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Turning back to Christian, I forced myself to look at him and let myself feel how much Lissa cared about him.
"Liss," I said hesitantly. She looked over at me, like she'd forgotten I was even there. Wordlessly, I brushed my hair away from my neck and tilted it toward her.
She stared for a moment, blank-faced; then understanding shone in her eyes.
Those fangs that lurked behind her pretty smile bit into my neck, and a small moan escaped my lips. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it, that sweet, wonderful pain followed by glorious wonder. Bliss settled over me. Dizzying. Joyful. Like being in a dream.
I don't entirely remember how long Lissa drank from me. Probably not that long. She would never even consider drinking the quantities that would kill a person and make her a Strigoi. She finished, and Alberta caught me as I started to sway.
Dizzily, I watched as Lissa leaned over Christian and rested her hands on him. In the distance, I heard the other guardians crashing through the forest.
No glowing or fireworks surrounded the healing. It all took place invisibly, occurring between Lissa and Christian. Even though the bite's endorphins had numbed my connection to her, I remembered Victor's healing and the wonderful colors and music she must be bringing forth.
A miracle unfolded before my eyes, and Alberta gasped. Christian's wounds closed. The blood dried up. Color - as much as a Moroi ever had, at least - returned to his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered, and his eyes regained their life again. Focusing on Lissa, he smiled. It was like watching a Disney movie.
I must have keeled over after that, because I don't remember anything else.
Eventually, I woke up in the Academy's clinic, where they forced fluids and sugar into me for two days. Lissa stayed by my side almost the entire time, and slowly, the events of the kidnapping unfolded.
We had to tell Kirova and a few choice others about Lissa's powers, how she'd healed Victor and Christian and, well, me. The news was shocking, but the administrators agreed to keep it secret from the rest of the school. No one even considered taking Lissa away like they had Ms. Karp.
Mostly all the other students knew was that Victor Dashkov had kidnapped Lissa Dragomir. They didn't know why. Some of his guardians had died when Dimitri's band attacked - a damned shame, when guardian numbers were so low already. Victor was now being held under 24/7 guard at the school, waiting for a royal regiment of guardians to carry him away. The Moroi rulers might be a mostly symbolic government within another country's larger government, but they had systems of justice, and I'd heard about Moroi prisons. Not any place I'd want to be.
As for Natalie...that was trickier. She was still a minor, but she'd conspired with her father. She'd brought in the dead animals and kept an eye on Lissa's behavior - even before we left. Being an earth user like Victor, she'd also been the one to rot the bench that broke my ankle. After she'd seen me hold Lissa back from the dove, she and Victor realized that they needed to injure me to get to her - it was their only chance to get her to heal again. Natalie had simply waited for a good opportunity. She wasn't locked up or anything yet, and the Academy didn't know what to do with her until a royal command came.
I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. She was so awkward and self-conscious. Anyone could have manipulated her, let alone her father, whom she loved and from whom she so desperately wanted attention. She would have done anything. Rumor said she'd stood screaming outside the detention center, begging them to let her see him. They'd refused and hauled her away.
Meanwhile, Lissa and I slipped back into our friendship like nothing had happened. In the rest of her world, a lot had happened. After all that excitement and drama, she seemed to gain a new sense of what mattered to her. She broke up with Aaron. I'm sure she did it very nicely, but it still had to be hard on him. She'd dropped him twice now. The fact that his last girlfriend had cheated on him probably wasn't helping his confidence any.
And without any more hesitation, Lissa started dating Christian, not caring about the consequences to her reputation. Seeing them out in public, holding hands, made me do a double take. He didn't seem able to believe it himself. The rest of our classmates were almost too stunned to even comprehend it yet. They could barely process acknowledging his existence, let alone him being with someone like her.
My own romantic state was less rosy than hers - if you could even call it a romantic state. Dimitri hadn't visited me during my recovery, and our practices were indefinitely suspended. It wasn't until the fourth day after Lissa's kidnapping that I ran into him in the gym. We were alone.
I had come back for my gym bag and froze when I saw him, unable to speak. He started to walk past and then stopped.
"Rose..." he began after several uncomfortable moments. "You need to report what happened. With us."
I'd been waiting a long time to talk to him, but this wasn't the conversation I'd imagined.
"I can't do that. They'll fire you. Or worse."
"They should fire me. What I did was wrong."
"You couldn't help it. It was the spell..."
"It doesn't matter. It was wrong. And stupid."
Wrong? Stupid? I bit my lip, and tears threatened to fill my eyes. I quickly tried to regain my composure. "Look, it's not a big deal."
"It is a big deal! I took advantage of you."
"No," I said evenly. "You didn't."
There must have been something telling in my voice because he met my eyes with a deep and serious intensity.
"Rose, I'm seven years older than you. In ten years, that won't mean so much, but for now, it's huge. I'm an adult. You're a child."
Ouch. I flinched. Easier if he'd just punched me.
"You didn't seem to think I was a child when you were all over me."
Now he flinched. "Just because your body...well, that doesn't make you an adult. We're in two very different places. I've been out in the world. I've been on my own. I've killed, Rose - people, not animals. And you...you're just starting out. Your life is about homework and clothes and dances."
"That's all you think I care about?"
"No, of course not. Not entirely. But it's all part of your world. You're still growing up and figuring out who you are and what's important. You need to keep doing that. You need to be with boys your own age."
I didn't want boys my own age. But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything.
"Even if you choose not to tell, you need to understand that it was a mistake. And it isn't ever going to happen again," he added.
"Because you're too old for me? Because it isn't responsible?"
