Rose's POV

Despite my urgent message, Adrian did not visit me that night. He had said he was going to pay me another visit soon, anyway, so I should have just accepted that he may have simply been busy and would visit me as soon as he could, but I was worried nevertheless. Maybe I had been too harsh to him in our last dream, and he was trying to teach me a lesson – I only hoped he wouldn't keep this up for too long.

It didn't help that Dimitri asked me how my meeting with Adrian went when we met up in his office a few hours before first period. His tone made it very clear that he did not like the idea of me spending my dreams with another man, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

"He didn't show," I informed him.

There was a short flicker of relief in his eyes, but it was immediately replaced with alarm. "What do you mean he didn't show?"

I let out a sigh. "I think he's just mad at me and—"

"Ivashkov and I may have our differences, but if there is one thing I know, it's that he would not endanger Vasilisa or – I'm assuming – Sunshine because of a petty disagreement."

"Well, I..." Dimitri was right. It hadn't even crossed my mind that something else may have prevented him from seeing me tonight. "Did you hear anything? From Court, I mean?"

He shook his head. "Everything appears to be in order, but we can't rule out the possibility of them being watched. Especially with what we know now."

Right again. But what else were we to do? I couldn't very well contact Lissa about the whole spirit issue, and Ms Karp was... well, I really didn't want to put any more pressure on her. I'd felt bad enough about asking her for that charm a few weeks ago, and even though she'd assured me that she wouldn't do anything drastic if she started feeling a little... erratic... again, I wasn't quite convinced. "Well, do you happen to have any secret spirit users up your sleeve that we can ask for help?"

"I'm thinking maybe we should have sent Sunshine to Baia after all," he replied.

Why would – of course! Oksana! Why didn't I think of her sooner? Adrian was a pro at dream walking, that much was true, but he didn't have a whole lot of experience with the protection side of spirit. Oksana, on the other hand...

"You wouldn't happen to have Oksana's phone number, would you?" I asked. I didn't have much hope that the answer would be yes.

"I do not," Dimitri confirmed, but his knowing smile gave me pause. He wasn't lying again, was he? "But I believe Viktoria does."

And he couldn't have said that, like, twelve hours ago? When we were still at the motel, with Viktoria, and could have possibly figured out a solution to at least one of our problems right then and there? "Damn it, Dimitri, you're being very unhelpful here. Why didn't you—"

"I was a little preoccupied thinking of a way to make the girl disappear so these people don't find her in the real world," he countered. He was beginning to sound irritated, and he probably had a right to be.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I don't want to fight. I'm just—"

"I know. You're worried, and I apologise for not thinking of this sooner. I will contact my sister right away so she can get this sorted out," he assured me, and within seconds, he was on the phone with Viktoria and did just that.

After a couple of words exchanged in Russian – of which I only understood half – Dimitri handed me the phone. "Sunshine wants to talk to you."

Another deep breath before I took the phone from him. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to her, but I knew it made saying goodbye all the harder.

"Hey Sunny," I said and cursed my voice for being so shaky. "How are you feeling?"

There was a short pause before she answered, "Okay. I didn't have bad dreams last night."

That was a relief. I supposed it would make sense if they stopped visiting her now since they believed to know her location, but I'd feel much better still once we knew how to stop them from entering her dreams altogether. There had to be some way, right? And if there was, surely, Oksana would know of it.

"That's good. How are things with Chri—your father? Are you getting along?"

To my surprise, I heard her laugh. "He's great, auntie! He's really funny, did you know that?"

I certainly did not know that. Or, well, I at least didn't agree with it. But maybe it wasn't all that surprising she shared his sense of humour – or lack thereof. He was her father, after all. "I'm happy to hear that. Sunny, I—"

Before I could finish my sentence and say my goodbyes, the phone was taken from Sunshine, and her voice was replaced by Christian's.

"Listen, Rose, we really have to get going. We'll be in touch."

And with that, the line went dead. I stared at the phone for a few more seconds before I gave it back to Dimitri. He didn't bother asking me if I was okay again, which I was grateful for. He knew I would have said yes, but he also knew it would have been a lie.

After eight years of never being apart from Sunshine, letting her go was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do. Minus that time I rammed a stake into the love of my life's chest and thought I'd killed him, but I supposed that was rather hard to top.

"She's going to be fine," Dimitri assured me, ripping me from my thoughts. I hadn't even noticed he'd walked around the desk, but he was standing right behind me now, his hand on my shoulder.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against him, praying to a God I still wasn't sure I believed in that he was right. "I know it was the right thing to do."

"Viktoria will keep us up to date as best as she can, she promised," he said, then leaned down to place a kiss on the crown of my head. "And we've got to get back to work, unfortunately."

I knew he didn't mean our work to find out what the actual fuck was going on here, and I groaned. "Yeah, I know. I am definitely not looking forward to combat training today."

My nose was better, and the bruise really wasn't as nasty as I thought it would have been, but facing the novices wasn't exactly something I wanted to do so soon. Then again, what choice did I have? This was my job for the time being; Dimitri had been right about that.

"I suppose I'd better start preparing my next lesson, huh?" I said and got up from my chair to make my way to the door.

Dimitri stepped in front of me to block my way. "Wait, not… I…"

He seemed unusually awkward, and I was worried he was going to say something about our night together. Did he have regrets? Did he—

My doubts were extinguished then and there when I felt his lips on mine again. It was a soft kiss, short and sweet, but I smiled nevertheless.

"We should probably talk about… this… at some point," I said. I believed we were on the same page here, but it had been a long time since we had been together, and I supposed it was only right to discuss our relationship sometime in the near future – but not now. As much as I wanted to simply have happiness with Dimitri, there were more pressing matters that required our attention at the moment.

"Yes," Dimitri sighed. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then shook his head. "In any case, I shouldn't keep you here longer. Alberta wanted to have a word with you before you head to the training grounds."

And, all of a sudden, I felt like I was back here as a student, not a guardian. Alberta wanting to have a word with me wasn't new by any means, but what was new was that I now realised I didn't need to fear her. Not in the way I used to, anyway. She could still be one scary lady.

Author's Note: Ummmm... hello there. It's been... a second since I've showed my face here, huh? I don't really want to talk about this too much but, basically, life is hard and I lost my motivation for a while, but then I reread this fic last night (shhhh, reading your own fanfiction after you forget all about it is the best, idk if that sounds arrogant lmao) and got really excited about getting back into it.

Also, apologies if this isn't perfect, I've had to make sense of the notes I've taken about this fic ages ago, and I curse my past self for not being more organised lmao