That was no longer true.
It took only a couple hours for them to get a casualty count, but waiting while those reports trickled in felt like days. And the numbers...the numbers were harsh. Fifteen Moroi had been killed. Twelve guardians had been killed. A group of thirteen, both Moroi and dhampirs, had been taken away. The guardians estimated that there had been close to fifty Strigoi, which was beyond mind-boggling. They'd found twenty-eight Strigoi bodies. The rest appeared to have escaped, many taking victims with them.
For that size of a Strigoi party, our casualty count was still lower than one might have expected. A few things were credited for saving us. One was the early warning. The Strigoi had barely penetrated the school's inner grounds when I'd warned Stan. The school had gone into lockdown quickly, and the fact that most everyone was already inside for curfew had helped. Most of the Moroi victims - dead or taken - were those who had been out in the open when the Strigoi came.
The Strigoi had never made it into the elementary dorms, which Dimitri said was largely thanks to me and Christian. They had managed to breach one of the Moroi dorms, however - the one that Lissa lived in. My stomach had dropped when I heard that. And even though I could feel that she was fine through the bond, all I could see was that smirking blond Strigoi, telling me he was going to finish the Dragomirs off. I didn't know what had happened to him; the attacking Strigoi group hadn't gotten far into her dorm, thankfully, but there had been casualties.
One of them was Eddie.
"What?" I exclaimed when Adrian told me.
We were eating in the cafeteria. I wasn't sure which meal it was since the campus had reverted to a daylight schedule that threw my sense of timing off. The cafeteria was nearly silent, all conversations in low whispers. Meals were the only reason students could leave their dorms. There was going to be a guardian meeting later on that I was actually invited to, but for now, I was confined with the rest of my friends.
"He was with you guys," I said. I focused on Lissa, almost accusingly. "I saw him with you. Through your eyes."
She looked up at me over the tray of food she had no interest in eating, her face pale and full of grief. "When the Strigoi got in downstairs, he and some other novices went down to help."
"They didn't find his body," said Adrian. There was no smirk on his face, no humor anywhere. "He was one of the ones they took."
Christian sighed and leaned back in his chair. "He's as good as dead, then."
The cafeteria disappeared. I stopped seeing any of them. All I could see in that moment was that room back in Spokane, that room where we'd been held. They'd tortured Eddie and nearly killed him. That experience had changed him forever, affecting the way he now conducted himself as a guardian. He'd grown extremely dedicated as a result, but it had cost him some of the light and laughter he used to have.
And now it was happening again. Eddie captured. He'd worked so hard to protect Lissa and others, risking his own life in the attack. I'd been nowhere near the Moroi dorm when it had happened, but I felt responsible - like I should have watched over him. Surely I owed it to Mason. Mason. Mason who had died on my watch and whose ghost I hadn't seen since he'd warned me earlier. I hadn't been able to save him, and now I'd lost his best friend too.
I shot up from my chair and shoved my tray away. That dark fury I'd been fighting blazed through me. If Strigoi had been around, I could have burned them up with it, without any need of Christian's magic.
"What's wrong?" asked Lissa.
I stared at her in disbelief. "What's wrong? What's wrong? Do you seriously have to ask that?" In the silent cafeteria, my voice rang out. People stared.
"Rose, you know what she means," said Adrian, voice unusually calm. "We're all upset. Sit back down. It's going to be okay."
For a moment, I almost listened to him. Then, I shook it off. He was trying to use compulsion to chill me out. I glared at him.
"It is not going to be okay - not unless we do something about this."
"There's nothing to be done," said Christian. Beside him, Lissa was silent, still hurt from when I'd snapped at her.
"We'll see about that," I said.
"Rose, wait," she called. She was worried about me - and scared, too. It was tiny and selfish, but she didn't want me to leave her. She was used to me being there for her. I made her feel safe. But I couldn't stay, not right now.
I stormed out of the commons and into the bright light outside. The guardians' meeting wasn't for another couple hours, but that didn't matter. I needed to talk to someone now. I sprinted to the guardians' building. Someone else was walking into it as I was, and I bumped her in my haste.
"Rose?"