Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Academy or anything surrounding it (but I do own this plot :D)

RPOV

I skidded to a halt. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind did I find myself trying to align it with all the evidence we had as though it were some mathematical proof.

Trying to raise the dead.

What the actual fuck!?

It sounded almost so far-fetched that it could've quite easily set the perimeter for what could be determined 'far-fetched'.

And yet, it made sense.

Somehow, it fitted: it was perhaps the only thing that could fit. The ghosts, the pain, Mason, Andre, Patrick and spirit's influence. Whoever was doing this was trying to bring back the dead - trying to bridge that threshold between our worlds and pull them out. Whoever it was, they were trying to reverse the very will of nature, for the act went against every fibre that made up the natural order

No wonder it bloody hurt.

And not just the ghosts, but the living too. Reed. Poor, poor Reed. I actually felt my heart lurch at the thought of what he must be going through. I mean, I had been an absolute mess and all Lissa had done was attempt to heal blindness - I could not begin to imagine the power required to bring someone back from the dead, not to mention the darkness that went with it. Added to this, that very same spirit user I now knew was also poking about in Lissa's head, doing God only knows what.

It suddenly became very apparent that we needed to find out who this asshole was.

I considered turning around and heading back to Adrian before remembering the reason I had left was that I was supposed to be training with Killian.

So, I resolved to go find Dimitri.

I did feel bad for disturbing his sleep for the third time that night, but this was important. Also, it was probably for the best that I delayed telling Killian anyway, given the involvement of his brother and how sensitive the subject was. Heck, I was struggling to think straight with the thought of all those poor people being denied their right to rest in bloody peace.

Mason.

My dear friend. Oh, I am so sorry. I ran a nervous and shaking hand through my hair, continuing to walk towards the Guardian's dorms. This was making me feel sick. Fighting back the tears, I made a silent vow - to Mason, to Andre, to them all - that I would stop at nothing to find out what the hell was going on and make it stop.

"Hannah!"

I looked up just in time to swerve out of the way of an incoming person. "Woah, sorry there," I said, steadying myself a little and looking back towards the girl.

She didn't seem to notice me, instead speaking out to the empty space before her. "Hannah? You are not Hannah! Who are you!? Hannah!"

I made to walk away slowly, but the hysterics in her tone stopped me from going too far. "Hey, you okay?"

She did not respond, instead staggered a bit further ahead of herself, out of the archway of the corridors and onto the green of the quad, pointing authoritatively at the empty square. "Where is my friend? Hannah, Hannah Skuza. Just tell me where she is."

I frowned and stepped towards her. "Hey, do you need…" I reached out to place my hand on her shoulder.

I jumped when I felt its dampness and its coldness. She snapped around, gasping as she did, and I got a proper look at her face. It was pale, almost white. Her eyes were a wide and crystallized blue that seemed to swell within their sockets. Indeed, her whole face seemed rather bloated such that she groaned and croaked every time she breathed, each breath a greater struggle than the last. She had dark hair, the colour indeterminable by the fact that it was soaking wet and hung off her head like curtain drapes. Since it was not raining, I had assumed she had just come from the shower and her hysteria derived from the fact that she was probably high, but one look at her face - at her eyes which seemed glossed and unsightly, yet she was clearly seeing something - told me that this was far from the case.

"Hannah…?" she asked, reaching her hand out about five inches to the side of my shoulder. "Are you there? Hannah?"

I froze for a moment, somewhat at a loss for what to do. Staggering back a little, I decided to do the sensible thing and call for backup. "Okay, just wait there - I'm getting some help," I said, not taking my eyes off her as I pulled my phone from my pocket.

"Hannah…? Hannah…?" she mumbled over and over as she moved around aimlessly, her arms reaching around her as though she were wading through the air.

"Rose?"

"Hey, Dimitri - 911 in the courtyard. Need you, now." I said into my phone. Not a second later, he hung up and I put it back in my pocket, eyeing the girl carefully. She was about my age, maybe younger. She was a Moroi to be sure, for not even the bloatedness could hide her slender and tall figure. Whilst it was a clear morning, it certainly wasn't warm; the sky remained dark, with dawn's arrival only hinted by the horizon. And there was a chill in the air - a deathly, cold chill. The girl's summery short skirt and a t-shirt with jacket combo warranted a much warmer climate than the weather of the present early springtime, which only served to put her more out of place. I watched for a moment as she staggered some more, looking helplessly around her as though she were searching for something.

Or someone.

"Hannah…? Where are you? I can't see you. Hannah?" she whispered into the morning air.

I took a few steps towards her, following as she walked. "Hello there. Can I do anything to help? Whose Hannah?"

Again, she did not acknowledge me. I suspected she couldn't hear me, but I doubted raising my voice would do anything to help. No, she seemed completely unaware of her surroundings - me, St. Vlad's, any of it. It was almost as though her senses and her consciousness were elsewhere, while her body remained here.

Not unlike when I went into Lissa's head...

"Hey! What's going on here?" I didn't have time to further think about that thought when a voice caught my attention. I turned my head towards it to see a guardian walking towards me and as he got closer, I recognized him as Avery's guardian.

Sean? Steve? No, Simon.

Whatever his name was, I was somewhat relieved to see him. "Hi, I was on my way to the gym and I just came across her. I'm not sure what's wrong - I think she might be sick or-"

"I shall deal with this." He cut me off furiously.

I blinked, a little taken aback. "Oka-"

"Go inside. I shall deal with this," he said angrily commanded again. He pushed (well, more shoved) past me to get to the girl. Still a little thrown by his temper, I mouthed a 'wow' and stepped back towards the semi-outdoor corridors that lined the edge of the Academy's central courtyard. I was about to look back to see what Guardian Grumpy was up to when I saw Dimitri emerge from the guardian wing.

"Dimitri," I said, loud enough for him to hear, but not so loud as to elicit more anger from Simon.

Dimitri lifted his head and began to walk towards me. "What is it?" he said with no little severity.

"There is a-" I cut myself off as I turned around to see an empty courtyard. I blinked. "How in the hell…?"

Dimitri frowned. "Rose?"

"They're gone," I said, looking around in utter disbelief. It wasn't exactly a small courtyard and I'd only turned my back for about twenty seconds. Where had they gone?

"Who has gone?"

I frowned. "Sorry, there was girl: she was staggering about the courtyard."

"Drunk?" he asked, frowning a little.

"No," I said. "She looked..." I trailed off, struggling to find the words to describe her.

Dimitri, picking up on this, tried to help me out. "Was she a student?"

I frowned. "I think so. I mean, I'd never seen her before, but she looked my age."

"You didn't get her name?"

"She didn't say. She was looking for someone though. Hannah," I snapped my fingers trying to remember the surname. "Hannah Skuza," I said with one last snap. "She was wandering around until I nearly ran into her. Oh, and then Avery's guardian rocked up and kicked me to the curb." I muttered a little bitterly.

Dimitri, however, looked a mix of confusion and horror. "Hannah Skuza? Are you sure that's who she said?"

"Pretty sure, why?"

He paused before answering. "Rose, Hannah Skuza is dead."

"What?"

"It happened about ten years ago. Both Hannah and her best friend, Rebekah-"

I snapped my head up. "Wait, her best friend?"

Dimitri hesitated. "Yes."

It suddenly hit me: bloated, damp, cold. "Did they drown?"

He frowned. "In the lake...How did you…?"

Oh my God. I felt the blood drain from my body. "I think I'm going to be sick..."

I gripped my hand against his duster and doubled over. Dimitri caught onto my arm with one hand and wrapped his other around my waist to keep me upright. I gagged but did not throw up, instead managing to steady the nausea through long and deep breaths. I felt Dimitri's palm against my back, fanned out and moving in small, soothing, circular motions.

"Breathe. Breathe, my love, breathe," he said. The combined rhythm of his voice and his hand put me somewhat at ease, but not entirely. I put a hand over my mouth and stood, leaning my body against his side. He wrapped his arms around my waist, continuing to trace patterns on my back with his fingertips. "Better?"

"No," I replied honestly, my voice cold and distant as I remained in a state of almost shell shock. "I think I've just seen a dead girl."

Dimitri wasn't offended. "Another ghost?"

Another chill. Another wave of nausea. "No, a corpse. A living corpse."

At this, I felt the whole of Dimitri's person tense beside me. I think that it was on instinct that his hold tightened. "What?"

"The girl she was...soaked and swollen and cold. But she was real. As real as you are now. She was just walking around-" I corrected myself. "Well, she wasn't walking so much as she was wading, as though through water." A shiver ran its way down my spine and with it, I felt my body temperature drop as the chill set in deeper. The nausea returned.

I heard Dimitri swallow, but however shocked he may have been, his hands did not cease in their movements and with every revolution, I felt a little warmer.

I sealed my eyes shut, trying to block out the world and forget what I had just witnessed. But to no avail. Through the darkness, I saw her face and her fear. I opened my eyes, but her image did not leave me. I could still feel the dampness on my fingertips which; I tried to scrub from my hands but it would not seem to go away.

"Rose, I need to get you inside. You are shaking."

I hadn't even noticed that, for I remained far too focused on the rising sickening feeling inside my being. Nothing seemed to quell it and walking only seemed to make it worse. "No, no, no." I protested and Dimitri halted.

He ran his hand up to brush my hair from my face. "It's just a few steps. I promise."

I moaned a little but complied. A few steps later, we were under the cover of the main building. Dimitri, working solely on his memory for I wasn't much help, guided me into the nearest tutorial room and shut the door behind him. Free from his hold, I clutched the edge of the large, rectangular table and gagged again. He had his hand back on my back in seconds, resuming its gentle motion while he whispered a soft melody in my ear. I was clueless as to what he was saying given that it was in Russian, but it nonetheless calmed me a little and gave me something to focus on besides the face of a decade-old dead girl.

When the nausea subsided to a more tolerable level, I lifted my head up and took a deep breath. Dimitri stopped his melody. I smiled a little. "Thank you."

He waved it off. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, I guess," I said, still moderating my breathing. I brought my hands to rub against my face, groaning a little as I did. "Oh, who am I kidding? Sick: sick to my core." I said, letting my hands drop down as I slumped against the side of the table. "I know what they are doing."

Dimitri didn't need any further elaboration. "The spirit user."

I linked my arms together and held them to the back of my head to allow them to rest against them. "Yup." I said, popping the 'p' but with a distinct lack of mirth. "They are trying to raise the dead." I saw Dimitri's mouth open a little, the only indication of his surprise for he managed to stay remarkably composed after that sentence. "I was literally on my way to tell you when I saw her," I said, deadpan.

"Trying to raise the dead? You're sure?" he asked with an expression mixed with concern, disgust and scepticism.

I closed my eyes and replied with a sombre: "Yeah" before bringing my arms down past my neck. "What was her name? The girl, I mean."

I saw the sympathy on Dimitri's face. "Her name was Rebekah. Rebekah Tarus."

Recognizing the Royal name, my eyes widened. "Tarus? Shit." I said.

Dimitri nodded and folded his arms across his chest. "Indeed. It was kept very confidential, as you can imagine. The only reason I was informed about it was because it was part of the staff briefing a couple of years back for a training exercise on the lake involved."

I frowned. "I don't remember that."

A ghost of a smile flicked across his face. "You were not here."

I frowned for a moment before it hit me. "Ah," I said, realizing his meaning. Portland. I felt my own lips twitch at the memory. Then I remembered Rebekah and all traces of the smile vanished. "How old was she?"

"Sixteen. Both Rebekah and Hannah," he said.

I felt my heart lurch. "So young…" He nodded. I bit my lip before asking, "What happened?"

Dimitri hesitated for a moment. I watched as his fingers drummed against his folded arm in the way they did when he was considering something. With a small sigh, he resolved and spoke. "It was an accident. A tragedy without a doubt, but an accident all the same. Hannah had fallen into the water and hit her head on something, knocking her unconscious. Rebekah ran in to try and find her but slipped. They had both gone out on their own, so they weren't found for another couple of hours, but by then it was too late."

I shook my head. I could even picture it: that summer's day, that split-second where it all went wrong. Two girls then gone forever. Well, not forever as it turned out. "Why are they doing this?"

"The spirit user?"

"Can we just call them an asshole?" I interjected bitterly.

I saw Dimitri smile a little as he shook his head. "Maybe they're looking for someone?"

"What? To bring them back?"

He shrugged a little. "If you found out you could bring a loved one back, wouldn't you?"

"Not at this cost," I said as I recalled the ever-growing list of those suffering at the hands of this asshole.

Yet to my surprise, he paused and shrugged again. "I suppose it depends on the perspective. People are known to do reckless things in the name of love."

I was about to respond with another bitter quip when it happened: I felt my heart skip a beat, a weight coming down upon me like a tonne of bricks from the sky. It was in that moment that I was hit, not by Rebekah, or ghosts or even the asshole behind this, but by something else entirely.

My own actions.

It was at that moment that the full magnitude of what I had done so many months ago hit me, and hit me hard:

Reckless things in the name of love.

"Like running back into a cave full of Strigoi."

I saw Dimitri snap his head up, my eyes meeting his sightless ones. "Rose, you are nothing like this person." He assured.

"But I could've been," I said, feeling my rapidly rising heartbeat in my ears. I remembered my mother, Stan, and those other guardians whose names I did not even know - all of them running back after me, risking their lives because of me. My heart rate rose again. "Someone could've been hurt, or worse," I remembered Killian's chastisement: you haven't learnt...you don't get it...everything has consequences…

"Rose."

With an increased heart rate came an increased breathing rate. What if someone had died? I thought under a stream of hyperventilation. How many people could I have hurt?

"Rose."

Dizziness replaced the nausea, but I found myself incapable of stopping. What if that same bastard who got to Dimitri got to any one of those guardians? Got to my mother…?

"Rose, look at me." Dimitri had now unfolded his arms and brought them to rest on my shoulders. My eyes locked on his face. "I will not deny that what you did was reckless, but you are not the same as this asshole," he stated. "You know why? Because you ran into that cave alone. I know that at no point did it cross your mind that you should endanger the lives of those around you for either of our sakes, especially mine, whereas this asshole has already intentionally hurt people in order to achieve their goal. That is not love, that is malice. That is downright psychotic. And what you saw with poor Rebekah only goes to show that they are not stopping for anything." he said. His hands reached up to cup my cheeks and he brought his forehead down to mine as he had done not two hours ago under very different circumstances, but the tenderness was unchanged. "Rose, there is no doubt in my mind that you would have let me die if your mother had been endangered or hurt trying to save me."

I froze, my breath hitching as I replayed the scene in my mind, re-imagining now having to choose between Dimitri and my mother. Horror filled my person as I pictured both their bodies lying limp and dead. "I am not sure I would've," I confessed, the words trembling with my own shame as they left my lips as I gazed upon an imagined yet impossible choice.

I saw his eyelids close and he tilted his head up to plant a kiss on my forehead. "Rose, do not deprecate yourself: you are a far better person than you think you are."

At that, I let out a grateful, but depleted laugh. "I'm glad you think so."

"I know so." he corrected.

I closed my eyelids; the act allowing a tear to escape my brimming eyes and fall down my cheek. "I don't deserve you."

I felt his smile against my forehead. "As a wise woman once said: 'You've got me, so deal with it.'"

I couldn't help it, I laughed: a proper laugh, but as I was still on the brink of crying it came out an odd mix between the two. His smile widened against my head. I reopened my eyes and wrapped my hands around his waist, pulling him closer. I made to rest my head against his torso when I noticed something odd. I frowned and pulled back the flap of his duster to confirm my suspicion. "You're not wearing a shirt."

As my eyes flicked upward, I'm pretty sure I saw him blush at that one. "Ah, yes, well...you did say emergency."

I laughed again and dropped my head down, so it lightly thumped against his torso, feeling the warmth of his skin against my own. My laugh faded down into an exhausted smile. "I love you. So, so much." I said.

His fingers slowly threaded through my hair. "Quite right too."

I scoffed a little, lightly smacking his abdomen, only I could not bring myself to remove my hand once it had contacted his smooth, but toned skin. Upon my lingered touch, I felt his stomach move - his muscles contracting away from my tracing fingertips with a quiet whimper leaving his lips.

"Ah, cold hands," he said, feeling his way to my wrist and prying my hand from his person.

I let out a small but devious laugh. "Totally deserved it."

He chuckled and scooted back to where he had been. I don't think I could ever tire of his embrace - it had always astounded me how someone as seemingly tough and stoic as Dimitri Belikov could be so gentle; how someone so quick had so much patience, particularly for me given the borderline hysterical state I found myself (justifiably so, I might add) in that morning.

Not unnaturally, he went quiet, but it took me a few moments to notice that there was something different in this silence. I looked up and found him looking like he had something on his mind. I was about to inquire when his phone interrupted us both. He, with an apologetic smile, reached into his pocket and answered.

"Belikov," he said in his usual formal and authoritative tone. "Ah, Guardian O'Hara."

I felt my body tense up at that. Ah, shit. As a result of everything that had happened over the past couple of months (not to mention all the crap that was still bloody happening), I had come to see Killian as one of my friends, forgetting what he actually was supposed to be.

I really hated having a babysitter.

"That would not be necessary: she is with me. I had suggested a lap of the field for this morning's practice." I won't lie, I was quite touched that Dimitri was bailing me out on this one. I smiled a little. "I assumed she would have had the good sense to inform you."

My smile faltered. Huh, maybe not then.

I suspected I might've deserved that, but however valid it may have been, it still didn't stop me from using my newfound weapon in response: I replaced my cold hand against his abdomen and watched as he tensed. Impressively, his voice remained level.

"Yes, I shall have a word with her. Thank you, Guardian O'Hara." he hung up and replaced his phone in the pocket of his duster. He scowled down at me.

"What?" I asked as innocently as I could.

Unsurprisingly, he wasn't buying any of it. Leaning down, he grumbled. "I hope you know: I will get you back for that."

I smirked. "I would expect nothing less." He chuckled and shook his head before his face fell into that contemplative state once again. I frowned. "Hey, something on your mind?" He seemed a little taken aback at the question, flustered enough to warrant a substantial degree of concern on my part. "Dimitri, is everything alright?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, it's fine. It's nothing." He said, tightening his embrace a little.

I leaned back out of his arms, placing my hands on the table I sat upon. "You're lying," I said with an unintended pang of hurt.

I saw him hesitate. "I know, it's just…" he sighed and ran his hands through his loose hair.

I knew what he was doing. Clearly, he had something on his mind, something that was bothering him greatly and would benefit from being spoken aloud. I supposed he figured that now would probably not be the best time to mention it and maybe it wasn't, but what the hell: at this point, I doubted if anything would surprise me. "Dimitri?" I said, urging him a little.

"I don't think you are the only one being haunted." he more blurted than said.

It took me a few seconds, but I felt that was more as a result of denial for when I understood his meaning, I could not believe it. My eyes widened and I felt my jaw drop a little of its own accord. "What?"

So much for not being surprised.

He swallowed. "I am not entirely sure. I mean, I am not shadow-kissed like you are. I thought perhaps I did die, but then you said that they were being brought to life and-"

"Dimitri." I gently interrupted, for I knew he was rambling; he was always so eloquent with words, but they seemed to be getting the better of him here. I placed a hand on his sleeve and squeezed it softly. "What happened?"

He hesitated again, before relenting. "It happened yesterday. Just before you came knocking for cookies." He said with a small smile. I squeezed his arm again. "I had heard a voice, one that I had not heard for a very long time."

"Someone who had passed away?"

"Ivan," he said.

I blinked. "As in Ivan Ivan?"

He sighed, still smiling a little, and sat down against the table beside me. "Yes, that Ivan."

Ivan Zeklos: his friend, his charge, his guilt. I felt my heart lurch. "Oh my God, I am so sorry."

"I suspected it was just some misbehaving students, but…"

I bit my lip. "It was him." I finished his thought. He nodded, his body slouching over a little as though physically burdened by the topic. As I couldn't think of anything more to say than the cliched and ever-so-unhelpful 'I'm sorry', I decided to stay quiet, instead opting to lean against his side with the hope it would give him some form of comfort.

"He wasn't hurting."

I looked up. "What?"

Even Dimitri looked perplexed. "Ivan: he wasn't in pain like the others. I didn't really notice it before, but now that I think about it, he seemed just...surprised if anything."

I felt my eyes widen. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. "Confidently so. Tone doesn't lie, or so I have noticed."

I found myself frozen for a minute as the thought that I moments later voice crossed into my mind. "What if it worked?"

"What if what worked?"

I shifted as the discomfort rose within me. "What if the asshole actually managed to bring someone back?"

At this, Dimitri tensed; his whole body seemed to lock simultaneously, and I immediately regretted voicing my thoughts. I was all too familiar with the guilt and sorrow incited by an encounter with a ghost, so I could well imagine the less-than-pleasant emotions swirling in Dimitri at that moment. I saw him bury his face into his palms, then pull his hands down so as to rest his chin upon their clasped platform. "Perhaps, but only for a moment: Ivan went as quickly as he came," he said.

Picking up on the subtext of his tone, I nodded but did not speak. Despite his grief, I suspected that Dimitri had come to the same conclusion as I about the event, how Ivan Zeklos and Rebekah Tarus were both in the same boat so to speak:

They were both practices.

God only knows how many more 'practice runs' the asshole was running, but there was no doubt in my mind that there was a fair few. I highly doubted that plucking someone from the Shadow World was easy, so a certain degree of skill was involved which of course meant practice. It sickened me even more to be thinking so logistically, but the logic was hard to ignore.

I let out a groan and flopped back, hitting my head against the table as I landed. "Ow," I said.

Dimitri turned. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said once I stopped grimacing. My sore head was the least of our problems. "We should probably get going before someone comes in for a class. They might have a heart attack if they saw you." I said, still dejected and exhausted.

"Me. Why?"

I smiled a little. Ah, screw it: we need a little levity here. "You have a very lovely stomach, comrade."

I saw him tighten his duster over his front. "Oh," he said.

I laughed, tilting my head back to the table and catching sight of my loose hair fanned around me like some sort of mane. It came to my attention just how rough the both of us looked and, in my exhaustion, all I could do was smile.

Clearing his throat, Dimitri spoke again. "Right, well, I suggest we go and locate Guardian O'Hara. He might get suspicious if we are not at the track."

I closed my eyes and groaned a little, realizing how little I wanted to move. Then, of course, there was the other thing… "I don't really want to tell him."

Catching my meaning, Dimitri nodded. "You don't have to right away."

"I think he might notice if there was a dead girl walking about," I said monotone and staring up at the ceiling.

"Had you not said she had gone?" came Dimitri's somewhat confused reply.

"Oh, yeah," I said, remembering back before frowning myself. "Where did Steve go?"

"Steve?"

"Yeah, Avery's guardian."

I saw him cock a brow. "Do you mean Guardian Simon Harthorn?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, him. He came and-" I cut myself off. A second later, I sat up rigidly, peaking Dimitri's concern.

"Rose?"

"He said: 'I'll deal with it.'" I said, thinking back to that brief encounter: his anger, his directness, his purpose all leading to one conclusion: "He knew."

Dimitri frowned. "He knew what?"

"He knew who Rebekah was, or more significantly what she was."

"Rose, he is a dhampir." Dimitri pointed out, catching my train of thought. "He cannot be a spirit user."

Images of the scene replayed in my head, but one thing came up above them all: his anger. "He's another bondmate…"

"What?"

"Simon. He's shadow-kissed, just like Reed."

Dimitri frowned. "To the same person?"

"It's got to be."

"How is that possible?"

"Honestly, spirit is so mental I am more than willing to bet that there is no limit to how many people you can be bonded to."

"But then we are back again to who is that bondmate?"

I paused and considered. "It's got to be a Lazar. I mean, they've only been here what, two, three months? Surely someone would've noticed if two of their party had been killed at some point during that time."

"It can't be a Lazar, though: the headmaster is earth user, and Avery is water."

My head snapped up.

My heart jumped a beat.

"Dimitri, Avery is air," I said, though there was no authority in the comment for I was expecting, begging, him to contradict me.

And he did.

"No, I am sure she is a water user: Guardian Moore and I were on a patrol and we passed her putting out her brother's fire."

If it could detach itself from my skull, my jaw would've just smashed itself on the floor. "She's been telling everyone she's an air user, heck I'm pretty sure it's in her file-" I stopped and felt my eyes widen as I realized. As per protocol, all senior guardians were expected to have read the files of students who were either newly enrolled or already existing ones who were considered 'problematic' (yes, that included me). The way that patrols worked was they had to have one senior and one junior guardian in any single pairing. Given that Dimitri was a senior (and the fact I had never heard of him), Guardian Moore must be a junior meaning he had no jurisdiction or clearance to read Avery's or indeed anyone's file.

And then there was Dimitri himself…

"You never read it."

Dimitri smiled softly. "I don't read a lot nowadays."

His blindness: he couldn't read it. Alberta had no doubt given him the edited highlights, but it must not have included her speciality given that the greater threat to the Academy's security was her 'party' lifestyle. Her speciality was unknown to him, giving him a uniquely objective and unprejudiced viewpoint.

In short, he hadn't seen the lie she had created.

I fully believed I could burst with affection at that moment. Rising to my knees, I straddled his lap and kissed him hard, using the long collar of his duster to pull him closer. He was surprised, to say the least, but didn't object. However, I didn't give him time to settle into it before pulling back and breathing heavily. "We've found our spirit user," I whispered.

Dimitri, having recovered from my unexpected assault, swallowed. "You're sure?"

I nodded, biting my lip. "It has to be her."

And I was sure of it.

Avery Lazar was a spirit user.

A(drian)POV

I found myself waking up for the first time in a long time. Sure, I had passed out on occasion, but that hardly counts. Besides, insomnia was just one of the many things that made up my charming self. Well, that is at least how I had grown to accept it.

But, on occasion, I did manage to fall asleep and on that rare occasion, waking up always seemed such an unusual sensation. The light of the setting sun had penetrated past my blinds and soaked my room in a deep and burnt orange glow: the whole room looked as though it was on fire.

It was beautiful.

Some say the world will end in fire…

I smiled as the line entered my head. Robert Frost was hardly my favourite poet and the poem itself annoyed me to no end given that it quite literally had no end. Yet for all its inconclusiveness, I could still appreciate its sentiment. Closing my eyes, I shifted and stretched out my back. With the feel of the sheets against my body, I determined I was naked. Amused, I opened my eyes and looked across my bed.

The night's events came flooding back: me lounging about, the chess game, Rose. Honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I had had in a very long time.

Not least for the boost that it gave my ego.

Even after Rose had left me to go get hot and sweaty with the Irishman, I was still on a high. Reeling in my victory, I felt untouchable, invincible, and smug: the day could not get any better for me…

And then came a knock at my door.

At first, I thought it was Rose and so was a little disappointed when it was not the brown-haired beauty. But I was quickly compensated when she put her tongue down my throat and said the ever-magical words: I want you.

Well, what is a man to do?

Perhaps I could have handled it differently, with more grace, respect and decorum, but then again, when a woman had her tongue down my throat and her hands in my lap, I was hardly expected to be thinking with my head.

Did that make me an asshole? Probably. Did I care? Nope.

With a shake of my head and a small chuckle, I rolled over onto my side and began running my fingers down her spine. The act caused her to stir and I saw her eyes open with a devious glint in them.

"Good morning, Mr Ivashkov," she said, propping her chin up with her arm, causing her spine to curve and the covers to fall further down her body.

I grinned. "Good morning, Miss Lazar."