Abe kept talking the entire ride back to court. There was an air of awkwardness between Dimitri and me as he rambled on about the flight, the food, his newest suit, and if we liked the fabric of it. He kept talking and talking without even speaking of anything until we finally arrived at the gate.
"Ah, here we are!" he clapped his hands together and smiled.
"It has been a while since I've been to court. I look forward to meeting our new queen." He started to get out of the car, but I turned around and stopped him.
"Why would you be meeting the queen?" I asked.
"Rose, so forward. I like that about you. I believe we are alike in that trait. Right to the chase, no room for any chit-chat." He winked at me and smoothed down his goatee.
"Then explain it." I rolled my eyes.
"I'm a very important man, very important men should meet their fearless leader."
"If you're so important then why weren't I made aware of you? What do you even do?" He waved my questions off and opened the car door.
"A little of this and a little of that." He said as he got out of the door and stood with his hands in his pockets. Hans and a handful of other guardians met us at the garage, a few handled Abe's luggage while the others talked to Dimitri and got the paperwork filled out.
"Rose, walk with me." Abe said as he lit a cigar and puffed on the end a few times until the other end was burning red.
"Ah, there is nothing like a good Cuban." He held the cigar between his thumb and index finger and admired it.
"Care for a drag?" he offered me the cigar but I snurled my nose at it and shook my head.
"Walk with me to my apartment."
"You already have an apartment assigned?" I asked.
"Oh god no. I own one. I keep it for when the time comes that I must visit this place." He wrinkled his nose up at the word place and kept walking.
"The men know where my place of residence is. They'll follow with my items. But tell me, how is it being shadow-kissed?" I shifted uncomfortably as we fell step by step and shrugged my shoulders.
"Come on! You can tell me! I am interested in the effects that it must have on you." Abe turned the corner and waved me to follow him.
"Is it as bad as the writings say it?" He asked.
"What are you talking about? There are no writings. The only thing that it said about Vladimir was that he had bouts of insanity. And that Anna comforted him in his hours of need. There is no detail."
"Not in the text that you have read. But I have firsthand accounts of what it did to him. And how it affected Anna as well. I've not let Ivan read those yet." I stopped walking and let my arms fall to my side.
"You're the one that sent them here, aren't you? You're the mastermind behind whatever plan or agenda they have. It's you, isn't it?"
"How do you know anything about Lissa and me? And why are you so interested in us anyway?"
"I'm interested in the two of you because I think with a little help and guidance you can change the world. Lissa is a public figure; you are no exception to the press." Abe continued walking, not looking back to see whether I followed him. And then my dumbass started to.
"How are we going to change the world? Have the Moroi fight with us? Are you willing to fight alongside us?" I caught back up to him and followed him up a set of beautifully laid brick stairs.
"Me? No, I'm too old. But those under me, these Moroi that are under the age of eighteen, I see no reason why they could not be trained in a new way. Give it a generation or two and the population would be thriving instead of on the brink of extinction." Abe thumbed around in his coat pocket for a set of keys, found the desired one, and unlocked the massive metal door.
"I'm afraid this is where our little talk must end. I'm terribly weary from my travels. I'll find you once I've rested and fed." Abe closed the door in my face before I was able to tell him that that was never going to happen. I walked dumbfounded back to Hans' office to check in and give my report on how things went. I was halfway through my side of the paperwork when Dimitri walked into Hans' office holding the folder that had the initial trip documents in it. Hans gave a quick nod to acknowledge Dimitri's presence and went back to his computer screen. Dimitri sat the file folder down on his desk and was out of the office as quickly as he came in it.
"Normal shifts starting tomorrow, Hathaway." Hans made one finally clicked on his computer and smiled up at me.
"Thank you for today." He said as I signed my name on the last section of the paperwork and nodded my head. I didn't make it far out of Hans' office before I saw Dimitri waiting for me outside.
"Normal shift tomorrow?" he asked.
"Yup," I kept walking and he followed beside me.
"What time does it start?" he asked, his voice was level and gave no indication that he was either angry or happy with me. It was the perfect guardian tone.
"Six am." I kept walking and he kept following me.
"So, we'll start our training tomorrow at four-thirty am then." He responded.
"Wait, what?" I stopped and faced him.
"I told you we would start tomorrow. Did I not?" he had on his duster; his hands shoved in the pockets.
"No…no you did. But I just thought that-"
"Thought that what? That I lied to your face? No, no I wouldn't do that." He cut me off.
"Can we talk about this somewhere else?" I asked. His brown eyes searched my face. It was a few breaths before he answered.
"Okay."
I nodded in response and started walking back to my room. But the stained carpet made me change my mind.
"My rooms getting cleaned," I started as we entered the queens' quarters. "That's not a lie, I had an accident and the carpet needs replaced." I held my hands up in defense.
"Can we talk in your room?" I asked. Dimitri nodded his head and we continued, passing the hallway that led to my room and Lissa's. A quick glance down that direction and I saw a crew coming in and out of my room, indicating that they were changing the carpet now. We reached Dimitri's door, he unlocked it and shut the door behind me.
There was nothing special about his room, nothing that was out of the ordinary. Most guardians' rooms were bare and without personality from the traveling that the job required. His room was more neat than usual. A small stack of paperback books rested on the dresser, a tray that must have been there to hold things like wallets and keys. His bed was made military style, tight, and clean. No mess, nothing out of place. Everything perfect.
"I don't think my room was this neat before they put furniture in it." I joked. My eyes fell on the bed. I wondered what Dimitri and I would've done in that bed had we not been interpreted that night. I bit my lip at the thought.
"Everything has its place." He said simply as if it was the most obvious thought in the world. I went to the oversized armchair that was part of his "living room" suit and sat down. There was a coffee table just like mine and a couch that sat in the same place as the one in my room. Though the colors and patterns were different than mine. Dimitri sat on the couch next to me. The weight of him made the couch creak.
"Dimitri I-"
"Rose-"
We both cut each other off. Dimitri gestured for me to continue.
"Dimitri, I'm sorry. Let me first start by saying that." I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I tried to find the words.
"This has been something between Lissa and I, only Lissa and I, for the last five years. No one besides us knows. Well except for Adrian."
"Adrian?" Dimitri asked raising an eyebrow.
"That wasn't by choice," I raised a finger "He saw our auras connected. No one else knows, not Mason or even Christian. Lissa and I never wanted to let people know about the bond because we couldn't explain it, we couldn't control it, and we didn't know what it meant." I kept folding my hands over and over, playing with my fingers. It felt odd talking about the bond out loud. It was something that we had kept hidden for so long.
"I'm sorry that I lied to you about it. But it wasn't just my secret to tell." I pursed my lips together. I tried to find the words to explain what happened to my mind and my body when I got sucked into Lissa's head. I tried to think of a way to explain that feeling, the sensation of watching something happen through another person's eyes.
"That day in the hallway, you were in her head, weren't you?" Dimitri had leaned forward and rested his elbows on his legs.
"Yes." I nodded.
"What happens? What's it like?" I searched my mind to try to find the words.
"Um, it's like having an out-of-body experience I suppose. When her emotions are running high or when she's off her medicine it's stronger. I get sucked into her mind and I see what she sees, I feel what she feels. Not just mentally, but physically too. If she's doing something, say she's brushing her hair or whatever I feel that too. The medicine helped to dull it. I wasn't getting sucked in as often." I rubbed my hands together and pulled my knees up to my chest.
Resting my chin on my knees I stared at the carpet. I whispered the next part, not being able to meet his eyes.
"The darkness, that madness spills into me. Sometimes I can fight it off, but others it consumes me and takes control. The scars that Ivan has from cutting himself, I had similar ones. Before Lissa or Adrian healed me. It leaks over into the bond so that Lissa doesn't take the heat from using it." I remembered that past times I had lost control and cut myself. I remembered the most recent event, and then I remembered the compulsion that Ivan used on me. Dimitri stayed quiet for a few breaths until I heard him start to move on the couch, he shifted over until he was closer to me. I lifted my eyes to see his face, but it gave nothing away.
"I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this on your own." He said in a low voice.
"But I wish you wouldn't have kept it from me. Especially when Ivan is looking for answers to things that he doesn't understand about himself."
"Our bond has nothing to do with Ivan. You two aren't linked, and he doesn't have a bond mate. We kept nothing from him that was important to him." A bout of rage flared up inside of me. I wanted to lash out and tell him that he didn't know the man he swore to protect. That there were lies hidden in his soul and depiction in his veins, but because of the compulsion the bastard used on me I couldn't. I had to swallow those words like vomit.
"I kept Lissa safe. I will always put her first." Dimitri's eyes met mine and after a few breaths, he nodded his head.
"They come first." He said.
"They come first," I repeated. It was a saying that I hated. While I would willingly die for Lissa, I didn't think that it needed to be engraved in the heads of every dhampir that their life was worth less.
"How do you know Abe?" I asked. Dimitri shifted in his seat and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You need to be careful around him."
"Why?"
"Because he's dangerous."
"How?"
"Rose. Listen to me, you don't know him like I do, Ivan and I spent the last two years working alongside him and living with him. He's not royal, but he's a very, very dangerous man with connections that should frighten you." Dimitri clasped his hands together as he spoke. "Abe is not to be messed with You never know what he might take as disrespect. Questioning him like that, that was reckless. And when you're reckless around him you'll end up in a body bag."
"How does he even know about me?" I asked.
"That's a mystery to me as well. I wasn't aware that he even cared about the queen let alone her guards. But he knew you were shadow kissed. That's what puzzles me."
"When you said you worked alongside of him, what do you mean?"
"Ivan and he share similar ideas about how to improve our numbers. Ivan teamed up with Abe because he had the money and the connections to get the ball rolling." Dimitri shrugged his shoulders as if this was normal to talk about. Overturning the way our society was set up and the norms of it.
"So that's why you kept shooting me those dirty looks when I would question Abe?" I asked.
"You'd be surprised at what he takes for disrespect. You must really tiptoe around him."
"So, what did you and Ivan do in those two years?" I asked.
"Well, a little bit of this and that. A lot of research, a lot of training. To show that Ivan could hold his own in the field, it would probably have been better if he was stronger in one of the elements other than spirit-"
"Spirit is the mix of all the elements," I clarified.
"What?" he asked.
"It's a mix of all of them. He can control them all to a certain extent, but not enough for him to declare as one."
"That makes sense." Dimitri shook his head and then continued. "Well, like I said it probably would've been better if he was able to control fire or air more. But we worked with what we had. I made sure that he knew the basic moves that they teach us in school and how to actually defend himself. I didn't want him to always cower behind someone and he didn't want that either. The research took place alongside the training. How the Moroi used to fight with us and how the numbers were then verses now. How the social classes were and what was affected. What changed between then and now, the pros and the cons of it.
"Abe was supposed to get Ivan's foot in the door for him. I suppose that's why he's here now."
"Why does Abe care?" I asked.
"Well, he is first and foremost a businessman. I'm sure that Abe sees a way that he can profit from this, so I'm sure that's where his interest truly lies, despite what he might say." I could see the tension in Dimitri's arms and shoulders as he spoke. I wanted to reach out and touch him to relieve some of it, but I held back.
"So, when was Ivan going to bring this up to Lissa instead of them learning more about spirit?" I asked. Ivan had come here under the pretense that he wanted to learn more about his element. And from our last interaction that was a complete lie.
Dimitri signed and ran a hand through his loose hair.
"I think after he got some questions answered? Maybe. Ivan is his own person and despite how hard I try to protect him, he makes it difficult sometimes. He has been very secretive about this whole thing. Normally he tells me everything, but with this, he hasn't shared much."
"He did suspect that you and the queen were bonded though. I brushed it off as another one of his episodes because it sounds crazy."
"It does sound crazy. It is crazy." I laughed. Dimitri chuckled and shook his head.
"I've never been good at accepting things as reality that I couldn't see or touch. But Ivan has made my mind open to a lot of things. Now this…these bondmates and shadow kissed. It's a bit too much." That desire to reach out and touch him was so powerful. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and just let him know that this didn't change who I was as a person. I was still the same. We sat there in silence for a few moments, and I allowed myself to steal a few glances at him. Tried and sleep-deprived, he was still handsome.
"Thank you for hearing me out." I said at last. I wasn't sure what else to say. Dimitri nodded his head and stood up, I followed suit and stood in front of the chair. I slowly made my way to the door, but Dimitri caught hold of my arm. He pulled me into his chest with such force that I lost balance of my footing. He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. My arms flew around his waist. We stood there for a while, holding each other. I had closed my eyes and rested my head against his chest. He started to stroke my hair in soothing motions, playing with the ends of it with his other hand. His cheek was resting on the top of my head as we took in the warmth of each other's embrace. I was surprised at how well our bodies molded together. It felt like his was made just for mine.
It made me feel complete.
I needed to look at him. I needed to see those deep pools of brown that warmed me from the inside out. I never knew that someone's gaze could do so much to me, Dimitri's eyes were able to do more to me then most men's kisses.
I shifted and craned my neck up so that I could look at him. His eyes met mine, holding me hostage. Not that I wanted to leave this moment, ever. Dimitri started to say something, I saw in his eyes that he wanted to. But he closed his lips and licked his bottom lip.
"I-"
"I know." I shook my head, I knew what he wanted to say. I could feel that we felt the same way in this moment. That we wanted this to last, this was something that was real. It didn't matter than we had only known each other for three weeks. It didn't matter that we were still relatively new to each other. We understood one another. We were able to guess things about the other that no one else was able to. I had seen it in our gym sessions. The conversations that we had warmed me and kept my mind occupied. And while I hadn't shared everything with him, I really had wanted to. I wanted him to know everything about me, he already knew a great deal. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to lay me down on that bed and show me what he was capable of.
My soul already cried out his name and now my body was beginning to.
His eyes moved to different parts of my face searching for something. They flickered from my eyes to my lips, back to my eyes. My hands moved to behind his neck and laced together. I was standing on the very tip of my toes as I strained to meet his height. My eyes closed as I leaned forward and waited for his lips to meet mine.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, I was thrown into Lissa's mind.