"What do you mean?"
"The spell. Victor said you had to want me...to care about me...for it to work." When he didn't say anything, I tried to grip his shirt, but my fingers were too weak. "Did you? Did you want me?"
His words came out thickly. "Yes, Roza. I did want you. I still do. I wish...we could be together."
"Then why did you lie to me?"
We reached the clinic, and he managed to open the door while still holding me. As soon as he stepped inside, he began yelling for help.
"Why did you lie?" I murmured again.
Still holding me in his arms, he looked down at me. I could hear voices and footsteps getting closer.
"Because we can't be together."
"Because of the age thing, right?" I asked. "Because you're my mentor?"
His fingertip gently wiped away a tear that had escaped down my cheek. "That's part of it," he said. "But also...well, you and I will both be Lissa's guardians someday. I need to protect her at all costs. If a pack of Strigoi come, I need to throw my body between them and her."
"I know that. Of course that's what you have to do." The black sparkles were dancing in front of my eyes again. I was fading out.
"No. If I let myself love you, I won't throw myself in front of her. I'll throw myself in front of you."
The medical team arrived and took me out of his arms.
And that was how, two days after being discharged, I ended up back in the clinic. My third time in the two months we'd been back at the Academy. It had to be some kind of record. I definitely had a concussion and probably internal bleeding, but we never really found out. When your best friend is a kick-ass healer, you sort of don't have to worry about those things.
I still had to stay there for a couple of days, but Lissa - and Christian, her new sidekick - almost never left my side when they weren't in class. Through them, I learned bits and pieces about the outside world. Dimitri had realized there was a Strigoi on campus when they'd found Natalie's victim dead and drained of blood: Mr. Nagy of all people. A surprising choice, but since he was older, he'd been able to put up less of a fight. No more Slavic art for us. The guardians in the detention center had been injured but not killed. She'd simply slammed them around as she had me.
Victor had been found and recaptured while trying to escape campus. I was glad, even though it meant Natalie's sacrifice had been for nothing. Rumors said that Victor hadn't seemed afraid at all when the royal guards came and carried him away. He'd simply smiled the whole time, like he had some secret they didn't know about.
Inasmuch as it could, life returned to normal after that. Lissa did no more cutting. The doctor prescribed her something - an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug, I couldn't remember which - that made her feel better. I'd never really known anything about those kinds of pills. I thought they made people silly and happy. But it was a pill like any other, meant to fix something, and mostly it just kept her normal and feeling stable.
Which was a good thing - because she had some other issues to deal with. Like Andre. She'd finally believed Christian's story, and allowed herself to acknowledge that Andre might not have been the hero she'd always believed him to be. It was hard on her, but she finally reached a peaceful decision, accepting that he could have had both good and bad sides, like we all do. What he'd done to Mia saddened her, but it didn't change the fact that he'd been a good brother who loved her. Most importantly, it finally freed her from feeling like she needed to be him to make her family proud. She could be herself - which she proved daily in her relationship with Christian.
The school still couldn't get over that. She didn't care. She laughed it off, ignoring the shocked looks and disdain from the royals who couldn't believe she'd date someone from a humiliated family. Not all of them felt that way though. Some who had gotten to know her during her brief social whirlwind actually liked her for her, no compulsion necessary. They liked her honesty and openness, preferring it to the games most royals played.
A lot of royals ignored her, of course, and talked viciously about her behind her back. Most surprising of all, Mia - despite being utterly humiliated - managed to wiggle back into the good graces of a couple of these royals. It proved my point. She wouldn't stay down for long. And, in fact, I saw the first signs of her revenge lurking again when I walked past her one day on the way to class. She stood with a few other people and spoke loudly, clearly wanting me to hear.