Shadow Kiss (10 page)

"Hey she was a cool lady."

"I'm sure she was. Can I go yet?"

His eyes were still on the vine's blossoms. "You shouldn't knock Moroi family trees. You don't know anything about your father. For all you know, we could be related."

"Would that mean you'd leave me alone?"

Strolling back over to me, he switched subjects as though there'd been no interruption. "Nah, don't worry. I think we come from different trees. Isn't your dad some Turkish guy anyway?"

"Yeah, according to my— Hey, are you staring at my chest?"

He was studying me closely, but his eyes were no longer on my face. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared.

"I'm staring at your shirt," he said. "The color is all wrong."

Reaching out, he touched the strap. Like ink spreading across paper, the ivory fabric turned the same shade of rich indigo as the vine's blossoms. He narrowed his eyes like an expert artist studying his work.

"How'd you do that?" I exclaimed.

"It's my dream. Hmm. You're not a blue person. Well, at least not in the color sense. Let's try this." The blue lit up into a brilliant crimson. "Yes, that's it. Red's your color. Red like a rose, like a sweet, sweet Rose."

"Oh man," I said. "I didn't know you could kick into crazy mode even in dreams." He never got as dark and depressed as Lissa had last year, but spirit definitely made him weird sometimes.

He stepped back and threw his arms out. "I'm always crazy around you, Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you." He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky:

"Rose is in red

But never in blue

Sharp as a thorn

Fights like one too."

Adrian dropped his arms and looked at me expectantly.

"How can a thorn fight?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Art doesn't have to make sense, little dhampir. Besides, I'm supposed to be crazy, right?"

"Not the craziest I've ever seen."

"Well," he said, pacing over to study some hydrangeas, "I'll work on that."

I started to ask again about when I could go "back" to sleep, but our exchange brought something to my mind.

"Adrian … how do you know if you're crazy or not?"

He turned from the flowers, a smile on his face. I could tell he was about to make a joke, but then he looked at me more closely. The smile faded, and he turned unusually serious.

"Do you think you're crazy?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said, looking down at the ground. I was barefoot, and sharp blades of grass tickled my feet. "I've been … seeing things."

"People who are crazy rarely question whether they're crazy," he said wisely.

I sighed and looked back up at him. "That doesn't really help me."

He walked back over to me and rested a hand on my shoulder. "I don't think you're crazy, Rose.

I think you've been through a lot, though."

I frowned. "What's that mean?"

"It means I don't think you're crazy."

"Thanks. That clears things up. You know, these dreams are
really
starting to bug me."

"Lissa doesn't mind them," he said.

"You visit hers too? Do you seriously have no boundaries?"

"Nah, hers are instructional. She wants to learn how to do this."

"Great. So I'm just the lucky one who gets to put up with your sexual harassment."

He actually looked hurt. "I really wish you wouldn't act like I'm evil incarnate."

"Sorry. I just haven't had much reason to believe you can do anything useful."

"Right. As opposed to your cradle-robbing mentor. I don't really see you making much progress with him."

I took a step back and narrowed my eyes. "Leave Dimitri out of this."

"I will when you stop acting like he's perfect. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's one of the people who hid the trial from you, right?"

I looked away. "That's not important right now. Besides, he had his reasons."

"Yeah, which apparently didn't involve being open with you
or
fighting to get you there.

Whereas me…" He shrugged. "I could get you into the trial."

"You?" I asked with a harsh laugh. "How are you going to pull that off? Have a smoke break with the judge? Use compulsion on the queen and half the royals at court?"

"You shouldn't be so quick to slam people who can help you. Just wait." He placed a light kiss on my forehead that I tried to wiggle away from. "But for now, go get some rest."

The garden faded, and I fell back into the normal blackness of sleep.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I followed Christian around without incident. And as I did, I found myself growing more and more impatient.

For one thing, I was discovering that a lot of being a guardian was waiting around. I'd always known that, but the reality was harder than I'd realized. Guardians were absolutely essential for when Strigoi decided to attack. But those Strigoi attacks? They were generally rare. Time could pass—
years
could pass—without a guardian ever having to engage in any sort of conflict.

While my instructors certainly wouldn't make us wait that long during this exercise, they nonetheless wanted to teach us patience and how important it was
not
to slack just because there'd been no danger in a while.

We were also being held to the strictest conditions a guardian could be in: always standing and always being formal. More often than not, guardians who lived with Moroi families behaved casually in their homes and did ordinary things like reading or watching TV—while still staying perfectly aware of any threats. We couldn't always expect that, though, so we had to practice the hard way while in school.

My patience level didn't do so well with all this waiting, but my frustration was more than just restlessness. I was desperate to prove myself, to make amends for not having reacted when Stan attacked. I'd had no further Mason sightings and had decided that what I'd seen really had been fatigue- and stress-induced. That made me happy, because those were much better reasons than being crazy or inept.

But certain things were not making me happy. When Christian and I met up with Lissa after class one day, I could feel worry and fear and anger radiating off of her. It was only the bond that clued me in, though. To all outside appearances, she looked fine. Eddie and Christian, who were talking about something with each other, didn't notice a thing.

I moved close and put an arm around her as we walked. "It's okay. Everything's going to be okay." I knew what was bothering her. Victor.

We'd decided that Christian—despite his willingness to "take care of things"—probably wasn't the best choice to go see about us getting into Victor's trial. So Lissa had played diplomat the other day and very politely spoken to Alberta about the possibility of us testifying. Alberta had told her, equally politely, that it was out of the question.

"I figured if we just explained things—why it was so important—they'd let us go," she murmured to me. "Rose, I can't sleep. … I just keep thinking about it. What if he gets loose?

What if they really set him free?"

Her voice trembled, and there was an old vulnerability there that I hadn't seen in a long time.

That sort of thing usually set off my warning bells, but this time, it triggered a weird rush of memories, of times past when Lissa had depended on me so much. I was happy to see how strong she'd become and wanted to make sure she stayed that way. I tightened my arm, hard to do while still walking.

"He won't get loose," I said fiercely. "We'll get to court. I'll make sure of it. You know I'd never let anything happen to you."

She leaned her head against my shoulder, a small smile on her face. "That's what I love about you. You have no idea how you'll get us to court, but you still push forward anyway to make me feel better."

"Is it working?"

"Yes."

The worry still lurked in her, but her amusement dampened its effects a little. Plus, despite her teasing me about my bold promise, my words really had reassured her.

Unfortunately, we soon found out that Lissa had other reasons to be frustrated. She was waiting for the medication to fade from her system and allow her full access to her magic. It was there—we could both sense it—but she was having trouble touching it. Three days had passed, and nothing had changed for her. I felt for her, but my biggest concern was her mental state—which thus far had stayed clear.

"I don't know what's going on," she complained. We had almost reached the commons. Lissa and Christian had plans to watch a movie. I half-wondered how difficult it would be for me to watch the movie and be on alert. "It seems like I should be able to do
something,
but I still can't.

I'm stuck."

"That might not be a bad thing," I pointed out, moving away from Lissa so I could scan the path ahead.

She shot me a rueful look. "You're such a worrier. I thought that was my job."

"Hey, it's my job to look out for you."

"Actually, it's my job," said Eddie, in a rare show of joking.

"Neither of you should be worrying," she argued. "Not about this."

Christian slipped his arm around her waist. "You're more impatient than Rose here. All you need to do is—"

It was déjà vu.

Stan leapt out from a copse of trees and reached for Lissa, wrapping his arm around her torso and jerking her toward him. My body responded instantly, no hesitation whatsoever as I moved to "save" her. The only problem was that Eddie had responded instantly too, and he was closer, which put him there ahead of me. I circled, trying to get in on the action, but the way the two were squaring off blocked me from being effective.

Eddie came at Stan from the side, fierce and swift, pulling Stan's arm away from Lissa with a strength nearly powerful enough to rip it out of the socket. Eddie's wiry frame often hid how muscular he really was. Stan's hand caught the side of Eddie's face, nails digging in, but it was enough so that Lissa could wriggle free and run to join Christian behind me. With her out of the way, I moved off to the side, hoping to assist Eddie—but there was no need. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Stan and threw him down to the ground. Half a breath later, Eddie's practice stake was poised right above Stan's heart.

Stan laughed, genuinely pleased. "Nice job, Castile."

Eddie withdrew the stake and helped his instructor up. With the action gone, I could now see how bruised and blotched Stan's face was. Attacks for us novices might be few and far between, but our guardians were picking fights daily during this exercise. All of them were taking a lot of abuse, but they handled it with grace and good humor.

"Thank you, sir," said Eddie. He looked pleased but not conceited.

"I'd be faster and stronger if I were Strigoi, of course, but I swear, you could have rivaled one with your speed there." Stan glanced at Lissa. "You okay?"

"Fine," she said, face aglow. I could sense that she'd actually enjoyed the excitement. Her adrenaline was running high.

Stan's smiling face disappeared as he turned his attention on me. "And you—what were you doing?"

I stared, aghast at his harsh tone. It was what he'd said last time too.

"What do you mean?" I exclaimed. "I didn't freeze or anything this time! I was ready to back him up, looking for a chance to join in."

"Yes," he agreed. "That's exactly the problem. You were so eager to get a punch in that you forgot that you had two Moroi behind you. They might as well have not existed as far as you were concerned. You're out in the open, and you had your back to them."

I strode forward and glared at him, unconcerned about propriety. "That is
not
fair. If we were in the real world and a Strigoi attacked, you cannot tell me that another guardian wouldn't jump in and do everything they could to take that Strigoi down as quickly possible."

"You're probably right," Stan said. "But you weren't thinking about eliminating the threat efficiently. You weren't thinking about your exposed Moroi. You were thinking about how quickly you could do something exciting and redeem yourself."

"Wh-what? Aren't you making a few leaps there? You're grading me on what you
think
was my motivation. How can you be sure what I'm thinking?" I didn't even know half the time.

"Instinct," he replied mysteriously. He took out a small pad of paper and made some notes on it.

I narrowed my eyes, wishing I could see through the notepad and discern what he was writing about me. When he finished, he slipped the pad back in his coat and nodded at all of us. "See you later."

We watched him walk across the snowy grounds toward the gym where dhampirs trained. My mouth was hanging open, and I couldn't even get any words out at first. When did it end with these people? I was getting burned again and again on stupid technicalities that had nothing to do with how I'd actually perform in the real world.

"That was not even fair. How can he judge me on what he thinks I was thinking?"

Eddie shrugged as we continued our journey toward the dorm. "He can think whatever he wants. He's our instructor."

"Yeah, but he's going to give me another bad mark! Field experience is pointless if it can't really show how we'd do against Strigoi. I can't believe this. I'm good—I'm really good. How on earth can I be failing this?"

Nobody had an actual answer for that, but Lissa noted uncomfortably, "Well… whether he was fair or unfair, he had one thing right: You were great, Eddie."

I glanced over at Eddie and felt bad that I was letting my own drama take away from his success. I was pissed off—
really
pissed off—but Stan's wrongness was my problem to deal with. Eddie had performed brilliantly, and everyone praised him so much on the walk back that I could see a blush creeping over his cheeks. Or maybe that was just the cold. Regardless, I was happy for him.

We settled into the lounge, pleased to find no one else had claimed it—and that it was warm and toasty. Each of the dorms had a few of these lounges, and all were stocked with movies and games and lots of comfy chairs and couches. They were only available for student use at certain times. On weekends, they were pretty much open the whole time, but on weekdays, they had limited hours—presumably to encourage us to do our homework.