"What if someone saw? What if someone knows?..."
I tightened my grip on her arm, digging my nails in to get her attention. She flinched. "No. It's not the same. It has nothing to do with that. Do you hear me?" I could feel both Natalie and Dimitri's eyes on us. "It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay."
Not looking like she believed me at all, Lissa nodded.
"Get this cleaned up," Kirova snapped to the matron. "And find out if anyone saw anything."
Someone finally realized I was there and ordered Dimitri to take me away, no matter how much I begged them to let me stay with Lissa. He walked me back to the novices' dorm. He didn't speak until we were almost there. "You know something. Something about what happened. Is this what you meant when you told Headmistress Kirova that Lissa was in danger?"
"I don't know anything. It's just some sick joke."
"Do you have any idea who'd do it? Or why?"
I considered this. Before we'd left, it could have been any number of people. That was the way it was when you were popular. People loved you, people hated you. But now? Lissa had faded off to a certain extent. The only person who really and truly despised her was Mia, but Mia seemed to fight her battles with words, not actions. And even if she did decide to do something more aggressive, why do this? She didn't seem like the type. There were a million other ways to get back at a person. "No," I told him. "No clue."
"Rose, if you know something, tell me. We're on the same side. We both want to protect her. This is serious."
I spun around, taking my anger over the fox out on him. "Yeah, it is serious. It's all serious. And you have me doing laps every day when I should be learning to fight and defend her! If you want to help her, then teach me something! Teach me how to fight. I already know how to run away."
I didn't realize until that moment how badly I did want to learn, how I wanted to prove myself to him, to Lissa, and to everyone else. The fox incident had made me feel powerless, and I didn't like that. I wanted to do something, anything.
Dimitri watched my outburst calmly, with no change in his expression. When I finished, he simply beckoned me forward like I hadn't said anything. "Come on. You're late for practice."
EIGHT
BURNING WITH ANGER, I FOUGHT harder and better that day than I ever had in any of my classes with the novices. So much so that I finally won my first hand-to-hand pairing, annihilating Shane Reyes. We'd always gotten along, and he took it good-naturedly, applauding my performance, as did a few others.
"The comeback's starting," observed Mason after class.
"So it would seem."
He gently touched my arm. "How's Lissa?"
It didn't surprise me that he knew. Gossip spread so fast around here sometimes, it felt like everyone had a psychic bond.
"Okay. Coping." I didn't elaborate on how I knew that. Our bond was a secret from the student body. "Mase, you claim to know about Mia. You think she might have done that?"
"Whoa, hey, I'm not an expert on her or anything. But honestly? No. Mia won't even do dissections in biology. I can't picture her actually catching a fox, let alone, um, killing it."
"Any friends who might do it for her?"
He shook his head. "Not really. They're not really the types to get their hands dirty either. But who knows?"
Lissa was still shaken when I met her for lunch later, her mood made worse when Natalie and her crew wouldn't shut up about the fox. Apparently Natalie had overcome her disgust enough to enjoy the attention the spectacle had brought her. Maybe she wasn't as content with her fringe status as I'd always believed.
"And it was just there," she explained, waving her hands for emphasis. "Right in the middle of the bed. There was blood everywhere."
Lissa looked as green as the sweater she wore, and I pulled her away before I even finished my food and immediately launched into a string of obscenities about Natalie's social skills.
"She's nice," Lissa said automatically. "You were just telling me the other day how much you liked her."
"I do like her, but she's just incompetent about certain things."
We stood outside our animal behavior class, and I noticed people giving us curious looks and whispering as they passed. I sighed.
"How are you doing with all this?"
A half-smile crossed her face. "Can't you already feel it?"
"Yeah, but I want to hear it from you."
"I don't know. I'll be okay. I wish everyone wouldn't keep staring at me like I'm some kind of freak."
My anger exploded again. The fox was bad. People upsetting her made it worse, but at least I could do something about them. "Who's bothering you?"
"Rose, you can't beat up everyone we have a problem with."
"Mia?" I guessed.
"And others," she said evasively. "Look, it doesn't matter. What I want to know is how this could have...that is, I can't stop thinking about that time - "