Last Sacrifice (36 page)

When the mourners dispersed from the graveyard, Lissa felt a hand touch her shoulder. Christian. She threw herself gratefully into his arms, trying hard to hold back sobs. He felt real and solid. Safe. "How did this happen?" she asked. "How could it have happened?"

Christian released her, his crystal-blue eyes more serious and sorrowful than I'd ever seen. "You know how. Those Strigoi were trying to kill you. She sacrificed herself to save you."

Lissa had no memory of this, but it didn't matter. "I can't . . . I can't believe this is happening." That agonizing emptiness grew within her.

"I have more bad news," said Christian.

She stared in astonishment. "How could this get any worse?"

"I'm leaving."

"Leaving . . . what? Court?"

"Yes. Leaving everything." The sadness on his face grew. "Leaving you."

Her jaw nearly dropped. "What . . . what's wrong? What did I do?"

"Nothing." He squeezed her hand and let it go. "I love you. I'll always love you. But you are who you are. You're the last Dragomir. There'll always be something taking you away . . . I'd just get in your way. You need to rebuild your family. I'm not the one you need."

"Of course you are! You are the
only
one! The only one I want to build my future with."

"You say that now, but just wait. There are better choices. You heard Adrian's joke. ‘Little Dragomirs'? When you're ready for kids in a few years, you're going to need a bunch. The Dragomirs need to be solid again. And me? I'm not responsible enough to handle that."

"You'd be a great father," she argued.

"Yeah," he scoffed, "and I'd be a big asset to you too—the princess married to the guy from the Strigoi family."

"I don't care about any of that, and you know it!" She clutched at his shirt, forcing him to look at her. "I love you. I want you to be part of my life. None of this makes sense. Are you scared? Is that it? Are you scared of the weight of my family name?"

He averted his eyes. "Let's just say it's not an easy name to carry."

She shook him. "I don't believe you! You're not afraid of anything! You never back down."

"I'm backing down now." He gently removed himself from her. "I really do love you. That's why I'm doing this. It's for the best."

"But you can't . . ." Lissa gestured toward my grave, but he was already walking away. "You can't! She's gone. If you're gone too, there'll be no one . . ."

But Christian
was
gone, disappearing into fog that hadn't been there minutes ago. Lissa was left with only my tombstone for company. And for the first time in her life, she was really and truly alone. She had felt alone when her family died, but I'd been her anchor, always at her back, protecting her. When Christian had come along, he too had kept the loneliness away, filling her heart with love.

But now . . . now we were both gone. Her family was gone. That hole inside threatened to consume her, and it was more than just the loss of the bond. Being alone is a terrible, terrible thing. There's no one to run to, no one to confide in, no one who cares what happens to you. She'd been alone in the woods, but that was nothing like this. Nothing like it at all.

Staring around, she wished she could go sink into my grave and end her torment. No . . . wait. She really could end it.
Say
"
stop,
" the old woman had said. That was all it took to stop this pain. This was a spirit dream, right? True, it was more realistic and all-consuming than any she'd ever faced, but in the end, all dreamers woke up. One word, and this would become a fading nightmare.

Staring around at the empty Court, she almost said the word. But . . . did she want to end things? She'd vowed to fight through these trials. Would she give up over a dream? A dream about being alone? It seemed like such a minor thing, but that cold truth hit her again:
I've never been alone.
She didn't know if she could carry on by herself, but then, she realized that if this wasn't a dream—and dear God, did it feel real—there was no magic "stop" in real life. If she couldn't deal with loneliness in a dream, she never would be able to while waking. And as much as it scared her, she decided she would not back down from this. Something urged her toward the fog, and she walked toward it—alone.

The fog should have led her into the church's garden. Instead, the world rematerialized and she found herself in a Council session. It was an open one, with a Moroi audience watching. Unlike usual, Lissa didn't sit with the audience. She was at the Council's table, with its thirteen chairs. She sat in the Dragomir seat. The middle chair, the monarch's chair, was occupied by Ariana Szelsky.
Definitely a dream,
some wry part of her thought. She had a Council spot and Ariana was queen. Too good to be true.

Like always, the Council was in a heated debate, and the topic was familiar: the age decree. Some Council members argued that it was immoral. Others argued that the Strigoi threat was too great. Desperate times called for desperate actions, those people said.

Ariana peered down the table at Lissa. "What does the Dragomir family think?" Ariana was neither as kind as she'd been in the van nor as hostile as Tatiana had been. Ariana was neutral, a queen running a Council and gathering the information she needed. Every set of eyes in the room turned toward Lissa.

For some reason, every coherent idea had fled out of her head. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. What did she think? What was her opinion of the age decree? She desperately tried to dredge up an answer.

"I . . . I think it's bad."

Lee Szelsky, who must have taken the family spot when Ariana became queen, snorted in disgust. "Can you elaborate, princess?"

Lissa swallowed. "Lowering the guardian age isn't the way to protect us. We need . . . we need to learn to protect ourselves too."

Her words were met with more contempt and shock. "And pray tell," said Howard Zeklos, "how do you plan to do that? What's your proposal? Mandatory training for all ages? Start a program in the schools?"

Again Lissa groped for words. What
was
the plan? She and Tasha had discussed it lots of times, strategizing this very issue of how to implement training. Tasha had practically pounded those details into her head in the hopes Lissa could make her voice heard. Here she was now, representing her family on the Council, with the chance to change things and improve Moroi life. All she had to do was explain herself. So many were counting on her, so many waiting to hear the words she felt so passionately about. But what were they? Why couldn't Lissa remember? She must have taken too long to answer because Howard threw his hands up in disgust.

"I knew it. We were idiots to let a little girl on this Council. She has nothing useful to offer. The Dragomirs are gone. They've died with her, and we need to accept that."

They've died with her.
The pressure of being the last of her line had weighed on Lissa since the moment a doctor had told her that her parents and brother had died. The last of a line that had empowered the Moroi and produced some of the greatest kings and queens. She'd vowed to herself over and over that she wouldn't disappoint that lineage, that she would see her family's pride restored. And now it was all falling apart.

Even Ariana, whom Lissa had considered a supporter, looked disappointed. The audience began to jeer, echoing the call of removing this tongue-tied child from the Council. They yelled for her to leave. Then, worse still: "The dragon is dead! The dragon is dead!"

Lissa almost tried again to make her speech, but then something made her look behind her. There, the twelve family seals hung on the wall. A man had appeared out of nowhere and was taking down the Dragomir's crest, with its dragon and Romanian inscription. Lissa's heart sank as the shouts in the room became louder and her humiliation grew. She rose, wanting to run out of there and hide from the disgrace. Instead, her feet took her to the wall with its seals. With more strength than she thought herself capable of possessing, she jerked the dragon seal away from the man.

"No!" she yelled. She turned her gaze to the audience and held up the seal, challenging any of them to come take it from her or deny her her rightful place on the Council. "This. Is. Mine. Do you hear me?
This is mine!
"

She would never know if they heard because they disappeared, just like the graveyard. Silence fell. She now sat in one of the medical examining rooms back at St. Vladimir's. The familiar details were oddly comforting: the sink with its orange hand soap, the neatly labeled cupboards and drawers, and even the informative health posters on the walls. STUDENTS: PRACTICE SAFE SEX!

Equally welcome was the school's resident physician: Dr. Olendzki. The doctor wasn't alone. Standing around Lissa—who sat on top of an examination bed—were a therapist named Deirdre and . . . me. Seeing myself there was pretty wacky, but after the funeral, I was just starting to roll with all of this.

A surprising mix of feelings raced through Lissa, feelings out of her control. Happiness to see us. Despair at life. Confusion. Suspicion. She couldn't seem to get a hold of one emotion or thought. It was a very different feeling from the Council, when she just hadn't been able to explain herself. Her mind had been orderly—she'd just lost track of her point. Here, there was nothing to keep track of. She was a mental mess.

"Do you understand?" asked Dr. Olendzki. Lissa suspected the doctor had already asked this question. "It's beyond what we can control. Medication no longer works."

"Believe me, we don't want you hurting yourself. But now that others are at risk . . . well, you understand why we have to take action." This was Deirdre. I'd always thought of her as smug, particularly since her therapeutic method involved answering questions with questions. There was no sly humor now. Deirdre was deadly earnest.

None of their words made sense to Lissa, but the
hurting yourself
part triggered something in her. She looked down at her arms. They were bare . . . and marred with cuts. The cuts she used to make when the pressure of spirit grew too great. They'd been her only outlet, a horrible type of release. Studying them now, Lissa saw the cuts were bigger and deeper than before. The kinds of cuts that danced with suicide. She looked back up.

"Who . . . who did I hurt?"

"You don't remember?" asked Dr. Olendzki.

Lissa shook her head, looking desperately from face to face, seeking answers. Her gaze fell on me, and my face was as dark and somber as Deirdre's. "It's okay, Liss," I said. "It's all going to be okay."

I wasn't surprised at that. Naturally, it was what I would say. I would always reassure Lissa. I would always take care of her.

"It's not important," said Deirdre, voice soft and soothing. "What's important is no one else ever gets hurt. You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?"

Of course Lissa didn't, but her troubled mind shifted elsewhere. "Don't talk to me like a child!" The loudness of her voice filled the room.

"I didn't mean to," said Deirdre, the paragon of patience. "We just want to help you. We want you to be safe."

Paranoia rose to the forefront of Lissa's emotions. Nowhere was safe. She was certain about that . . . but nothing else. Except maybe something about a dream. A dream, a dream . . .

"They'll be able to take care of you in Tarasov," explained Dr. Olendzki. "They'll make sure you're comfortable."

"Tarasov?" Lissa and I spoke in unison. This other Rose clenched her fists and glared. Again, a typical reaction for me.

"She is
not
going to that place," growled Rose.

"Do you think we want to do this?" asked Deirdre. It was the first time I'd really seen her cool façade crumble. "We don't. But the spirit . . . what it's doing . . . we have no choice . . ."

Images of our trip to Tarasov flashed through Lissa's mind. The cold, cold corridors. The moans. The tiny cells. She remembered seeing the psychiatric ward, the section other spirit users were locked up in. Locked up indefinitely.

"No!" she cried, jumping up from the table. "Don't send me to Tarasov!" She looked around for escape. The women stood between her and the door. Lissa couldn't run. What magic could she use? Surely there was something. Her mind touched spirit, as she rifled for a spell.

Other-Rose grabbed a hold of her hand, likely because she'd felt the stirrings of spirit and wanted to stop Lissa. "There's another way," my alter ego told Deirdre and Dr. Olendzki. "I can pull it from her. I can pull it all from her, like Anna did for St. Vladimir. I can take away the darkness and instability. Lissa will be sane again."

Everyone stared at me. Well, the other me.

"But then it'll be in you, right?" asked Dr. Olendzki. "It won't disappear."

"I don't care," I told them stubbornly. "I'll go to Tarasov. Don't send her. I can do it as long as she needs me to."

Lissa watched me, scarcely believing what she heard. Her chaotic thoughts turned joyous.
Yes! Escape
. She wouldn't go crazy. She wouldn't go to Tarasov. Then, somewhere in the jumble of her memories . . .

"Anna committed suicide," murmured Lissa. Her grasp on reality was still tenuous, but that sobering thought was enough to momentarily calm her racing mind. "She went crazy from helping St. Vladimir."

My other self refused to look at Lissa. "It's just a story. I'll take the darkness. Send me."

Lissa didn't know what to do or think. She didn't want to go to Tarasov. That prison gave her nightmares. And here I was, offering her escape, offering to save her like I always did. Lissa wanted that. She wanted to be saved. She didn't want to go insane like all the other spirit users. If she accepted my offer, she would be free.

Yet . . . on the edge or not, she cared about me too much. I had made too many sacrifices for her. How could she let me do this? What kind of friend would she be, to condemn me to that life? Tarasov scared Lissa. A life in a cage scared Lissa. But me facing that scared her even more.

There was no good outcome here. She wished it would all just go away. Maybe if she just closed her eyes . . . wait. She remembered again. The dream. She was in a spirit dream. All she had to do was wake up.