Vampire Academy: The Ultimate Guide (11 page)

Read Vampire Academy: The Ultimate Guide Online

Authors: Michelle Rowen,Richelle Mead

Tags: #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Emotions & Feelings, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fiction, #Horror

BOOK: Vampire Academy: The Ultimate Guide
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But his flirtation is lost on her in her current dark mood. He notices that it’s not just her mood, but her aura that’s also edged in darkness. It’s like there’s always a shadow following her. Something about how he says it makes her shiver. Once before, Adrian mentioned that Rose “takes shadows” from Lissa. But Rose doesn’t know what this means. For now, it simply feels like a permanently bad mood.
Lissa has been officially granted permission to go off her depression meds and is able to use her magic again so that she and Adrian can get deeper into learning spirit. This worries Rose, who’s seen her friend slide into darkness before because of her power. She asks Eddie, who’ll be working closely with Lissa during the tests, to keep an eye on her.
As the field experience begins, Rose needs to tag along with Christian—who she’s
still
not overly fond of despite their shared traumatic experience in Spokane—wherever he goes. Before the end of day one, they’re presented with their first “attack,” and Dimitri is playing one of the Strigoi. Eddie—also part of the kidnapping by Strigoi—fights them off and gets Rose to hang back and “protect” the Moroi. It goes fairly perfectly, even though Rose would prefer to play a bigger role in the scuffle. Still, not bad for a first day’s work. Also, as she spends some time with Christian, things get friendlier between the two. She begins to think the next six weeks won’t be so bad after all.
While accompanying Christian back to his dorm, Brandon Lazar, a friendly Moroi student who also lives there, falls into step with them. Rose is surprised to see that his face is bruised, which makes her wonder if he too has been fighting guardians lately. She questions him about this, and the kid shrugs it off as nothing, firmly telling the inquisitive Rose to let it go. But that’s not something Rose does very easily, not when her curiosity—and concern—has been piqued. She’s going to press for more information, but suddenly, they’re attacked again!
Finally, Rose has a chance to kick some butt and show everybody that she’s got what it takes to be a guardian. She puts herself in between Brandon and Christian and faces off with Stan, an instructor who’s given her a hard time ever since she returned to the school.
But when a vision of Mason appears again, it’s enough to make Rose completely lose her focus, and she gets taken down hard, failing the assignment very badly. After all of her complaints and attitude about being assigned to Christian rather than Lissa, Stan assumes she’s trying to rebel against the test.
Rose is dragged before a disciplinary committee and reprimanded, but she can’t exactly tell them the truth. To say she’s seeing ghosts would make her look crazy and possibly get her kicked out of school—or worse. But to say nothing makes her look incompetent—someone not capable of guarding a royal like Lissa. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Just when her fate is looking bleak, Dimitri jumps to her defense. Rose is given another chance but put on probation. Plus, one day a week she’ll be required to do community service as punishment. Could be worse.
Later, when another novice guardian taunts Rose for her abysmal performance, her temper boils over, and she gets him back by putting his Moroi charge in immediate danger—from
her
. It actually takes Adrian and his strong compulsion to make Rose let the girl go. Rose is dealing with some
major
anger issues. Maybe Mason’s ghost stirred up some deep feelings in her.
Lissa’s angry too, since she incorrectly assumes that Rose purposefully screwed up with Christian all because she doesn’t like him. Rose can’t believe that her best friend would immediately think the worst of her.
“Do you really think I’d do this? Abandon Christian and make myself look stupid on purpose just to get back at my teachers?”
“No, ” she said finally. “You’d probably do it in a way where you wouldn’t get caught.”
“Dimitri said the same thing,” I grumbled. “I ’m glad everyone has so much faith in me.”
“We do, ” she countered. “That’s why all of this is so weird.”
“Even I make mistakes.” I put on my brash, overconfident face. “I know it’s hard to believe—kind of surprises me myself—but I guess it has to happen. It’s probably some kind of karmic way to balance out the universe. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to have one person so full of awesomeness.”
—page 80
 
 
Rose knows she has to tell Lissa and the others about the Victor Dashkov trial they’re not invited to. And just as she expected, Lissa’s freaked by the very mention of his name. As Lissa struggles to get control over her emotions, Rose finds she’s
losing
control over her own. Her now-familiar black mood has seized her again, and she wants to let it out by ranting and raving about how mad she is that they can’t go to Victor’s trial.
But her first duty is to protect Moroi, not to give in to her own impulses. It’s the guardian mantra:
They come first.
Those words are starting to annoy her.
That night, while Rose is camped out on Christian’s bedroom floor—being a guardian is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job—she’s drawn into one of Adrian’s spirit dreams. And he’s not exactly the sanest she’s ever seen him.
“Rose is in red
But never in blue
Sharp as a thorn
Fights like one too.”
Adrian dropped his arms and looked at me expectantly.
“How can a thorn fight?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Art doesn’t have to make sense, little dhampir. Besides, I’m supposed to be crazy, right?”
“Not the craziest I’ve ever seen.”
“Well,” he said, pacing over to study some hydrangeas. “I’ll work on that.”
—pages 91-92
 
 
Rose takes Adrian’s craziness in stride—it seems to simply be a part of who he is. She’s been feeling pretty crazy lately, too, but Adrian points out that truly crazy people rarely question whether or not they’re crazy. Good point. It makes her feel just a little bit better.
Adrian lets Rose know that he’s tired of her giving him the brush-off whenever he shows interest in her. He knows she’s into Dimitri, but come on, the guy isn’t perfect.
He
can’t get Rose into Victor Dashkov’s trial, but Adrian, on the other hand . . . well, he just
might
. He suggests she start being nicer to him.
When Christian and Rose meet up with Lissa and Eddie after class one day, they’re “attacked.”Eddie and Rose fight together to take down the “Strigoi” threat. Rose is so determined to kick butt that she forgets that being a guardian isn’t just about the glory of the fight. Eddie’s praised and Rose is chastised for not protecting the Moroi and instead looking for a chance to redeem herself. She really can’t win lately.
To make matters worse, Eddie got his face scraped in the scuffle, and Lissa can’t resist healing him with spirit. Adrian’s amazed by this use of their ability and scratches himself purposefully to get her to do it again so he can learn from it.
Rose’s mood drops further.
So does Christian’s, although not for the same reasons. He’s growing increasingly jealous at how much time Lissa and Adrian are spending together. Bottom line: Christian doesn’t feel that he’s good enough to be with Lissa. And Adrian . . . well, he’s the queen’s gorgeous, rich grand-nephew.
Rose assures Christian that he has nothing to worry about—Lissa’s crazy about him. But Christian isn’t convinced . . .
However, he is hungry. Rose accompanies Christian to the on-campus feeder room located near the cafeteria so he can get some blood. There, Jesse and Ralf, two Moroi guys that Rose hates, approach him with an offer to join a secret group they’ve recently formed, but Christian turns them down flat. While he’d like to be more accepted around school, even
he
has standards. Still, he wonders what kind of group it is . . .
ALMOST A DATE
 
Dimitri volunteers to help Rose with her community service, which surprises her. This is supposed to be his day off; why would he want to spend it cleaning the chapel?
As they clean, Rose is still plagued by her Mason sightings. This seems like as good a place as any to find answers, so she decides to ask the priest about ghosts. But what the priest tells her isn’t exactly what she wants to hear: some believe that those who die young and violently will wander the earth for a time after their deaths. Could Mason really be a ghost—and is he haunting
her
?
Rose still feels chilled by her conversation with the priest as she and Dimitri take some boxes across campus to the elementary dorm. Rose waits outside while Dimitri brings the boxes in, and that’s where she meets Jill Mastrano—a fourteen-year-old who’s totally starstruck by the infamous Rose Hathaway. Jill’s a young, super-enthusiastic Moroi who tells her she wants to learn to use her magic defensively—and
also
learn to throw a punch. Maybe Rose can teach her some moves some time? Moroi students are getting beaten up lately by “some psycho,” and Jill wants to know how to properly defend herself.
This makes Rose remember Brandon’s bruises from the other day. What is going on at St. Vlad’s and who is beating kids up?
Before Rose can show Jill any fighting techniques, Dimitri shows up. Jill is tongue-tied around the handsome Russian and scurries off. Rose is still surprised the girl would want help from her, but Dimitri’s not. Rose is outgoing and dedicated, and she excels at everything she does—she’s definitely earned a lot of respect.
Not enough to get an invite to the trial, though, she reminds him. She wants to know if he can do anything to help, but he can’t. He just doesn’t have as much influence as Rose might think.
To Rose, Dimitri should be able to do
anything
. Why not this when she wants it so much? She refuses to accept that there’s nothing he can do to help. And if he’s so disinterested in her, why did he even bother helping her clean the chapel today? Is he spying on her? Trying to keep her out of trouble?
“Why does there have to be some ulterior motive?”
I wanted to blurt out a hundred different things. Like, if there wasn’t a motive, then that meant he just wanted to spend time with me. And that made no sense, because we both knew we were only supposed to have a teacher-student relationship. He of all people should know that. He was the one who’d told me.
“Because everyone has motives.”
“Yes. But not always the motives you think.” He pushed open the door. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him go, my feelings a tangle of confusion and anger. If the situation hadn’t been so strange, I would have almost said it was like we’d just gone on a date.
—page 133
 
 
OFF TO COURT
 
Turns out Rose shouldn’t have spent so much time worrying—Lissa has exciting news: they’re going to Victor’s trial! Somehow, Rose, Lissa, and Christian are now set to testify, and Eddie will come along too—the field experience doesn’t stop just because Lissa’s going off campus. A happy Rose apologizes to Dimitri—obviously he came through and got them invited. But it wasn’t him. Huh? But if it wasn’t him, then how did they get the opportunity to testify and the chance to do their part to send Victor Dashkov to prison?
On the flight to the Moroi Royal Court, Rose isn’t feeling so good. She has a massive headache, her mood is nasty, and she sees shadows darting through the plane. Adrian notes her aura is black . . .
very
black. Lissa tries to heal her headache with spirit, but it doesn’t do any good. Once at Court, though, Rose feels a bit better—but she’s still troubled by the memory of the shadows.
Lissa is called before Queen Tatiana. In the past, the queen has made it quite clear that Lissa shamed her family name by running away from St. Vlad’s, and Lissa is nervous about what she might say this time. She asks Rose to watch through the bond for moral support. Even if she can’t be there in person, Lissa will still feel better knowing she’s there in spirit.
Today, Tatiana is a bit more gracious and curious about seeing Lissa’s spirit ability in action. Since Victor’s on trial for forcing Lissa to use her rare ability to help heal his disease, her previously secret abilities are no longer secret. Queen Tatiana has Lissa demonstrate her mysterious and intriguing magic by bringing a plant back to life—and is very impressed by what she sees. Impressing the queen is
not
an easy feat, and Lissa (and Rose, through the bond) is thrilled.
Feeling that Lissa is doing just fine on her own, Rose breaks the bond and decides to go out exploring the grounds. She meets up with Eddie and Christian, who are with a familiar face—her former nemesis, Mia Rinaldi. After their traumatic experience in Spokane, as well as losing her mother, Mia left St. Vlad’s and moved to Court to be with her father. Mia’s since made friends with guardians here and is learning to fight in hand-to-hand combat. Since the kidnapping, Rose thinks Mia has changed for the better. However, she can’t say the same for herself. Rose feels that she’s worse off now than she was before—to her, the constant dark moods seem to be proof of this.

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