I know it has been a while so it might be helpful to go back and re-read the last few chapters? Just a suggestion!

Rose –

I was going hunting.

It was Abe's idea. He had decided that it was time that the two of us did some father-daughter bonding. Even though chasing after animals in the middle of the woods with a sawed off shotgun had never really struck me as something that fathers did with their only daughters, I had decided that I would accept my fate and would not complain.

Despite my resolution to not complain, I had managed to let out a few mild curses when Abe had first approached me with his plan to spend the weekend at one of his estates, but in the end, the idea of being able to escape my life at Court and Lehigh had won me over. It had been so long since I had done something outside the realm of my oath.

I only hoped that it would also distract me from my dealings with Robert Doru.

Lissa and I drove back from Lehigh late on Thursday night, and on that Friday I found myself standing in one of the Court's many parking garages with a duffel bag slung over my shoulder and a scowl on my face.

"Try not to look too excited," Christian drawled from beside me. "People might start to think that you're fun."

My scowl deepened and I turned to glare at him, but whatever retort I had been about to dish out disappeared at the sight of Christian's wide grin. He was always smiling whenever Lissa came back from school, in the first few hours after our arrival he would practically glow with elation.

She walked up from somewhere behind us and wrapped her pale arms around his waist, squeezing him tightly and then rising to the tips of her toes to press a kiss to the back of his neck. "Hey you," she said.

Christian blushed a shade of red similar to the flames he liked to throw at practice dummies. He squirmed in Lissa's grasp until he was facing her, still red and still grinning like an idiot.

"Excuse me," I said, making a dramatic gagging noise. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Christian swatted at me but never broke eye contact with Lissa, and I ducked away before I had to witness another make out session. It made me grateful that our bond was no longer intact, or else I probably would have had to witness that kiss first hand.

It was easy enough to slink off unnoticed by the guardian detail Abe had no doubt paid handsomely for. I hid behind one of the many sleek black SUVs at the Court's disposals and slid my phone from the pocket of my jeans, not even needing to look down at the keypad to dial the number I had long since memorized.

The phone rang only once before Dimitri answered.

"Hello?"

"Hey Comrade," I said, trying not to sound as sheepish as I felt. I heard voices in the background, the scraping of chairs and the clinking of glasses. "Is now a bad time?"

"No, no," he said without hesitation. "It's always a good time for you to call, Roza."

I couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds like a challenge. How about I call you in another 7 hours when you're sleeping and we'll see if it's still a good time."

Dimitri huffed into the phone and then pulled it away to speak to whoever he was with.

"Was that Sydney I heard?"

"Mhmm, we just got done having dinner."

"Oh?" I mused, shuffling my feet. "Time for a feeding already?"

"Not thank kind of dinner. Just spaghetti."

I heard someone call for me from somewhere in the parking garage, someone with a slight Turkish accent.

"I wonder if I could convince Abe to get dinner instead of going on this ridiculous hunting trip."

"Ah," he said knowingly. "So the trip is still on."

"Yes," I told him with a grumble. "We're leaving soon, so I was calling to say good bye now since I have a stinking suspicion that I won't get reception wherever we're going."

"It won't be that bad," he told me reassuringly. "Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself, you will be shooting things after all."

"I hate guns," I seethed. "It's cheating."

For a brief moment the scar on my chest flashed with pain I knew wasn't real and I fought the urge to bring my hand up to clutch at it.

"Then do you plan on running after the animals and tackling them with your bare hands?"

"Har, har," I told him sarcastically, though I was seriously considering it. "I wish I was coming to Palm Springs instead."

"Me too," he said, his voice a little softer. "These experiments won't last forever; I'll be home before you know it."

I knew he was right, knew that it didn't do me any good to pine over him, but I also knew that I had just gotten him back – we were still trying to figure out our life together, and now we were trying to do it from opposite sides of the country.

"I just miss you, that's all." An oversimplification, but still truthful.

"I miss you too, Roza."

There was a loud crash from somewhere in the parking garage, followed by a series of what I could only assume were Turkish curses, and I found myself wondering if I could get Abe to teach me a few - under the guise of learning about my heritage, of course.

"I have to go," I said reluctantly "I'll call you when I can."

"How do you lose a teenage girl?!" I heard Abe demand of one of his men.

"I love you," Dimitri told me, and I filed his words away for when I would surely need them over the course of the next few days.

"I love you too, I'll call you when I can," I told him again, but mostly for my own reassurances.

I slid the phone back into my pocket and stepped out from behind the fleet of SUVs. "Calm down, old man, I'm right here."

Abe stood at the center of the garage, surrounded by luggage and guilty looking guardians.

"I found her," said one of them, who I realized after a moment was Mikhail Tanner.

Abe glared at him, "Good work."

Lissa and Christian stood off to the side, trying to smother their laughter. Lissa skipped forward and threw her arms around my neck and squeezed so hard I thought my head might pop off.

"Have fun," she whispered. "And call me if you need to be rescued."

Christian strolled forward lazily, hands in his pockets. "I'm sure you're going to have a great time – lots of dirt and animals and bugs," he shivered dramatically. "You'll love the wilderness, Rose, but if you don't come back, can I have your stuff?"

I gritted my teeth and probably would have tried to tackle him to the ground if I hadn't been cut off by Abe who coughed loudly, "Who said anything about the wilderness?"

…

After saying goodbye to Lissa and Christian, the guardians loaded up one of the SUVs with an arsenal of supplies, but Abe and I were to ride to wherever it was we were going in his town car, driven by Mikhail.

I figured I would pass the time sleeping and I managed to curl up on one the ridiculously luxurious benches and lean my head against the window. It was hard for me to sleep these days and I was always amazed at how quickly I had grown accustomed to sleeping next to Dimitri. Falling asleep had only grown more difficult with each spirit dream visit from Robert Doru and now it was a miracle if I fell asleep at all.

The lull of the car as it sped along the highway was hypnotic and I soon felt the collective nights I had spent lying awake hit me like a tidal wave of exhaustion. I was asleep almost instantly.

The town car passed over a particularly large pothole and the sinking feeling jolted me awake. Once I had rubbed the remnants of sleep from my eyes and blinked away the leftover fog, I found that we had driven through the night, and the sun had begun to rise somewhere on the horizon. I also found that I had no idea where we were.

Abe sat on the bench across from me looking particularly amused at my current state.

"Where are we?" I asked, trying to stretch my legs as much as I could in the back of the car.

He leaned toward the window and grinned. "We're here," he said, sounding a little too pleased with himself.

I looked out the window to catch my first glimpse of…well, I didn't really know what to expect. Abe had been pretty secretive with the details of our little hunting trip. Christian had teased me about staying in tents and cooking marshmallows over a fire, and when I had asked Dimitri about his hunting experiences with Abe, he hadn't been particularly forthcoming.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and loosed a breath as we passed through an iron gate and drove up to one of the most beautiful estates I had ever seen.

It felt like stepping into one of Adrian's dreams.

There was a manor house surrounded by lush green lawns, impeccably maintained and the color of emeralds. Ivy clung to the brick walls and swirled across the iron railings of balconies and windowsills. In the middle of the cobblestone driveway sat a marble fountain where a woman, hewn of white stone, poured water from her pitcher.

"Is this what you had in mind when you told me we were going camping?" I narrowed my eyes into slits and stared at where he sat, still perched on the opposite bench.

"I never actually said we were going camping, just hunting. You just assumed that it would be outside." he said, folding his hands in his lap. "Is it not to your liking?"

I rolled down the window and leaned out to get a better view. It was even more spectacular now that the colors weren't muted by the black tint of the town car. "Is all of this yours?" I asked.

"It is," he said, as the car came to a stop before the fountain.

"Now I know you were lying when you told me you weren't a mob boss."

His only response to my accusation was to shrug and tell me, "I'm retired.

…

Abe took me on a tour of the house, each room was brimming with art and polished furniture – but none of it seemed like it came from the same place, and yet it all somehow seemed to belong.

The guardians Abe had brought along left the luggage piled in the kitchen where Abe chose to end our tour.

"Now what?" I asked, placing my hands on my hips.

"Now," said Abe, grabbing a pack and thrusting it into my arms. "We hunt."

I groaned and looked out the window to where I could see a tree-line far off in the distance, which I could only assume meant that we really were going to be chasing after animals in the middle of the woods.

I tried to remember that I had promised to limit the amount of complaining I did on this trip.

I followed Abe out the backdoor of the kitchen, which opened up onto a small cobblestone path that led away from the manor house. The green grass that butted up against the stones was just as vibrant and lush as the sprawling lawns that lay at the front of the estate, but it was somehow wilder - it seemed older and the blades grew taller. All around us were ancient oaks and massive pines, their limbs full to bursting with leaves of every shade of green.

Abe continued to lead me down the path, and the farther we went, the denser the foliage became. The air was closer beneath the canopy, and the world seemed to grow just a little bit darker. The light that did manage to cut through the branches and the bark cast slanted shadows across the mossy forest floor that had since engulfed the cobblestones of the path.

"Uh," I said, dodging a cobweb that clung to the branches of a nearby spruce. "Was the whole father-daughter bonding trip just an act? Are you sure you didn't bring me out here to murder me?"

Abe peered over his shoulder and smiled smugly. "What makes you think that?"

I moved to side step a small boulder. "This is just like the plot of The Most Dangerous Game. You know, the short story where the creepy dude likes to hunt people because hunting animals got too boring for him." I paused to readjust my pack. "Are you going to start hunting dhampirs to spice things up a bit?"

He chuckled, "You have quite the imagination. I didn't realize you were a fan of Richard Cornell's work."

"I'm not," I told him pointedly "My professor, however, seems to really enjoy forcing his students to read it. He also enjoys asking us what we thought the author meant when they wrote...I don't know...the sky is blue."

Abe seemed to slow his pace a little. "And what do you think the author meant when they wrote that the sky was blue?"

I was a little caught off guard by the question, but I had spent enough time thinking about how much I despised our literature assignments that I didn't have to spend to long considering it. "I think that not everything is a metaphor. Maybe the author literally meant that the sky was blue. Sometimes people just say what they mean, and that's it."

"Ah, I did not realize my daughter was so learned," he said, clapping his hands together in approval.

"Yeah well," I paused to readjust the straps of my pack again, "I'm a fancy college student now."

He chuckled, and clasped my shoulder jovially. "That you are. Now come on, we're almost there."

He set off without another word, knowing that I didn't really have a choice but don't follow him.

We eventually emerged onto a clearing where a few of the guardians stood waiting next to what looked like a small machine perched on a tripod.

"You can drop the pack there," he said, pointing to a spot next to the machine.

"What on earth is even in here," I asked, grateful to be rid of the heavy pack.

Mikhail knelt down next to the pack and pulled out a solid orange disc and laughed. "It's your prey."

"My prey?" I repeated skeptically. "I'm obviously missing something here."

Mikhail took out more of the orange discs and loaded them into the machine. Another guardian stepped forward to hand me a pair of what looked like ear muffs.

"You might want to put these on," he warned me.

I took them, even though I had no idea what possible purpose they would serve. I turned to ask Abe what the hell we were doing, but stopped when I saw that he was wearing a similar pair of ear muffs and that he was loading rounds into a shotgun.

"We should step back," said Mikhail, resting a hand on my shoulder.

I nodded, taking a step back as I stretched the ear muffs over my head. I watched as Abe nestled the butt of the gun in the crook of his shoulder and took aim. "Pull," he yelled.

One of the guardians yanked on a cord connected to the machine and it jettisoned one of the pucks into the air. Abe traced its path as it sailed across the sky, and pulled the trigger.

The puck exploded in a cloud of orange dust and the guardians clapped politely for him. I felt myself release a breath I hadn't even known I'd been holding. We weren't hunting animals, I realized, we were trap shooting.

I found that I was instantly grateful to Abe.

He turned to look at me, saying something that I couldn't quite understand. "What?" I asked, pulling aside one of the ear covers.

"I asked if you wanted to try," he said, clipping on the safety.

I recognized from my training at St. Vlad's that Abe was loading a break-action shotgun as he pressed the barrel breach lever on the side of the gun, and the barrel fell forward at a 90 degree angle. He took out the shell casings and handed them to one of the guardians.

I fought the urge to take another step backwards. I had handled guns before, but even before I had been shot with one, I hadn't liked using them. I wondered if Abe would let me throw a stake instead.

Abe, who never missed anything, noticed my hesitation and he gestured for me to come stand beside him.

"You know," he said, too low for anyone but me to hear. "Fear is a complicated emotion." He paused to press another rounded into the cartridge. "It keeps us focused on the past, we tend to fear that which has already hurt us. But I have found, that the best way to overcome that fear, is to face it in the present and to not give it the power to hurt us again."

I let Abe's words sink in, and realized that I was in control. I reached out to take the gun, letting my hands run over its rugged surface and then clicked the barrel into place.

Abe stepped back. I raised the gun in my arms and closed one eye. I sucked in a breath and said "Pull."

The punk shot into the sky and I did my best to follow it, to mark it as I had seen Abe do, but when I pulled the trigger, there was no explosion of color - just the feeling of the shotgun kicking back into my shoulder. I winced with pain and embarrassment.

Abe resumed his place at my side. "You closed your eye, you'll never hit anything with one eye closed – it messes with your depth perception" he clucked. "And your posture is all wrong." He re-positioned my arms so that the butt of the gun was resting against my shoulder. "Take a deep breath," he told me, and I obeyed. "And another. Did you feel the differences between those two breaths? No intake of air is ever the same, never pull the trigger on an inhale. Wait until that moment when you have released all of the air, and pull."

He stepped back once more and I took a moment to consider Abe's advice. I reminded myself again that I was completely in control; of the trap thrower, of the shotgun, and of my fear.

I sucked in another breath and released it along with my one word command. "Pull."

This time I was ready for the clay pigeon. I didn't have to track it with the barrel of my gun. I waited until it crossed high into the air, and pulled the trigger right before it arced downward. The puck exploded in a riot of orange dust and I couldn't help the cheer that escaped my mouth. I turned to see Abe beaming at me, while the other guardians clapped their approval.

Abe stepped forward to hand me another round. "Much better, you just needed a little help, that's all."

"Thank you," I said, a little breathlessly.

"You can always ask me for help, you know," he said backing away. "All you have to do is ask."

I nodded, pulling the latch to break open the barrel and insert the round. I turned back to face the open field, braced against an equally open sky and took aim.

…

We spent the entire day shooting. Toward the end, Abe and I had started to get a little competitive and we had decided to head back to the house before things got out of hand. Dinner was simple, and despite the fact that my shoulder ached and my lids were heavy, Abe had insisted that we have a drink to celebrate my success before bed.

We ended up in a parlor on the second floor of the house. Mikhail joined us, but in a more official capacity. Abe headed straight for a bar cart at the far side of the room and pulled the glass stopper out of a decanter and began to pour a drink.

"Only the finest scotch for my daughter," he said proudly, then suddenly halted mid-pour. After a moment he shook his, muttering something in Turkish and then resumed pouring. "Don't tell your mother," he told me with a wink before handing me the glass.

Mikhail took up his position by the door, his hands clasped behind his back and his normally easygoing expression schooled into neutrality. It was amazing how effortlessly a guardian could melt into their surroundings, shifting from a powerful presence to little more than a fly on the wall in a matter of seconds.

Abe poured a second glass, but instead of keeping the scotch to himself, he extended it toward Mikhail.

Mikhail's only reaction to the offer was a barely visible shake of his head before saying. "Thank you, but drinking on the job is generally frowned upon."

"Suit yourself," said Abe, turning to set the glass onto the polished wooden coffee table that sat at the center of the room.

He lowered himself onto a plush red sofa, whose coloring bore a striking resemblance to blood. I took a seat in a high-backed arm chair next to the fireplace, but had to sit perched on the edge of it to be avoid being swallowed up by the opulent velvet cushions.

Despite the openness of the parlor, the air felt close and stuffy. I wasn't sure if my uneasy feeling was flowing from the antique furniture and thick looking draperies or the awkwardness that stemmed from sitting in a room with my estranged father and a decanter full of scotch.

Even Abe seemed to be a little off as he cleared his throat before saying, "So, Mikhail, how are the wedding plans coming along?"

Mikhail glanced toward one of the empty parlor seats as if he were trying to figure out who Abe was speaking to, then cleared his throat. "Sonya has been handling most of it, not that I don't want to be involved, but I think it helps to distract her from..." he paused, eyes shifting to me, then to the charred logs lying in the fireplace.

"From the Strigoi research," I finished for him, staring into the bottom of my glass before taking a sip.

I decided immediately that I did not like scotch.

Abe, seeming to realize that this particular conversation was not one that Mikhail and I wanted to have, he quickly changed the subject. "Does that also mean you're letting her handle the bachelor party?" he asked with a sly smile.

The corners of Mikhail's mouth twitched upward slightly. "No, I've decided I don't really need a traditional bachelor party, just good people and maybe some good food – something simple."

Abe considered his words, "That seems reasonable, I like your style."

I raised an eyebrow and took another, smaller sip from my glass. "Really?" I asked trying not to grimace as the scotch burned its way down my esophagus. "I figured a wild night of debauchery and other unsavory shenanigans would be right up your alley, old man."

Abe lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. "You do recall who my bride to-be is, don't you?"

"How could I forget," I huffed, taking a bigger sip.

"I doubt very much that Janine would approve of me having a traditional bachelor party. Besides," he added, reaching for the glass of scotch he had abandoned on the coffee table. "I am, as you so lovingly and frequently remind me, an old man." He paused to take a long drink. "Bachelor parties are for young men who need to have one last memorable experience as a single man. I have lived much of my life without your mother, I don't need a party to remind me of what it was like to live that way."

Abe tilted the crystal glass from side to side, watching as the amber liquid swirled around and around before downing the remaining contents. I realized then that this was probably the most emotion I had seen Abe display. I was again forced to realize, as I had with my mother, that the man in front of me was more than just a parent - more than just his status and his reputation - he was a person, flawed and uncertain and like the rest of us, had felt things the rest of the world would probably never understand.

Instead of saying any of this out loud, I followed suit and finished my drink. The taste of it didn't make me cringe this time, it had even warmed my insides enough that I might have agreed to a second glass if it were offered.

"Do you regret it?" I asked, hands gripping the glass a little more tightly. "I mean, I guess what I'm really asking is if you could go back, would you have done things differently?"

He pursed his lips slightly, dark brows drawing together in thought. "Experience has taught me that considering the many 'what-ifs' of life and pondering what you would change if given the chance usually does one little good."

"That was a pretty round-about way of saying no." I told him bluntly.

His jaw was pulled tight, and he rose from his seat to pour himself another drink. "What do you want me to say, Rosemarie? That if I could, I would go back and be the father you always deserved?"

I tried not to let the tone of his words sting. "I'm glad you can at least admit that I deserved better."

"Of course you deserved better!" he said, gesturing wildly, his drink still in hand. "Do you think I liked the idea of you being shipped off to St. Vladimir's? Do you think I had any choice in the matter? Your mother did what she thought was best for you."

I fought the urge to leap out of my chair, but I gripped my hands more tightly around my glass instead. "And you thought abandoning me was the best thing for me?"

"That's being a bit dramatic, Rosemarie," he told me, leaning against the bar cart. "We did not abandon you, we did not utterly forsake our only daughter. Alberta sent us letters, reports, pictures even – when she could. I kept my distance to keep you safe, but that doesn't mean I abandoned you"

"Safe from what? You keep talking about protecting me, doing what's best for me - but no one ever wants to explain what they think I need protecting from."

Abe let out a sigh, his shoulders drooping slightly and he turned to set the glass down on the cart before taking a seat on the chair across from mine. "Do you know what they called your mother?" he asked, his elbows coming to rest on the tops of his thighs. "When everyone at court found out that she was pregnant?"

I tried not to flinch at the thought of what the more wretched court-dwellers had probably said to my mother.

"Blood-whore." He said the term with such distain, as if he meant to burn the word from existence with his malice. "Some of the royals meant to scandalize her pregnancy; the renowned guardian Janine Hathaway, pregnant with some Moroi man's bastard." He spoke his words like a gossip headline. "But you know your mother, she's strong now and she was strong back then. She endured the worst of it…until you were born and she realized that she could never endure their hatred so that you wouldn't have to, she would never be able to shield you from the worst of it." He paused, watching as I set my empty glass onto a side-table, and slid my hands under my thighs to hide the shaking. "So she sent you to the best academy she could, and she thought that maybe the walls of St. Vlad's would prove to be less susceptible to gossip, and she threw herself into her work – became the best guardian she knew how to be. She made sure that her reputation as a guardian is what the rest of the world thought of when they heard the name Hathaway."

"Where were you in all of this?" I asked, trying not to choke on the anger I felt for people I didn't even know.

"We both knew my involvement would just make matters worse," he said, his voice as sad as I had ever heard it. "So I did what I do best, and I worked from behind the scenes. Of course, there were some at court who knew I was your father, but it seems your mother and I managed to keep the rumors at bay."

Mikhail cleared his throat quietly and I nearly leapt out of my skin at the sound. I had forgotten that he was still in the room, but Abe didn't seem to notice.

"So, to answer your question – did you deserve better? Yes, as far as I'm concerned nothing and no person in this world will ever be good enough for you. Was it wildly unfair to you that your mother and I never let you make the decision to be raised in an academy for yourself? Probably. Would I change a single thing? No. Except maybe the part where you start dating your instructor, but...semantics."

The room was suddenly silent, save for the sound of Abe draining the last of his scotch. I kept my eyes trained on the far side of the room, at a gilded oil painting mounted above a vase full of silk flowers. I stared until the canvas blurred together in a maelstrom of color and I tried desperately not to think about my childhood and what life had been like for me as a young ward of St. Vladimir's.

Even after hearing Abe's explanation for why things had turned out the way that they did, I found that I still did not agree with them, even as I gained a new understanding and perspective of it, even as I found that I forgave them. They had made sacrifices for me, to keep me safe, and when I had disappeared to find Dimitri, Abe had been the one to find me and the one to ultimately bring me home. He had blown up half of court and staged a prison break for me. They were unconventional, and strange, but I guessed that that was okay because they were still mine.

"Mikhail," I said, my voice a little strained. "Would you mind giving us a minute?"

Mikhail didn't argue, he looked relieved at being asked to leave the room and I almost wished that he would bring me with him. Abe didn't seem phased by my asking Mikhail to leave us alone though, but my palms had begun to sweat and I had to wipe them on the fine upholster of up my chair.

"Did you mean what you said earlier?" I asked, turning toward Abe the moment the door clicked shut behind Mikhail.

"You'll have to be more specific, I tend to say a great deal throughout the day."

"About helping me, with anything, whatever I needed."

"Of course I did," he said, sounding mildly offended that I would need to confirm the truth of his statement.

"I'm going to tell you something," I said after a brief pause. "And you don't get to ask questions, not until the end."

Abe's forehead creased in what I could only assume was a mixture of concern and confusion. "Rose," he asked, sounding slightly alarmed. "What is this about?"

I took a deep breath in through my nose, and then told him my story, the one that had been weighing me down and keeping me awake – the one about Victor and Robert and Elliott.

I had been toying with the idea of explaining my situation to Abe for a few days now. I was running myself ragged trying to come up with solutions, to no avail. My father was one of the few people I knew with the resources to tackle the kind of problem that Robert and Elliott posed. And today he had reminded me that he was my father, and he would be there when I needed him to be.

I told him everything, and was only a little impressed that he only tried to interrupt me four times before I had finished.

"When was the last time Robert Doru tried to contact you?" he asked, rising swiftly to his feet.

"Last week, I was in class, but the spirit charm Lissa made me wouldn't let the dream fully form."

He began pacing back and forth. "And the report that the guardians received last month about Victor Dashkov being sighted, that was Robert?"

I nodded firmly and watched Abe as he continued to ware down the wood flooring with his pacing. "The alchemist, Elliott, he knows about you and what happened to Dashkov?"

I nodded again. Abe seemed to be going through a mental checklist in his head, ticking off facts one by one. I could practically see the wheels in his head spinning, the gears and cogs whirring as he considered all that I had told him.

He suddenly halted and pulled his phone from his pocket, pressed the keys in rapid succession and pressed the phone to his ear. The conversation was quick, heated, and took place almost entirely in Turkish.

"Thank you," he said after a few, brief moments.

It was the only word I understood.

"Come on," he told me, turning on his heel and walking toward the door. "We're leaving."

"Wait, what?" I asked, clambering after him. "It's the middle of the night, where are we going?"

"You," he said, spinning around to face me. "Are going back to Court. You will not speak a word of this, to anyone, including your mother. You are going to tell anyone who asks that I was called away on business."

"Where are you going?" I demanded, my arms folded across my chest.

He stiffened and straightened his jacket. "I am going to find Robert Doru," he told me, a hard glint in his eyes.

My eyes, the same deep brown as his, narrowed. "How are you going to do that?"

"My dear girl," he said, and his lips curled. "They do not call me Zmey for nothing."

Hey everyone! I know it's been a while, but summer is here and I am ready to write! Also here is a little update within the update – I finished my first year of law school and will be transferring to Georgetown in the fall! Woo! I am really excited to start this new chapter of my life (and it's going to include more chapters of To Forgive and Forget) Love you all and thank you for sticking with me!