The truth is hard to tell and even harder to take for Emily, who’s tried to shield her daughter from anything royal for her entire life. But Jill, while young and fearful, understands what’s at stake and wants to help. Finally, after much debate, Emily relents. Jill can go to Court. For now, the others are allowed to spend the night in the Mastrano home.
Meanwhile, Lissa’s been sent word that Ambrose wants to talk. He’s gone through Tatiana’s belongings and stolen some documents from her safe, including a letter from someone chastising her for both the age law and for the secret group of royal Moroi she had arranged to practice defense. Tatiana definitely had enemies. The writer of this letter could be the murderer.
On their way back from this meeting, a man heads directly for Lissa—with a knife in his hand! Christian jerks her back as Eddie leaps to her defense and forces the guy to the ground. Even restrained, he’s able to aim his blade for Eddie’s neck. Eddie deflects the blow, but there’s no doubt that this man is out to kill. Before the man can get a death blow in, Eddie takes his shot and stakes him.
Other guardians arrive and take one look at the scene—there’s a dead Moroi and someone holding a bloody weapon. They throw Eddie against the wall and pry his weapon away. Lissa’s shouts that he saved her life fall on deaf ears. Eddie has killed a Moroi. Guardians are supposed to
protect
them.
Killing
one is unimaginable.
A frantic Rose is brought back to her reality, desperate to help her friends at Court. Dimitri assures her all will be okay—Lissa is protected even without Rose by her side. The Dragomir they need to worry about is Jill. And Dimitri praises Rose for the single-minded determination she’s shown thus far—it’s only because of it that they were able to find Jill.
Rose wonders if Adrian, who was so angry with her in their last dream, will feel the same. The mention of her current boyfriend definitely spoils the mood.
“Do you love him?”
There were only a few people in the world who could ask me such insanely personal questions without getting punched. Dimitri was one of them. With us, there were no walls, but our complicated relationship made this topic surreal. How could I describe loving someone else to a man I’d once loved?
A man you still love
, a voice whispered inside my head. Maybe. Probably. Again, I reminded myself that it was natural to carry lingering feelings for Dimitri. They would fade. They had to fade, just like his had. He was the past. Adrian was my future.
“Yeah,” I said, taking longer than I probably should have. “I . . . I do love him.”
—page 403
Even though Rose has admitted she loves Adrian, it’s impossible to ignore the connection between her and Dimitri. Being this close to him makes her dizzy. The attraction to each other hasn’t vanished—if anything, this trip has only made it stronger.
“What?” I asked uneasily. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He shook his head, the smile rueful now. “Because sometimes, a person can get so caught up in the details that they miss the whole. It’s not just the dress or the hair. It’s you. You’re beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts me.”
—page 404
Rose is reminded of how it was between them before Dimitri was turned Strigoi and everything went horribly wrong. Back when they were in the cabin in the woods . . . He’d looked at her the same way then, only with less sadness than there is now. He still thinks she’s beautiful—the confirmation helps free all the feelings for him she’d locked away—and feels that sense of oneness they’d shared. It’s as if they’re bound . . . but not in the way Lissa and Rose were, by a bond forced on them.
The moment—and it was most
definitely
a moment—is broken by Sydney’s appearance. The Alchemist would much rather hang out with the evil creatures upstairs that she knows than the ones downstairs that she doesn’t.
But then, suddenly, guardians are raiding the house! Rose and Dimitri must escape or else they’ll be killed, and in doing so they must leave everyone else behind. Rose only has enough time to shout at Sydney that she has to get Jill to Court before she and Dimitri jump out of the window to the ground below. Racing to get away from the gun-wielding guardians hot on their heels, Rose and Dimitri steal a car and finally manage to give their pursuers the slip. All their plans have fallen apart, but at least they’re still alive.
Dimitri picks up some supplies, and he and Rose head to a campground to pitch a tent for the night. They each take turns keeping watch while the other sleeps. Rose sleeps first and is pulled into a spirit dream. And this is a first—it’s with Sonya. She has some bad news to break to Rose. Everything that Rose worked for may have been for nothing—Victor and Robert took Jill from the house during the chaos earlier. Victor’s always wanted power and control—well, now he’s got a major bargaining chip in the form of a certain missing Dragomir. Sonya promises that she’ll help Rose get Jill back. She is a spirit user, after all. She’ll visit Jill in a dream and then from there determine her location.
Before the dream ends, Sonya comments on Rose and Dimitri’s auras—since her powers are the same as Adrian’s, she can also see them. She was surprised to hear Rose had another boyfriend, one who
wasn’t
Dimitri. Sonya doesn’t believe in soul mates, but she believes in souls being in sync—which is exactly what Rose and Dimitri’s auras show.
She also warns of the darkness she sees in Rose’s aura—Rose carries that dangerous darkness with her. One spark could be enough to make it explode.
Rose recounts the dream to Dimitri—minus the romantic soul-sync stuff. She’s deeply disturbed that Victor has innocent Jill in his nasty clutches.
While Dimitri sleeps, Rose visits Lissa. She finds her with Eddie, as Hans questions them about the Moroi staking. Everyone sticks to the truth—Eddie protected her from an attack. There was something weird about the Moroi’s hand—Lissa wonders if it’s the same Moroi who paid off Joe the janitor to give false testimony about Rose.
Hans tells Lissa the latest—her pal Rose has kidnapped Jill Mastrano. This is a complete shock for Lissa. Last she heard, Rose was safely tucked away at the original motel. And what would Rose want with Jill? It doesn’t make any sense.
Three Alchemists are brought into the room, including Sydney, who’d been taken into custody by the guardians who raided the Mastrano house. She denies she played any part in Rose’s escape from Court. Still, the guardians aren’t exactly convinced. The Alchemists will be kept under guardian surveillance at a hotel close to Court. As they’re leaving, an Alchemist named Ian spots the picture of the bad-handed Moroi and seems to recognize who it is. Rose mentally logs this for later reference.
Eddie’s detained, but Lissa needs to get to her last monarch test. This one is also presided over by Ekaterina. It’s a question that Lissa will be given time to consider:
“What must a queen possess in order to truly rule her people?”
Rose snaps back to the reality of the tent when she senses movement. It’s Dimitri, who, in his sleep, has rolled up against her. The contact brings forth a flood of emotions she can’t control. The smart thing to do would be to push him away. She doesn’t. Instead, she pulls him closer.
His eyes opened, instantly alert. I expected him to jump away from me, but instead, he only assessed the situation—and didn’t move. I left my hand where it was on the side of his face, still stroking his hair. Our gazes locked, so much passing between us. In those moments, I wasn’t in a tent with him, on the run from those who regarded us as villains. There was no murderer to catch, no Strigoi trauma to overcome. There was just him and me and the feelings that had burned between us for so long.
—page 446
They come close to kissing, but at the last second Dimitri pulls away from her, seemingly frustrated.
Sonya arrives. She knows where Jill is. They head as a group to the motel where Victor and Robert have her. As the three of them close in, Rose tries to talk about what happened in the tent. They almost kissed! How could he stop something like that? But he knows it would be wrong—he refuses to try to take Rose away from Adrian, a man she’s admitted to loving. He’s very focused on doing the right thing after being Strigoi. Stealing Rose from another man would be wrong.
Their conversation is cut short when the brothers exit the motel with Jill in tow. Rose doesn’t wait for an invitation—she takes Victor down to the pavement hard.
“Well done,” he gasped out.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a very long time,” I growled.
Victor smiled through the pain and the blood. “Of course you have. I used to think Belikov was the savage one, but it’s really you, isn’t it? You’re the animal with no control, no higher reasoning except to fight and kill.”
—page 454
Victor summons his earth magic to create a mini-earthquake centered around Rose. But it’s not his magic that throws her off balance the most—it’s his threats toward Jill and Lissa and his claims that he can control them both now.
At the thought of the Dragomirs being in danger, Rose loses it. That darkness Sonya saw in her aura overwhelms her and suddenly, Victor becomes the epitome of every evil in the world. She lashes out at him with violence and strength, slamming him into a concrete wall like the uncontrollable animal he just accused her of being.
The strength of the blow is enough to kill Victor Dashkov. Robert is grief stricken, and Dimitri has to restrain him before he can try to work his spirit magic to bring his brother back to life. Meanwhile, Sonya directs Rose back to the car. She’s a murderer now—stunned, distraught, and talking crazy. The darkness that has always been at the edges, waiting to destroy her, has taken over.
Sonya takes Jill’s silver bracelet and charms it with healing magic to help Rose think a bit clearer. After disposing of Victor’s body, they head toward a hotel, where they can gather themselves and prepare for the next day. It should be a momentous one: they plan to head to Court with Jill.
Trying to escape herself, Rose visits Lissa through the bond. Adrian has located Serena, Lissa’s previous guardian. They want to question her about the secret Moroi training sessions—the ones mentioned in the threatening letter to the queen. She agrees to provide a list of names as soon as she can.
At the hotel, Sonya and Jill take a separate room so that Dimitri can talk to Rose alone. It’s a good thing too—Rose is destroyed over what she’s done. Victor was a villain, a bad guy, but he wasn’t really a threat to her. She murdered him without even a second thought. And her spirit darkness is no excuse.
Rose and Dimitri are the same now. He can’t forgive himself for what he did when he was Strigoi—even though he couldn’t control any of it—just like Rose couldn’t control her darkness that led her to kill Victor. Rose knows they’re the same. Sonya even confirmed it when she commented on their matching auras.
But it’s more than that . . .
“She was right about something else too,” Dimitri said after a long pause. My back was to him, but there was a strange quality to his voice that made me turn around.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That I do still love you.”
With that one sentence, everything in the universe changed.
Time slowed to one heartbeat. The world became his eyes, his voice. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t real. None of it could be real. It felt like a spirit dream. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and see if I’d wake up moments later. No. No matter how unbelievable it all seemed, this was no dream. This was real.
This was life. This was flesh and blood.
“Since . . . since when?” I finally managed to speak.
“Since . . . forever.”
—page 480
Dimitri’s feelings have been repressed since he was restored—but in the alley, after Donovan, he could see Rose’s goodness, her hope, her faith, and her beauty—inside and out. She’s the most amazing woman he’s ever met.
But Dimitri believes they can’t be together. He knows she’s moved on with Adrian. That she
loves
Adrian.
Yeah, he’s right. She
does
love Adrian—she loves hanging around with him and having fun with him. Adrian’s wonderful on so many levels. But Dimitri . . . well, he’s the only one in the world who really
gets
her. And she’s never, ever stopped loving him.
“I don’t belong to anyone. I make my own choices.”
“And you’re with Adrian,” said Dimitri.
“But I was meant for you.”
And that did it. Any pretense of control or reason either of us possessed melted away. The walls crumbled, and everything we’d been holding back from each other came rushing out. I reached up, pulling us together for a kiss—a kiss he didn’t let go this time. A kiss I didn’t end by punching him.
—page 484