Rose’s anger toward Adrian fades, and she hugs him goodbye, allowing herself a brief and fleeting moment of comfort. She knows her heart will be crushed tonight—to her it’s inevitable that she’s going to lose somebody she loves tonight, either Dimitri or Lissa. Adrian begs her to be careful—he can’t bear the thought of losing her.
Rose kisses him—and in the midst of all of this death, the kiss feels more powerful and alive than any they have ever shared before. She wants to return to Adrian’s arms when all of this is over.
Rose’s bond to Lissa guides the convoy to the Strigoi’s location, an abandoned warehouse where Lissa and Christian are tied up. Lissa is terrified as she faces this evil version of Dimitri. He grips her throat so he can speak to Rose directly through the bond. He knows she won’t abandon her friends and that she’s coming after him. He knows what he’s doing.
It’s Rose’s worst nightmare come to life.
At the warehouse, the guardians and fire-magic-using Moroi fight through the waves of Strigoi protection. Rose is on the team headed for the room with Lissa and Christian. It’s what she was born to do—fight and kill Strigoi. Eventually, Rose maneuvers into the small room where her friends are tied up—and she’s finally face-to-face with Dimitri himself.
“You’re beautiful in battle,” said Dimitri. His cold voice carried to me clearly, even above the roar of combat. “Like an avenging angel come to deliver the justice of heaven.”
“Funny,” I said, shifting my hold on the stake. “That is kind of why I’m here.”
“Angels fall, Rose.”
—page 280
It’s time for this to end—all the heartbreak and all the hope that have led Rose to this moment. Dimitri must die for her friends to be saved. And she needs to be the one to kill him.
Dimitri doesn’t see things her way. He reminds her that this is all her fault. If she’d agreed to become Strigoi in Russia, they could be together in their own vampiric happily ever after.
Rose isn’t stupid. If that had happened, she’d be killing innocents now just like he does.
Christian burns through Lissa’s ropes and the two join the fight. To Rose’s shock, Lissa suddenly has a silver stake in her hand!
Dimitri is still not convinced Rose is ready to kill him. Oh, but she is. As horrible as it is, Dimitri’s given her no other choice.
And she tries to do just that—but Lissa shoves her out of the way!
Before Rose can figure out what is going on, a wall of fire encircles Dimitri. It traps him in place while—with great effort—Lissa manages to sink her stake into his heart. Rose screams.
She
was the one who was supposed to kill Dimitri!
But she’s about to learn that this particular stake isn’t meant to kill.
It’s charmed with spirit, just as Robert instructed. White light bursts out, and Rose can feel the healing magic come through the bond, more intense than anything she’s ever felt before. The bond temporarily disappears—shorted out by the sheer amount of spirit that’s just been used. And then . . . the results speak for themselves.
I’d expected him to be burned to a crisp—some sort of blackened, skeletal nightmare. Yet when he shifted his head, giving me my first full view of his face, I saw that he was completely unharmed. No burns marked his skin—skin that was as warm and tanned as it had been the first day I’d met him.
I caught only a glimpse of his eyes before he buried his face against Lissa’s knee. I saw endless depths of brown, the depths I’d fallen into so many times. No red rings.
Dimitri . . .was not a Strigoi.
And he was weeping.
—pages 289-290
A MODERN MIRACLE
That a Strigoi could be restored has shaken everyone who witnessed it. Despite Rose and Lissa’s protests, Dimitri’s taken away by guardians. Rose, meanwhile, is hauled in a different direction. She’s freaking out—no one will give her any damn information about what’s going on—or let her see Dimitri.
The trip back to Court is a blur, and it’s followed by a frustrating amount of secrecy. Dimitri’s been locked up somewhere, and nobody will tell her where. Lissa’s been taken to the medical center for treatment—Hans tells Rose she isn’t welcome there. It’s chaos and she’ll just be in the way. Adrian’s busy using spirit to help heal those who were injured in the fight, and everyone is buzzing with the rumor about Lissa working a miracle by restoring a Strigoi back to his former dhampir self.
When Rose finally gets to Lissa, her friend is making her second visit to see Dimitri. Rose wants to go too, but Lissa gives her some shocking news: Dimitri doesn’t want to see her.
What?
He doesn’t want to see her? After everything she’s done, everything she’s sacrificed to help him? Rose is deeply hurt—he is supposed to be
her
Dimitri. The man she went to Russia to find. The one who she made a deal with the devil to save. Lissa begs her to understand, to give Dimitri the time he needs to heal.
Not like she has any choice. Rose watches through the bond as her friend goes to Dimitri’s holding cell. As a former Strigoi, he’s being kept under constant guard. Rose can’t get over the way Dimitri looks at Lissa—it’s with awe and wonder that she was able to bring him back from the nightmare of being an evil Strigoi.
“I swear, whatever you need, anything—if it’s in my power—I’ll do it. I’ll serve and protect you for the rest of my life. I’ll do whatever you ask. You have my loyalty forever.”
Again, Lissa started to say she didn’t want that, but then a canny thought came to mind. “Will you see Rose?”
He grimaced. “Anything but that.”
“Dimitri—”
“Please. I’ll do anything else for you, but if I see her . . . it’ll hurt too much.”
—page 316
This sure isn’t the fairy-tale ending Rose always hoped for. Dimitri isn’t running into her arms. He’s running
away
from her.
While she finally lets herself cry in the privacy of her room, Adrian stops by to invite her to a party. But not any party. It’s a Death Watch, an official Moroi ceremony to honor those who died in the attack. It’s by invitation only for the most elite Moroi bloodlines—but he has some passwords he’s stolen to sneak his friends into the masked event.
The ceremony begins, and both Moroi and dhampirs who were lost in the battle are honored. Rose is surprised to see that the dhampir guardians are treated with such respect. Even if they weren’t actually invited to the party . . .
Christian and Mia are there as well, also courtesy of Adrian. And again, Lissa is jealous. To Rose, it’s obvious the two aren’t dating, but Lissa thinks the worst. Any romantic drama is put on hold, though, when someone outs Rose as a party crasher. To make matters worse, she’s the only dhampir in attendance, and this is considered a major breach of tradition. Adrian’s mother chastises him for letting this happen; however, the queen actually seems somewhat pleased that Rose was able to witness the respect paid to her race. Sadly, now even more guardians have been lost, leaving holes in the ranks.
Rose leaves the party—she can take a hint—and runs into Mikhail. And does he have a surprise for her: he says he can get her in to see Dimitri.
Right now.
Well, okay then. Eager and apprehensive, she’s led to Dimitri’s holding cell. She finds him standing with his back to her. This is exactly what he
didn’t
want to happen.
He probably knew the sound of my heartbeat and breathing. As it was, I think I stopped breathing while I waited for his response. When it came, it was a little disappointing.
“No.”
“No what?” I asked. “As in, no, it’s not me?”
He exhaled in frustration, a sound almost—but not quite—like the one he used to make when I did something particularly ridiculous in our trainings. “No, as in I don’t want to see you.”
—page 353
How can Dimitri just turn her away? What about the life that they almost had together, that they could have again? And what about everything she did for him? Rose’s anger starts to burn through the hurt when she tells him he should be grateful. He tells her he
is
grateful—to Lissa, his savior.
She demands that he turn around and face her. Finally, he does. When their eyes meet, all the memories of falling in love with him in the first place come flooding back. And it’s not just how she feels—she knows he feels it too. He might not want her there now, but he still feels something for her. Something big.
The way Dimitri was looking at me . . . it confirmed everything I’d suspected. The feelings he’d had for me before he’d been turned—the feelings that had become twisted while a Strigoi—were all still there. They had to be. Maybe Lissa was his savior. Maybe the rest of the Court thought she was a goddess. I knew, right then, that no matter how bedraggled I looked or how blank he tried to keep his face, I was a goddess to him.
—page 356
Dimitri finally breaks down and tells her he’s racked with guilt over his actions as a Strigoi—including what he did to Rose, keeping her imprisoned in Russia and feeding off her like a blood whore. Even his thoughts of killing her and using her friends as bait against her haunt him. He can’t forgive himself for any of it.
Rose assures him she forgives him for everything. She loves him and knows he still loves her.
Dimitri’s the one to bring up the subject of her new boyfriend—Adrian. But he’s not jealous; he’s glad. Besides, he assures her he
doesn’t
love her anymore. He can’t love
anyone
.
Her continued protests start to break him, and he shouts for the guards to get her out of there. When she finally leaves, her heart feels like it’s shattered into a million pieces.
THE QUEEN’S DECREE
Meanwhile, the Council has been debating something for days—the same thing that they had Rose testify about—and they’ve finally reached a verdict. Queen Tatiana has been the deciding vote in a decree to lower the age of official guardians. Now, instead of eighteen, guardians will graduate at sixteen and immediately be assigned to Moroi. It’s a controversial decision—to say the very least.
Rose is furious when she realizes it was her testimony that was held up as a shining example of what underage Strigoi killers can do. It’s clear to her now—Tatiana hadn’t begun to accept her. Instead, she’d shamelessly used her as a way to pass her new ruling.
Tasha is equally appalled by this decision. She’s been pushing for Moroi to learn how to fight to avoid just such a decision. The last thing she wanted was to put sixteen-year-olds in the line of fire.
The ruling brings up an important debate. Lissa is the last in her royal line. Even though she’s now eighteen, she had no vote on Council because of something called a
quorum
. In order to be eligible to vote, a family must have more than one member. If Lissa had a vote, this ruling would have gone a very different way.
Rose makes her opinion known to all about this ridiculous decision. She should be an exception. Not all teens are well trained enough to deal with what she’s had to face. She just had a great instructor—one the Court insists on keeping locked up even though he’s not a danger anymore.
To stop her outburst, Tatiana orders her removed from the Council room. But a pissed-off Rose has a few last words for the queen.
“You could change the quorum law if you wanted, you sanctimonious bitch!” I yelled back. “ You’re twisting the law because you’re selfish and afraid! You’re making the worst mistake of your life. You’ll regret it! Wait and see—you’ll wish you’d never done it!”
—page 377
They’re harsh words, spoken in a public forum, and Rose will come to regret them in the days that follow. But for now, they’re heartfelt and full of passion. Even the guardians who give her the boot think what she said was pretty fantastic.
Through the bond, Rose can see that Tasha is still arguing with everyone on the Council who’ll listen. To her, it’s been proven that a spirit user can restore a Strigoi. Why would they need to find new ways to kill them if they can save them?
To Rose, though, the amount of spirit needed to restore Strigoi makes it impossible for it to become the ultimate solution. The more spirit used, the quicker the spirit user will succumb to insanity. She’d seen it herself—Lissa had used a staggering amount of power to restore Dimitri. It had even temporarily hurt the bond. Even if she might be naively compassionate enough to do it again, Rose knows that road is a dangerous one for her friend or any other spirit user. It’s not worth it.