I could get him to spar with me, to show me how he moved like a cobra and struck as fast as one no one would be able to doubt my abilities. No one.

Glancing at the clock I ran through my head where Lissa was and what she was doing. Her meeting with Ivan should've ended by now and I reached out into my mind to latch onto her. Images of files and books sprayed across a dark wooden table popped up. Leather seats and stagnate air told me exactly where she was.

Rushing through blow drying my hair and tying my shoes I ran to the conference room that Lissa dedicated to her own personal studies. She didn't allow other members of court to be in this room. She saved it for her and Christian when they wanted to rekindle that flame of hooking up in the attic of the church at the academy. Hopeless sinners the both of them.

The conference room was off of the main hallway tucked away in a corner. I pushed open the heavy wooden doors and found Lissa leaning over the table, eyes wide as she read.

"Well, hello beautiful." A soft Russian voice cooed at me from the corner. This had to of been Ivan, Lissa hadn't done him justice describing him. He outstretched his hand to me, and I shook it.

"And who might you be?" He asked me.

"Rose, I'm one of Lissa's guards." I walked over to her and leaned over the table as well.

"Whatcha reading?" It was all in Russian, useless to my eyes. The yellow of the paper told me its age, the way Lissa grabbed a magnifying glass to get close to it made me think that it was seconds away from turning to dust.

"This is a journal from Saint Vladimir." She whispered; her eyes glued to the page. "You can feel the sadness coming off this page, Rose. There's… the way he writes, it's so sad." She looked up from the pages and her eyes met mine.

"Ivan this is Rose, Rose Ivan." She introduced us and went back to the pages. I walked over to Ivan and laughed at her.

"She's glued to that journal." I sat down in one of the chairs that were lined along the side of the rooms. While she was in her quarters Lissa was free to roam without the constant surveillance of a guard. There were none of Ivan guards in the room either, just the three of us and the smell of old, musty books.

"What's it saying?" I asked as Ivan took the seat next to me.

"This one is a rather old one, it's from Vladimir's younger years. Before he knew what was going on with him. This is before he met Anna." Ivan took something out of his pocket and handed it to me.

Taking it, I saw that it was a small silver cross with vines and leaf's engraved into the metal. It wasn't very big, it fit in the palm of my hand. As soon as it touched my palm, I left a shock go through my body, I dropped it on the carpet and rubbed where it touched my hand.

"What was that?" I asked, I looked down at where the cross lay, half scared to pick it back up. Ivan threw his head back and laughed. He leaned down and picked up the cross and started playing with the edges of it.

"Lissa's been telling about how she and someone has charmed silver before…I tried it, and this is my results." He held the cross up to the light of the lamp and examined it.

"You probably cursed it instead of charming it." I rubbed the burn mark it left in my palm.

"Why did it burn me and not you?" I asked.

"Maybe I'm more holy than you are." He shrugged his shoulders and placed the cross back in his pocket.

"Will you be joining us for all of our meetings?" Ivan asked. His blue eyes caught mine.

"No, no she won't be." Lissa looked up at us from her reading for just a moment, then returned.

"Apparently I'm not allowed." I mused.

"That's a shame." Ivan threw his hands behind his head and nodded toward Lissa's direction.

"Had I known that she was going to be such a nerd I would've waited to bring the books out."

"Had I been notified about this scheme; I could've told you that." Lissa shot me a look that could've killed me dead.

"Easy…" I fanned my hands at her. "I've told you that I forgive you." I smiled at her, and she rolled her eyes.

"So, Lord Zeklos-"

"Please, call me Ivan." He insisted.

"Ivan," I corrected myself. "Why are you here?"

"Rose!" Lissa scolded me.

"What? I can't ask a question?"

"I apologize for her." Lissa walked over to us and kicked my boot.

"There's no apology necessary. No offense taken; I can appreciate someone that's bluntly honest. I wish more people were like that." Ivan wasn't nearly as tall as Dimitri was. But he still had that height that all Moroi had. But there was more muscle to him than Moroi had. I could tell that he had seen a few hours in the gym, but his own physique was paled by Dimitri's.

"I didn't think that I was going to be able to declare a magic. For most of my life, I thought that there was something wrong with me because everyone else in my family were strong air users. But not me, not even close. I couldn't control the air well enough to make a breeze blow through this room. But despite my lack of skills with the other four elements I was exceptionally good at compulsion. I'd try to test my abilities with it here and there. But one of my guards, Guardian Belikov, saw first-hand the side effects of what using it done to me. And after one particular bad night that was mixed with immense spirit use and bad choices landed me in the hospital. I didn't even realize what I had done until the next day. I guess in a fit of rage I'd grabbed a razor and slit my wrists." He pulled up his sleeves and exposed two long vertical slits that ran from the base of his wrists up until the middle of his forearms.

"I don't remember doing it, but Guardian Belikov found me and got me to the hospital. There wasn't much that they could do, I'd lost a lot of blood, but my body was already starting to heal itself. They monitored me for a few days, then sent me home." He licked his thin lips and continued. "I started seeing people's auras a few days after that." He rubbed his knee and looked uncomfortable for the first time. Slowly, Lissa walked up until she was right at his feet. She pulled up her sleeve and showed three small horizontal lines from where the madness took over and she too cut herself and had heal over. But the last time she went into that rage filled haze and cut herself she left those marks. As a reminder of how out of control she became.

"I've noticed that too. It's like after you give into the darkness it gives you another gift to discover." Lissa's voice was a whisper. Ivan moved forward and caught her arm, running his fingers over the three separate line.

"I'm sorry." He looked up at her and held her eyes. There was something happening between the two of them. I wasn't sure if it was something that involved spirit or just a simple attraction. But I knew that I was now the third wheel in whatever was happening. Lissa was the one that pulled away. Bringing over a chair for herself she sat down and rubbed her temples.

"Saint Vladimir says that before he knew it was 'spirit' he thought that he was battling demons. The periods in which he was at his lowest he was self-harming, drinking, doing anything that would numb his senses. He was just a kid, a thirteen-year-old boy that was sent to a monastery because he had no parents, no family."

"That's where he met Anna." Ivan spoke up. "If you read more of those journals, you'll learn that after two years at the monastery he meets Anna, she was posing as a boy. She was also an orphan. People say that they were lovers, but I think that it was deeper than that. I don't think that it was a sexual relationship like others suggest. It went beyond that. He talks about how Anna knew his thoughts and his feelings, and how Anna would know whenever he was in trouble or in one of these episodes that he writes about. That sounds more like a loving friendship than a sexual one to me." Mine and Lissa's eyes met for a moment.

Don't tell him. Not yet. I spoke into her mind. A very slight nod of her head told me that she agreed.

"I don't mean to overload you. Especially not on my first day here. But I'll need to have a key to this room if we're leaving this journals and documents in here. They must be under lock and key. Is there a safe in here?" Ivan stood up and looked around the room.

"Maybe hidden in the wall or something?" Ivan proposed.

"Sorry to disappoint but we just had the wall safe taken out." I shot back at him.

"I like you, Rose…?" He wagged his finger at me,

"Hathaway." I answered.

"Rose…Hathaway? What's your mother's name?" He put his hands in his pants pockets and strolled over to where Lissa and I still sat.

"Janine."

"Janine Hathaway is your mother?" He sounded as if he didn't believe it.

"Yup." I popped the p at the end.

"The name Abe Mazur mean anything to you?"

"Nope." I popped the p at the end.

"Should it?" I asked. He shook his head and waved the air at us.

"No, I ran into Guardian Hathaway while traveling. She was intense."

"It's not a recessive trait." I cleared my throat and stood up.

"Lissa, care to walk with me?" Lissa arose from her chair and nodded toward Ivan.

"I'll have one of my staff find a safe for you. I'm not sure if we can accommodate the wall safe request." She voice was soft and playful.

"Lord Zeklos, tomorrow?" He took her hand and kissed the top.

"I look forward to it, your Majesty."