Last Sacrifice (48 page)

"Don't cringe," Christian told Lissa as they passed a particularly vocal group, which had noticed her. "You're a queenly nominee. Act like it. You deserve this. You're the last Dragomir. A daughter of royalty."

Lissa gave him a brief, astonished look, surprised to hear the fierceness in his voice—and that he clearly believed his words. Straightening up, she turned toward her fans, smiling and waving back, which excited them that much more.
Take this seriously
, she reminded herself.
Don't disgrace our history
.

In the end, getting through the crowd to the gate proved easier than getting time alone with Serena. The guardians were swamped and insisted on keeping Serena for screening, but my mom had a quick conversation with the guardian in charge. She reminded him of Lissa's importance and offered to stand in for Serena for a few minutes.

Serena had long since healed from the Strigoi attack. She was my age, blond-haired and pretty. She was clearly surprised to see her former charge. "Princess," she said, maintaining formalities. "How can I help you?"

Lissa pulled Serena away from the cluster of guardians speaking to the Moroi drivers lined up at the gate. "You can call me Lissa. You know that. You taught me to stab pillows, after all."

Serena gave her a small smile. "Things have changed. You might be our next queen."

Lissa grimaced. "Unlikely."
Especially since I have no clue how to solve that riddle
, she thought. "But I do need your help. You and Grant spent a lot of time together . . . did he ever mention training Moroi for Tatiana? Like, secret combat sessions?"

Serena's face gave the answer away, and she averted her eyes. "I'm not supposed to talk about that. He wasn't even supposed to tell me."

Lissa gripped the young guardian's arm in excitement, making Serena flinch. "You have to tell me what you know. Anything. Who he was training . . . how they felt about it . . . who was successful.
Anything
."

Serena paled. "I
can't
," she whispered. "It was done in secret. On the queen's orders."

"My aunt's dead," said Adrian bluntly. "And you said yourself you might be talking to the future queen." This earned a glare from Lissa.

Serena hesitated, then took a deep breath. "I can pull together a list of names. I might not remember all of them, though. And I have no clue how well they were doing—only that a lot resented it. Grant felt like Tatiana had purposely picked those most unwilling."

Lissa squeezed her hand. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

Serena still looked pained at giving up the secret information.
They come first
didn't always work when your loyalties were split. "I'll have to get it to you later, though. They need me here."

Serena returned to her post, bringing my mother back to Lissa. As for me, I returned to my own reality in the car, which had come to a stop. I blinked to clear my eyes and take in our surroundings. Another hotel. We should have had gold member status by now. "What's going on?"

"We're stopping," said Dimitri. "You need to rest."

"No, I don't. We need to keep going to Court. We need to get Jill there in time for the elections." Our initial goal in finding Jill had been to give Lissa voting power. It had since occurred to us that if Lissa running was mucking up the elections, the surprise appearance of her sister would likely create just as much sensation and disbelief. A genetic test would clear up any doubts and give Lissa her voting power, but the initial confusion would buy us more of the time we so badly needed to find the murderer. In spite of the random evidence my friends kept turning up, they still had no substantial theories on a culprit.

Dimitri gave me a
don't lie to me
look. "You were just with Lissa. Are the elections actually happening yet?"

"No," I admitted.

"Then you're getting some rest."

"I'm
fine
," I snapped.

But those fools wouldn't listen to me. Checking in was complicated because none of us had a credit card, and it wasn't the hotel's policy to take a cash deposit. Sonya compelled the desk clerk into thinking it
was
their policy, and before long, we had booked two adjoining rooms.

"Let me talk to her alone," Dimitri murmured to Sonya. "I can handle it."

"Be careful," Sonya warned. "She's fragile."

"You guys, I'm right here!" I exclaimed.

Sonya took Jill's arm and guided her into one of the rooms. "Come on, let's order room service."

Dimitri opened the other door and looked at me expectantly. With a sigh, I followed and sat on the bed, my arms crossed. The room was a hundred times nicer than the one in West Virginia. "Can
we
order room service?"

He pulled up a chair and sat opposite me, only a couple feet away. "We need to talk about what happened with Victor."

"There's nothing to talk about," I said bleakly. The dark feelings I'd been shoving back during the drive suddenly fell upon me. They smothered me. I felt more claustrophobic than when I'd been in the cell. Guilt was its own prison. "I really am the murderer everyone says I am. It doesn't matter that it was Victor. I killed him in cold blood."

"That was hardly cold blood."

"The hell it wasn't!" I cried, feeling tears spring to my eyes. "The plan was to subdue him and Robert so we could free Jill.
Subdue
. Victor wasn't a threat to me. He was an old man, for God's sake."

"He seemed like a threat," said Dimitri. His calmness was the counter to my growing hysteria, as usual. "He was using his magic."

I shook my head, burying my face in my hands. "It wasn't going to kill me. He probably couldn't have even kept it up much longer. I could have waited it out or escaped. Hell, I did escape! But instead of capturing him, I slammed him against a concrete wall! He was no match for me. An old man. I killed an
old man
. Yeah, maybe he was a scheming, corrupt old man, but I didn't want him dead. I wanted him locked up again. I wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison, living with his crimes.
Living
, Dimitri."

It seemed strange that I'd feel this way, considering how much I hated Victor. But it was true: it hadn't been a fair fight. I'd acted without thinking. My training had always been about defense and striking out against monsters. Honor had never really come up, but suddenly, it meant a lot to me. "There was no honor in what I did to him."

"Sonya said it wasn't your fault." Dimitri's voice was still gentle, which somehow made me feel worse. I wished he'd chastise me, confirming the guilt I felt. I wanted him to be my critical instructor. "She said it was a backlash of spirit."

"It was. . . ." I paused, recalling the haze of that fight as best I could. "I never really understood what Lissa experienced in her worst moments until then. I just looked at Victor . . . and I saw everything evil in the world—an evil I had to stop. He was bad, but he didn't deserve that. He never stood a chance."
Honor
, I kept thinking.
What honor is there in that?

"You aren't listening, Rose. It wasn't your fault. Spirit's a powerful magic we barely understand. And its dark edge . . . well, we know it's capable of terrible things. Things that can't be controlled."

I lifted my eyes to his. "I should have been stronger than it." There it was. The thought behind all my guilt, all these horrible emotions. "I should have been stronger than it. I was weak."

Dimitri's reassuring words didn't come so quickly. "You aren't invincible," he said at last. "No one expects you to be."

"
I
do. What I did . . ." I swallowed. "What I did was unforgivable."

His eyes widened in shock. "That . . . that's crazy, Rose. You can't punish yourself for something you had no power over."

"Yeah? Then why are you still—"

I stopped because I'd been about to accuse Dimitri of continuing to punish himself. Except . . . he no longer was. Did he feel guilt for what he'd done as a Strigoi? I was certain of it. Sonya had admitted as much. But somewhere in this journey, he had taken control of his life again, bit by bit. She'd told me that, but only now did I truly understand.

"When?" I asked. "When did it change? When did you realize you could keep living—even after all that guilt?"

"I'm not sure." If the question surprised him, he hid it. His eyes were locked with mine, but they weren't quite focused on me. The puzzle occupied him. "In bits, really. When Lissa and Abe first came to me about breaking you out, I was ready to do it because she asked me to. Then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was personal too. I couldn't stand the thought of you locked in a cell, being cut off from the world. It wasn't right. No one should live like that, and it occurred to me that I was doing the same—by choice. I was cutting myself off from the world with guilt and self-punishment. I had a second chance to live, and I was throwing it away."

I was still in turmoil, still raging and full of grief, but his story kept me quiet and transfixed. Hearing him pour his heart out was a rare opportunity.

"You heard me talk about this before," he continued. "About my goal to appreciate life's little details. And the more we continued on our journey, the more I remembered who I was. Not just a fighter. Fighting is easy. It's
why
we fight that matters, and in the alley that night with Donovan . . ." He shuddered. "That was the moment I could have crossed over into someone who fights just to senselessly kill—but you pulled me back, Rose. That was the turning point. You saved me . . . just as Lissa saved me with the stake. I knew then that in order to leave the Strigoi part of me behind, I had to fight through to be what they
aren't
. I had to embrace what they reject: beauty, love, honor."

Right then, I was two people. One was overjoyed. Hearing him talk like that, realizing he was fighting his demons and close to victory . . . well, I nearly wept with joy. It was what I'd wanted for him for so long. At the same time, his inspiring words only reminded me how far I'd fallen. My sorrow and self-pity took over again.

"Then you should understand," I said bitterly. "You just said it: honor. It matters. We both know it does. I've lost mine. I lost it out there in the parking lot when I killed an innocent."

"And I've killed hundreds," he said flatly. "People much more innocent than Victor Dashkov."

"It's not the same! You couldn't help it!" My feelings exploded to the surface again. "Why are we repeating the same things over and over?"

"Because they aren't sinking in!
You
couldn't help it either." His patience was cracking. "Feel guilty. Mourn this. But move on. Don't let it destroy you. Forgive yourself."

I leapt to my feet, catching him by surprise. I leaned down, putting us face to face. "Forgive myself? That's what you want?
You
of all people?"

Words seemed to escape him. I think it had to do with my proximity. He managed a nod.

"Then tell me this. You say you moved past the guilt, decided to revel in life and all that. I get it. But have you, in your heart, really forgiven
yourself
? I told you a long time ago that I forgave you for everything in Siberia, but what about you? Have you done it?"

"I just said—"

"No. It's not the same. You're telling me to forgive myself and move on. But you won't do it yourself. You're a hypocrite, comrade. We're either both guilty or both innocent. Pick."

He rose as well, looking down at me from that lofty height. "It's not that simple."

I crossed my arms over my chest, refusing to be intimidated. "It
is
that simple. We're the same! Even Sonya says we are. We've always been the same, and we're both acting the same stupid way now. We hold ourselves up to a higher standard than everyone else."

Dimitri frowned. "I—Sonya? What does she have to do with any of this?"

"She said our auras match. She said we light up around each other. She says it means you still love me and that we're in sync, and . . ." I sighed and turned away, wandering across the room. "I don't know. I shouldn't have mentioned it. We shouldn't buy into this aura stuff when it comes from magic users who are already half-insane."

I reached the window and leaned my forehead against the cool glass, trying to decide what to do.
Forgive myself.
Could I? A small city sprawled before me, though I'd lost track of where we were. Cars and people moved below, souls out living their lives. I took a deep breath. The image of Victor on the asphalt was going to stay with me for a long, long time. I had done something horrible, even if my intentions were good, but everyone was right: I hadn't been myself. Did that change what had happened? Would that bring Victor back? No. And honestly, I didn't know how I would move past what I'd done, how I'd shake the bloody images in my head. I just knew I had to go on.

"If I let this stop me," I murmured, "if I do nothing . . . then that's the greater evil. I'll do more good by surviving. By continuing to fight and protect others."

"What are you saying?" asked Dimitri.

"I'm saying . . . I forgive myself. That doesn't make everything perfect, but it's a start." My fingertip traced the line of a tiny crack in the glass's surface. "Who knows? Maybe that outburst in the parking lot let out some of the darkness Sonya says is in my aura. Skeptic that I am, I have to give her some points. She was right that I was at a breaking point, that all I needed was a spark."

"She was right about something else too," Dimitri said after a long pause. My back was to him, but there was a strange quality to his voice that made me turn around.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That I do still love you."

With that one sentence, everything in the universe changed.

Time slowed to one heartbeat. The world became his eyes, his voice. This wasn't happening. It wasn't real. None of it could be real. It felt like a spirit dream. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and see if I'd wake up moments later. No. No matter how unbelievable it all seemed, this was no dream. This was real. This was life. This was flesh and blood.