Shadow Kiss

That was no longer true.

It took only a couple hours for them to get a casualty count, but waiting while those reports trickled in felt like days. And the numbers…the numbers were harsh. Fifteen Moroi had been killed. Twelve guardians had been killed. A group of thirteen, both Moroi and dhampirs, had been taken away. The guardians estimated that there had been close to fifty Strigoi, which was beyond mind-boggling. They'd found twenty-eight Strigoi bodies. The rest appeared to have escaped, many taking victims with them.

For that size of a Strigoi party, our casualty count was still lower than one might have expected. A few things were credited for saving us. One was the early warning. The Strigoi had barely penetrated the school's i

The Strigoi had never made it into the elementary dorms, which Dimitri said was largely thanks to me and Christian. They had managed to breach one of the Moroi dorms, however—the one that Lissa lived in. My stomach had dropped when I heard that. And even though I could feel that she was fine through the bond, all I could see was that smirking blond Strigoi, telling me he was going to finish the Dragomirs off. I didn't know what had happened to him; the attacking Strigoi group hadn't gotten far into her dorm, thankfully, but there had been casualties.

One of them was Eddie.

"What?" I exclaimed when Adrian told me.

We were eating in the cafeteria. I wasn't sure which meal it was since the campus had reverted to a daylight schedule that threw my sense of timing off. The cafeteria was nearly silent, all conversations in low whispers. Meals were the only reason students could leave their dorms. There was going to be a guardian meeting later on that I was actually invited to, but for now, I was confined with the rest of my friends.

"He was with you guys," I said. I focused on Lissa, almost accusingly. "I saw him with you. Through your eyes."

She looked up at me over the tray of food she had no interest in eating, her face pale and full of grief. "When the Strigoi got in downstairs, he and some other novices went down to help."

"They didn't find his body," said Adrian. There was no smirk on his face, no humor anywhere. "He was one of the ones they took."

Christian sighed and leaned back in his chair. "He's as good as dead, then."

The cafeteria disappeared. I stopped seeing any of them. All I could see in that moment was that room back in Spokane, that room where we'd been held. They'd tortured Eddie and nearly killed him. That experience had changed him forever, affecting the way he now conducted himself as a guardian. He'd grown extremely dedicated as a result, but it had cost him some of the light and laughter he used to have.

And now it was happening again. Eddie captured. He'd worked so hard to protect Lissa and others, risking his own life in the attack. I'd been nowhere near the Moroi dorm when it had happened, but I felt responsible—like I should have watched over him. Surely I owed it to Mason. Mason. Mason who had died on my watch and whose ghost I hadn't seen since he'd warned me earlier. I hadn't been able to save him, and now I'd lost his best friend too.

I shot up from my chair and shoved my tray away. That dark fury I'd been fighting blazed through me. If Strigoi had been around, I could have burned them up with it, without any need of Christian's magic.

"What's wrong?" asked Lissa.

I stared at her in disbelief. "What's wrong? What's wrong? Do you seriously have to ask that?" In the silent cafeteria, my voice rang out. People stared.

"Rose, you know what she means," said Adrian, voice unusually calm. "We're all upset. Sit back down. It's going to be okay."

For a moment, I almost listened to him. Then, I shook it off. He was trying to use compulsion to chill me out. I glared at him.

"It is not going to be okay—not unless we do something about this."

"There's nothing to be done," said Christian. Beside him, Lissa was silent, still hurt from when I'd snapped at her.

"We'll see about that," I said.

"Rose, wait," she called. She was worried about me—and scared, too. It was tiny and selfish, but she didn't want me to leave her. She was used to me being there for her. I made her feel safe. But I couldn't stay, not right now.

I stormed out of the commons and into the bright light outside. The guardians' meeting wasn't for another couple hours, but that didn't matter. I needed to talk to someone now. I sprinted to the guardians' building. Someone else was walking into it as I was, and I bumped her in my haste.

"Rose?"

My fury turned to surprise. "Mom?"

My famous guardian mother, Janine Hathaway, stood there by the door. She looked the same as she had when I'd seen her at New Year's, her curly red hair still worn short and her face weathered from the sun. Her brown eyes seemed grimmer than last time, however, which was saying something.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

As I'd told Deirdre, my mother and I had had a troubled relationship for most of my life, largely because of the distance that inevitably came with having a parent who was a guardian. I'd resented her for years and we still weren't super close, but she'd been there for me after Mason's death, and I think we both tentatively hoped things might improve in coming years. She'd left after New Year's, and last I'd heard, she'd gone back to Europe with the Szelsky she guarded.

She opened the door, and I followed her through. Her ma

Replenishing the numbers. Replacing the guardians who had been killed. All the bodies had been cleared away—Strigoi, Moroi, and dhampir alike—but the hole left behind by those who were gone was apparent to all. I could still see them when I closed my eyes. But with her here, I realized I had an opportunity. I grabbed hold of her arm, which startled her.

"We have to go after them," I said. "Rescue the ones who were taken."

She regarded me carefully, a small frown the only sign of her feelings. "We don't do that kind of thing. You know that. We have to protect those who are here."

"What about those thirteen? Shouldn't we protect them? And you went on a rescue mission once."

She shook her head. "That was different. We had a trail. We wouldn't know where to find this group if we wanted to."

I knew she was right. The Strigoi wouldn't have left an easy path to follow. And yet… suddenly, I had an idea.

"They put the wards back up, right?" I asked.

"Yes, almost immediately. We're still not sure how they were broken. There were no stakes used to pierce them."

I started to tell her my theory about that, but she wasn't up to speed with my ghostly shenanigans. "Do you know where Dimitri is?"

She gestured toward groups of guardians hurrying all around. "I'm sure he's busy here somewhere. Everyone is. And now I need to go check in. I know you were invited to the meeting, but that's not for a while yet—you should stay out of the way."

"I will… but I need to see Dimitri first. It's important—it might play a role in what happens at the meeting."

"What is it?" she asked suspiciously.

"I can't explain yet…It's complicated. It'd take too much time. Help me find him, and we'll tell you later."

My mother didn't seem happy about this. After all, Janine Hathaway wasn't someone people usually said no to. But she nonetheless helped me find Dimitri. After the events over winter break, I think she'd come to regard me as more than a hapless teenager. We found Dimitri with some other guardians, studying a map of campus and pla