Back in the woods, Dimitri catches up with Rose. He grabs hold of her and attempts to take her back to the motel, but she puts up a major fight.
“Rose,” he said wearily. “You can’t win.”
“How’s your face feeling?” I asked. I couldn’t see any marks in the poor lighting, but I knew the punch I’d given him would leave a mark tomorrow. It was a shame to damage his face like that, but he’d heal, and maybe it would teach him a lesson about messing with Rose Hathaway.
Or not. He began dragging me again. “I’m seconds away from just tossing you over my shoulder,” he warned.
“I’d like to see you try.”
—page 118
Perhaps fighting with Dimitri isn’t the best use of her time. She realizes there’s something else she can do to help Lissa while she’s away from Court. She’s going to find the lost Dragomir!
Sure, this will go against the orders Dimitri and Sydney were given by Lissa and Abe, respectively—to keep Rose safe and out of trouble—but they all agree that it’s a worthy pursuit. To find a sibling of Lissa’s would mean she can get a vote on the royal council, and that vote could mean the difference between life and death for Rose. The only problem is that they don’t have any real leads. Sydney knows a place they can stay while they figure it out. On the drive there, Rose visits Lissa through the bond.
She finds her friend at Adrian’s parents’ home, recovering with Adrian and Christian from the questioning session. Lissa isn’t confident she convinced the officials that she had nothing to do with Rose’s escape, but the guardians don’t have any proof.
They’re interrupted by a knock on the door. An unfamiliar young Moroi guy is looking for Adrian’s mother. Adrian recognizes him—this is Joe, the janitor, who gave Adrian his alibi the night of the murder so he wouldn’t be implicated along with Rose.
Joe wants Adrian to relate a message to his mother—that he’s leaving Court, but “everything’s set.” He’s about to go, but a suspicious Lissa uses compulsion to get him to go into further detail about what he meant. It turns out Joe was given money by Adrian’s mother, Daniella, to put a specific time on when he saw Adrian—even though Joe didn’t remember precisely when it was. For a price, he’d fudged the details for Daniella in order to protect her son. Joe says he was also paid off by another Moroi to give false testimony about Rose’s whereabouts—and that was testimony that made Rose the prime suspect.
Rose’s friends are desperate to find out who it was that bribed him. But unfortunately, the janitor is no more help to them. All he knows is that there was something strange about the Moroi’s hand . . .
THE KEEPERS
Rose, Dimitri, and Sydney near their destination, deeper and deeper into darkness, surrounded by mountains and forest. They leave the main road and drive down a tiny gravel one toward what looks like a campground. There are other old-looking vehicles here, and all around them is dark forest.
Finally, they get out of the car since they have to continue on foot.
They’re suddenly surrounded by vampires—they’re Moroi, but still, they’re dangerous, and Rose and Dimitri both have their stakes in hand in an instant, just in case they’re attacked. They aren’t. This is a commune of Keepers—Moroi who keep to the old ways and will marry humans or dhampirs without concern for social protocol. They consider modern Moroi to be “Tainted.”
The leader of the Keepers, Raymond, generously allows the trio to stay with his family. Raymond has four children, including a cute dhampir son Joshua and an extremely angry and unwelcoming dhampir daughter, Angeline.
That night, Rose is pulled into a spirit dream by someone who’s never previously summoned her: Robert Doru. His brother, Victor Dashkov, is in the dream as well, and Rose’s first response is to attack—Victor clearly has something devious up his sleeve. But her fighting abilities prove to be of little worth in the dream—since Robert is the one controlling it, she can’t get to either of them.
“Are you done with your tantrum?” asked Victor. “Behaving like a civilized person will make our talk so much more pleasant.”
“I have no interest in talking to you,” I snapped. “The only thing I’m going to do is hunt you down in the real world and drag you back to the authorities.”
“Charming,” said Victor. “We can share a cell.”
—page 156
Victor has great interest in the queen’s murder. He’s deceitful but smart, and Rose decides to tell him about the missing Dragomir. He offers to help in the search, but she still doesn’t have any leads. She needs time.
Victor offers a suggestion that would provide Rose with some additional time—have Lissa run as a candidate for queen. Sure, she’d never be elected since her family doesn’t have quorum. But still, she can run. And her doing so would certainly incite some major debate at Court, which in turn would cause a sizable delay . . .
The dream ends, but Rose is pulled into another—this time with a much better-looking guy: Adrian. He compliments her on the dress she’s wearing—and Rose realizes she’s unconsciously chosen the dress she wore the night she and Dimitri almost had sex thanks to Victor’s lust charm. Of course, Adrian doesn’t realize that. All he sees is a sexy black dress on a beautiful girl. But is her subconscious trying to tell her that spending so much time with her ex is affecting her more than she’d like to admit?
Despite this distraction, before the dream ends, Rose is able to tell Adrian about the potential plan to nominate Lissa for queen.
The next day, Rose, Sydney, and Dimitri go to a nearby town so Sydney can get internet access to start their search to find the missing Dragomir. While Sydney looks up information online, Rose and Dimitri go for a walk around town to kill some time. They end up at the local library, where they flip through travel books and imagine where they’d like to travel to one day. Being with Dimitri like this feels . . . good. Very good.
If anyone had told me forty-eight hours ago that I’d be lying in a library with Dimitri, reading a travel book, I would have said they were crazy. Almost as crazy was the realization that I was doing something perfectly ordinary and casual with him. Since the moment we’d met, our lives had been about secrecy and danger. And really, those were still the dominant themes in our lives. But in those quiet couple of hours, time seemed to stand still. We were at peace. We were friends.
—pages 185-186
They head back to the café to see if Sydney’s found anything useful. She has. She was able to track down Eric Dragomir’s bank records and transactions, hoping they might lead to his mistress. Instead, they led to the mistress’s next of kin—and it’s a shockingly familiar name: Sonya Karp. This is the same teacher from St. Vlad’s who specialized in spirit and chose to turn Strigoi as the only way to escape her madness. But how are they supposed to track down a Strigoi?
THE SEARCH FOR SONYA
Grimly, Dimitri makes a call during which he speaks Russian. Rose recognizes the change in his tone, and it scares her deeply.
A strange sensation spread over me as he spoke. I was confused, lost because of the language . . . but there was more than that. I felt chilled. My pulse raced with fear. That voice . . . I knew that voice. It was his voice and yet not his voice. It was the voice of my nightmares, a voice of coldness and cruelty.
Dimitri was playing Strigoi.
—page 192
Sydney translates Dimitri’s demands for Rose—he wants to know where to find Sonya Karp, and he wants to know NOW. He threatens the Strigoi on the other end with extreme violence if he fails to provide answers. It’s an effective call, but pretending to be Strigoi shakes Dimitri—and Rose—to their cores.
When they get back to the commune, Joshua wants to show Rose his future living quarters—a nearby cave. Dimitri looks like he doesn’t approve of this outing and warns Rose not to lead the young dhampir on. Well, that makes zero sense. Is he jealous she’s thinking about spending time with another cute guy? He doesn’t have control over her. It’s his choice to k
eep Rose at arm’s length. She proves her independence by agreeing to go for a tour of the cave. There, Joshua surprises her by proposing marriage.
Um . . . unexpected. Very unexpected. Rose lets him down as easy as possible. He takes the rejection well—especially when Rose makes it clear that she’s already dating somebody else. When Rose sorts out her issues, Joshua hopes she might come back for him. He then gives her a finely carved wooden bracelet as a gift. Since she turned down his marriage proposal, she doesn’t want to insult him, so she accepts the gift—although she hopes this isn’t encouraging his interest.
They head back to the big campfire, where Rose is promptly attacked by Angeline. She wants Rose to prove she’s really a badass guardian by fighting her. The girl is scrappy but untrained, and Rose is able to restrain her. Angeline is finally impressed by Rose—and it’s okay with her that Rose marries her brother. When the young girl had spotted the bracelet Rose wore, she’d assumed the two were engaged. It’s a Keeper custom that the prospective bride and groom must battle it out with the other’s nearest relative of the same sex.
Dimitri wryly reminds Rose that he told her not to encourage Joshua’s interest.
His humor fades when he decides it’s time to leave the commune to make another call to his Strigoi contact—the cell phone they have can only get a signal ten minutes away from the Keeper village. Since Rose wants to check in with Lissa, she asks that Sydney go with him for support as he is forced to relive his Strigoi days.
When they leave, Rose sees through the bond that Lissa, Adrian, and Christian are now questioning Ambrose about the murder. The dhampir resents that they think he might have had something to do with it. He cared deeply about Tatiana.
Ambrose thinks the murderer was politically motivated. The queen wasn’t happy about making the guardian age decree, but her only other option was to force all dhampirs into service as guardians. Her ultimate decision was the lesser of two evils. Tatiana had also been secretly working to have a group of Moroi trained in defense. The group’s instructor was Lissa’s previous guardian Grant. Unfortunately, he was killed the night of Lissa’s birthday in the Strigoi attack led by Dimitri.
Ambrose lets them know that the queen was also romantically involved with Blake Lazar, a royal party boy who makes Adrian look like an upstanding member of society. Perhaps the real murderer wasn’t politically motivated. It could be that another woman, jealous of the queen’s romantic interludes, decided to take her life. Ambrose promises to check the queen’s bedroom for any further evidence.
Back at the Keepers’ commune, Dimitri and Sydney return from their phone call. Dimitri has a solid lead on a Strigoi who could tell them where to find Sonya. They need to leave immediately for the six-hour trip to Lexington. Angeline begs them to take her with them. Her pleas show that not all Keepers are thrilled about being stuck where they are. Rose feels bad about leaving her behind, but she can’t risk the girl’s safety.
On the drive to Lexington, Rose views the nomination ceremony through Lissa’s eyes. The Royal Ballroom is packed with royals and commoners alike. A member of each royal family is nominated.
When it’s believed all nominations have been made, Tasha steps forward to nominate Lissa—much to the princess’s surprise. It’s seconded by Christian and confirmed by Adrian. Some Moroi are unhappy about this, but others are now watching Lissa with interest—this princess from a dying line who can allegedly work miracles.
Lissa retains her composure until she gets back to her room with Christian and Adrian, where she promptly freaks out. She doesn’t want to be queen! They assure her it’s only to buy time for Rose so they can find the real murderer.
DIMITRI’S BREAKDOWN
The Strigoi they’re after, Donovan, works in a tattoo shop. Since he would sense a dhampir, the plan is to send in a very reluctant Sydney so that she can lure him out into Rose and Dimitri’s trap.
Despite Sydney’s fears, it works! Donovan and his two henchmen enter the alley, where Rose and Dimitri attack. Rose takes out one of the henchmen, and Dimitri pummels the other. Being faced with Strigoi reminds him of the horrors he was responsible for when he too was a monster. He begins to lose control of himself.
Dimitri’s face. It was . . . terrifying. Ferocious. He’d had a similar look when he’d defended me at my arrest—that badass warrior god expression that said he could take on hell itself. The way he looked now . . . well, it took that fierceness to a whole new level. This was personal, I realized. Fighting these Strigoi wasn’t just about finding Sonya and helping Lissa. This was about redemption, an attempt to destroy his past by destroying the evil directly in his path.
—page 249
He stakes the Strigoi henchman—hard—but he’s so fixated that he’s almost blindsided by Donovan. He and Rose restrain the Strigoi and demand answers. Donovan finally reveals what he knows, giving them a town and description of Sonya’s house.
As soon as they have the information they came for, Dimitri stakes him. And not just once. He thrusts his stake into Donovan’s chest over and over again. The carnage gets out of hand, and Rose has to beg Dimitri to stop before he loses himself completely.
“It’s over. You’ve done enough.”
“It’s never enough, Roza,” he whispered. The grief in his voice killed me. “It’ll never be enough.”
“It is for now,” I said. I pulled him to me. Unresisting, he let go of his stake and buried his face against my shoulder. I dropped my stake as well and embraced him, drawing him closer. He wrapped his arms around me in return, seeking the contact of another living being, the contact I’d long known he needed. “You’re the only one.” He clung more tightly to me. “The only one who understands. The only one who saw how I was.”
—page 253
The pain he feels is palpable. It breaks Rose’s heart. She tries to comfort him, tries to remind him that he said he wants to appreciate life now that he’s a dhampir again. But at the moment, he can’t find anything beautiful . . . there’s only death. She forces him to focus on one thing that’s beautiful; one thing will be enough to make him realize he is no longer Strigoi.
Finally, he finds something. Her hair—Rose’s hair is beautiful to him. Since Strigoi don’t see beauty in the world, only death, this is definitely progress.
Later, in a spirit dream, Rose is visited again by the brothers Dashkov. Against her better judgment, she shares their quest to find Sonya Karp, a major lead in locating the missing Dragomir. Victor and his brother promise to join them tomorrow to assist her in her efforts. Then the dream ends.
Awesome.
One spirit dream follows another as Adrian checks in with his dhampir girlfriend, who he believes is still safely tucked away at the original motel—and Rose isn’t filling him in on their current plan since she doesn’t want to worry anyone. Adrian shares his concerns with Rose about his own mental stability. Unlike Lissa, who has Rose to take away some of her spirit darkness when it gets to be too much to handle, Adrian doesn’t have anyone to whom he’s bonded. He’s afraid he’s going insane—the alcohol only masks his deterioration. Adrian tells Rose that she’s his strength. She’s about to tell him that she’d rather he find that strength inside himself when she’s abruptly woken from the dream by the blare of the alarm clock, leaving her frustrated—both because she misses Adrian and also because she hadn’t been able to tell him all she wanted to. She can only hope that he’ll be able to manage on his own.
GETTING ANSWERS THE HARD WAY
On the way to Sonya’s house, Rose shares a little info with the others.
“So,”I began casually, “Victor Dashkov might be joining us soon.”
It was to Sydney’s credit that she didn’t drive off the road. “What? That guy who escaped?”
I could see in Dimitri’s eyes that he was just as shocked, but he kept cool and under control, like always. “Why,” he began slowly, “is Victor Dashkov joining us?”
“Well, it’s kind of a funny story . . .”
>
—page 267
Rose fills Dimitri and Sydney in on Robert Doru’s background and also the spirit dreams she’s been having with the Dashkov brothers. While she glosses over Victor’s “mysterious” escape from prison a few weeks ago, something tells her that Dimitri is putting the pieces together for himself about what really happened—and just what extremes Rose took to find a way to restore him from his Strigoi self.
When they arrive at Sonya’s house, Rose and Dimitri scout the area, until finally they break in. Rose bangs her head hard while fighting Sonya, but at last they’re able to chain her to a chair. Even restrained, Sonya refuses to tell them anything about her connection to the missing Dragomir. No surprise there—she’s a Strigoi.
Dimitri’s concerned about Rose’s head injury and instructs her to rest, which she does begrudgingly.
While resting, Rose mentally visits Lissa and finds that she’s now taking part in the first of three monarch tests. The test takes place in the wilderness and is designed to assess the candidates’ physical endurance. The royals are given cell phones, maps, and compasses to guide them. If, however, they decide to use their phones to call for help, they’ll have failed the test and be out of the running for the throne.
The map contains a riddle Lissa must follow to find her way to the finish as well as the locations of helpful items. It’s a miserable, cold, and rain-drenched day, but Rose is impressed by how well Lissa can take care of herself. The princess is far from helpless.
When Rose is drawn back to Sonya’s house, the Strigoi still isn’t saying a word—and is extremely dangerous, even restrained.