Chapter 1

Self control

The crowd began to cheer as soon as the heavy double doors were opened. The noise was deafening to me, and I knew that to Vasilisa's moroi ears, which were even more sensitive than my own dhampir ones, the noise must be completely overwhelming. I saw her hesitate, just for a second, as the sound crashed over us. Then she pulled the confident queenly attitude she had worn through most of the coronation back into place like a mask. Anyone who didn't know her well wouldn't have noticed that tiny moment of insecurity, but Christian had. He moved his arm slightly, stretching his fingers out to touch the back of her hand in a discrete gesture of support.

In full queen mode now, Lissa nodded to Joseph and Luka, her forward guardians, and they stepped out ahead of her and split off, one left and one right, to scan the balcony. Seconds later, two 'all clear's came through the earpieces. Uri, the senior royal guard, gave a nod, and Her Royal Majesty Queen Vasilisa Sabina Rhea Dragomir stepped out to greet her people.

My training took over, and I switched to guardian mode. We moved in structured, choreographed formation. Christian, or rather, lord Ozera, walked Vasilisa's right hand side, while the newly titled Princess Jillian Mastrano-Dragomir. Jill had yet to be assigned her official guardians, so two of the royal guards stood in as her temporary guardians. Once he was officially and publicly engaged to lissa, Christian would also be assigned a second guardian, but for now he had one. Me.

We took our positions. The three moroi were lined up along the stone banister, waving to the huge crowd. Luka and Joseph stood at either end of the wide balcony, and the other royal guards lined up behind us. As the only females on the royal guard, rose and Serena were Lissa's near guardians, standing close behind her. Serena stood behind the gap between lissa and Jill, with Daniel, one of Jill's temporary's, on her left side. I stood behind Christian's right shoulder, and next to me, behind the gap between lissa and Christian, stood Rose.

She stood stiffly, carefully. She was healing rapidly, but she hadn't fully recovered yet. She really shouldn't have been on duty today. She should be in bed, resting. She was so stubborn.

Thinking of her bed, of course, made me think of being with her in bed. Suddenly it was a struggle to keep my eyes on the crowd, scanning for any possible threat. My eyes wanted to look at her. My arms wanted to wrap themselves around her, holding her to me. My mouth wanted to fall on those perfect rosebud lips and kiss her and kiss her. My hands wanted to let her hair down from the twist behind her head and weave themselves through it, caressing her shoulders, making their way down across her full chest and flat stomach, around her hips to her round...

Snap out of it, Belikov! Focus!

With strength of will I didn't know I possessed, I managed to keep my eyes, and other parts of my anatomy, away from the goddess standing less than a foot from me. This was a familiar battle, though it wasn't usually this difficult. A battle I was used to fighting. All those moments at Saint Vladimir's, the touches, the stolen kisses. I had fought to stay in control, to not let the situation escalate. Others had seen my intense focus as an unwavering dedication to duty, never realizing it was mostly a way to cover my desperate attempt at self control. Rose, of course, had seen right through me, and had done everything in her power to undermine that control. Eventually, she had broken me.

Before I could stop it, my mind span back to that time in the cabin, so long ago. The feel of her soft skin beneath my hands, the depth of trust and love in her eyes as she opened herself to me for the first time, the way her fingers had dug into my back as she'd clung to me for dear life, her voice, gasping my name...

What the hell are you doing? FOCUS, GAURDIAN!

I dragged my mind back to the task at hand. The crowd was still cheering its queen, who was still waving and smiling dutifully. Jill's smile was more forced; she looked like she wished she was somewhere, anywhere else. Christian just looked bored. I remembered how much he hated pageantry, and thought he probably wanted this over with almost as much as I did,

Beside me, rose shifted her weight, and she sucked air between her teeth in a hiss. My eyes snapped to her, for a brand new reason. During our time as fugitives, I had come to rely on her supernatural senses as an early warning system. Such a reaction could mean she sensed strigoi presence, or had seen a dead spirit. Or perhaps she had simply seen some mundane threat that I had missed. Not impossible, considering my distracted state of mind. But no, her body wasn't crouching, readying to attack or leap in front of lissa. Her eyes were shut, her face clenched, her shoulders and back rigid. She was in pain.

My Roza was in pain!

The realization was like a knife in my stomach. My hands went to reach for her of their own accord, and I just barely stoped them. It took everything I had not to scoop her into my arms and run her to the nearest hospital. How could I just stand here when Rosa was suffering?

Thankfully, I wasn't the only one who had noticed. Lisa had had her full attention on her subjects, but Christian had heard the tiny noise, and turned. He glanced at rose, his eyes widening slightly, and he taped Lissa's shoulder.

As lissa looked at Rose, Rose's eyes opened. They locked gazes. And I could see determination blazing in Roza's eyes as she tried to wipe all trace of pain from her expression. Her shallow, pained breathing and stiff stance gave her away. Lissa reached a hand toward rose. Rose shook her head, and the reaching hand paused. Rose tipped her head towards the massed moroi and dhampirs in the courtyard, and her message was clear. You can't heal me right now. You have to be their queen. That's more important. For a moment, I thought lissa was going to heal her anyway, but then she looked at me.

"Guardian Belikov. Please take guardian Hathaway to the hospital immediately. And keep her there until I, personally, say otherwise."

"Yes, majesty" I said, bowing to her. Beside me, rose mirrored the movement, a whimper escaping her lips. The knife in my stomach twisted. We straightened, and turned towards to doors. Rose's steps were unsteady, but I knew better than to try to help. I had seen it in her face as she had her wordless conversation with her best friend. The entire world was watching, and she was determined not to show any weakness.

As soon as we were through the doors and out of sight, rose collapsed against me. In that same second, I lifted her into my arms and set off, I wasn't quite running, but it was a close thing. The members of the coronation party who had remained inside gasped as I hurried through them. In seconds, Janine and Abe Muzar were either side of me.

"What's wrong with her?" They asked in perfect, panicked unison that would have made me laugh in other circumstances. These two were not the most conventional parents, but in moments like this, they were almost comically stereotypical.

"I don't know" I looked down at rose. She had her eyes closed again, both hands rested on a spot at the bottom edge of her ribcage, just left of centre. That was where one of the two bullets had torn through her body.

"It's ok. I think I... " She gasped and grimaced in pain, and started over. "I think I popped a stitch or something"

I moved faster, Janine and Abe keeping pace with me. Whenever we came to a door, Janine would dart ahead to open it. We took the back street, and made it to the medical centre in minutes. I didn't speak until rose was on the slender white gurney, with a moroi in green scrubs tugging up her shirt. When I saw the red stain spreading beneath her skin, I said something entirely untranslatable.