The Fiery Heart

“You made good time,” I said by way of greeting. “Did Belikov bend the rules of time and space to get here so fast? He can do that, right?” The Moroi Royal Court was in Pennsylvania, making for a much longer trip than mine had been.



Rose smiled at that, though I could sense a little wariness in her as well. She wasn’t sure what to expect from me and was afraid I might do something that would cause a scene. I couldn’t blame her. It was probably why she was receiving me here before letting me into the volatile situation inside.



“No need to today. We got really, really lucky and got on a flight the instant we heard about this. And we only just got here about an hour ago.” She shook Neil’s hand. “I’m Rose.”



“Neil,” he said, with a formal bow of his head. “It’s a great honor to meet you. Your heroics with Dimitri Belikov are legendary.”



“Um, thanks,” she said. It was nice to see one woman finally immune to that accent. That wasn’t to say Rose wasn’t a sucker for accents. She just preferred hers from the other side of Europe. “He’s inside if you want to meet him.”



Neil lit up. “That’d be wonderful.” He cast an uncertain look at me, and I waved him off.



“Go, go. I’ll be fine. Besides, this is Rose’s not-so-subtle way of saying she wants to talk to me alone. Go do some hero worship.”



Neil didn’t need to be told twice. She watched him with amusement and then turned back to me, sobering a little. “I also figured you’d want a cigarette. Must have been rough going, what, three hours?” she teased.



“Three hours? Hell, Rose. I’m going on about six weeks.”



The complete shock on her face was one of the best things I’d seen all day. To be fair, her surprise wasn’t entirely unwarranted. I’d kind of quit while dating her, though I’d cracked a few times and then completely relapsed afterward. “You . . . quit?”



I put my hands in my coat pockets and leaned against the railing. “It’s a bad habit.”



“Wow . . . well, good for you.” She overcame her amazement and apparently decided to further assess my new respectability. “And I heard you’re in college too?”



“Yup. Taking some art classes. Just finished a project examining the symbolic evolution from the Australopithecus age to the one of superficial media obsession.” The words rolled easily off my tongue, and I wondered how many hot points that would’ve scored me if Sydney were here.



“Wow,” Rose said again, her eyes widening.



I played it cool. “Just a little something I threw together. But let’s focus on business. What am I going to find inside?”



She snapped instantly back to attention. “About what I saw in Lexington when Robert Doru saved Sonya. An exhausted spirit user and a confused patient. Dimitri’s been talking to Olive, which seems to have helped already, and I’m sure Nina will feel better having you around.”



It was a nice setup for making some joke about how all women loved having me around, but I decided to withhold my stunning wit until I’d seen things with my own eyes. “How’d you find out about this?”



“A guardian called us. I guess Nina had been looking for her sister for a long time and used a guardian friend to create this whole elaborate trap to restore Olive.” Rose’s face turned sympathetic. “But Nina wasn’t prepared for the physical and mental toll it took on both of them. That’s when the guardian called for help. It all happened less than twenty-four hours ago.”



“Explaining the urgency,” I murmured. Everyone really had acted quickly. “Well, we’ll see what I can find. Spirit’s fickle.”



“Yeah, believe me, I know. I miss that connection with Lissa, but I don’t miss living with spirit.” She tilted her head to study me. “How are things with Jill?”



I gave her the same answer I had given Lissa. “The same. Not much of the nasty side effects getting to her, but we also haven’t learned to put barriers between us. So she still gets to experience the awesome adventures of Adrian Ivashkov firsthand.”



“I’m a little worried about how ‘awesome’ they are.” Her dubious look transformed to one of horror. “Oh, God, Adrian. You aren’t working your way through every Moroi girl in southern California, are you?”



“Of course not,” I said. “I’m much more discriminating.”



She groaned. “Even one is too much. You should be ashamed of yourself, exposing Jill to your sex life. Isn’t it possible for you to abstain from your cheap flings for just a little while? For Jill’s sake?”



Some part of me wanted to defend the magnitude of my relationship with Sydney. The rest of me knew that if the world thought I was rampantly having one-night stands with Moroi girls, they’d never suspect I was devoted to a human one.



I gave Rose a cocky grin. “Hey, I’ve gotta live, don’t I?”



She shook her head in disgust and headed for the door. “I guess some things can’t change.”



It was an older house but still in good condition, and I wondered where they’d dug it up. According to Lissa, it didn’t belong to either of the sisters and had been set up by the guardians to provide a safe haven. As we stepped into the front room, a Moroi girl close to my age stood waiting for us. Her hair was a tangle of dark curls, and she had a blanket draped around her like a cloak.



Rose’s disposition immediately softened. “Nina, you should get back to bed.”



The girl shook her head and glanced between us with wide, gray eyes. “I want to know what’s going on. Why are new people here? What are you going to do with Olive? Are you going to experiment on her like some sort of lab animal?” The girl began to tremble, her face full of fear and outrage, and my heart went out to her.



“Everything’s going to be fine,” I said, sending out a trickle of compulsion to soothe her. “There’s no need to worry.”



Her features started to relax, and then she suddenly blinked and fixed me with a glare. “Don’t try that on me.”



Worn out or not, Nina Sinclair was still a savvy spirit user. I chuckled and held up my hands in a placating gesture. “Just trying to help.”



“Everything really will be okay,” Rose told her. “This is Adrian. He just needs to talk to her. You can come along.”



Nina gave me a long, suspicious look but said nothing else as she followed us farther into the house. We reached a spacious bedroom with peeling wallpaper and a quilt-covered bed. A dhampir girl sat upright in it. I hid how much that surprised me. No one had mentioned it, and I’d just assumed the sisters were both Moroi. Although they shared black hair, they were complete opposites in other features. Olive’s skin was a coppery brown, making me think of Native American heritage, and her eyes were large and dark. She had the athletic build most dhampirs had, contrasting with her sister’s tall, slim frame. Only a similarity in their facial shape and high cheekbones suggested they shared a parent, probably their father, seeing as Moroi men liked to have dhampir women on the side. It gave me a new regard for Nina, since dhampir half siblings weren’t always acknowledged. Nina had risked her life for hers.



Along with Rose, Dimitri, and Neil, there were three other guardians in the room, creating an almost comical scene, considering how docile Olive looked at the moment. In fact, Dimitri was making this very argument to one of the unknown guardians, telling him, “There’s no Strigoi part of her left, trust me. You don’t need this much security. She’s safe.”



The other guardian didn’t seem certain. “We have our orders.”



Dimitri raked a hand through his chin-length hair in frustration, knowing better than anyone else that restored Strigoi possessed no more of that undead state. Everyone technically knew it, but fear still ran high in some people. Seeing me, he let his argument go and gave me a smile that was genuine. He and I had recently had to spend a lot of time together, and although it was hard to shake that he was the one Rose had left me for, I couldn’t help but feel a grudging respect for him.



“Adrian,” he said. “I’m glad you could be here. We’re hoping that acting so quickly might get us somewhere the experiments didn’t.”



He kept talking, but my attention was all on Olive. I summoned spirit to view her aura, which was a mix of what I’d expect from a dhampir and what I would not expect: the brilliant flares of gold seen in a spirit user. Even as I watched, that gold was fading ever so slightly. I drew on more spirit and heard Nina catch her breath. She might be too drained to produce much of her own, but it would be obvious to her how much I was using. I focused on Olive again, trying to look past her aura, more deeply into her very essence. I’d never done it before, and it was much more difficult than I’d expected. I didn’t even know if it would accomplish anything. I was simply playing a hunch.



I gritted my teeth and concentrated harder. There—it was hard to see. In fact, it was more of a sense than actual vision. But every part of Olive was infused with that same golden glow. I couldn’t see at a cellular level or anything, but I suddenly knew that all of her being was wrapped in spirit. And like the aura, it was fading with each breath she took. There was still plenty there, but connecting what I saw now with how long ago she’d been saved, I had a feeling it would all dissipate within hours. I blinked, and the spirit burning within me went out. Olive looked normal again.



The room was silent. I dragged my eyes from her and looked at everyone else. They were all staring back expectantly. I swallowed, and for the briefest of moments, my earlier anxiety swelled inside my chest. The magnitude of what I faced slammed into me. We were on the verge of one of the biggest breakthroughs in our race’s history, and everyone was looking to me to figure it out. Me! What were they thinking? I was no genius like Sydney. I was just a slacker guy who fought the temptation of his liquor cabinet every day and couldn’t finish The Great Gatsby. Who was I to do this?



An image of Sydney’s face appeared in my mind’s eye, calm and lovely. I believe in you.



My anxiety faded. I took a deep breath and met the gazes of all those watching me in the room. Who was I to do this?



I was Adrian Ivashkov. And I was about to kick some ass.



“If you want any chance of learning how to save others, you need to do exactly as I say. And you need to it now.”



Chapter 8



SYDNEY



ADRIAN’S TRIP SHOULDN’T HAVE BOTHERED ME as much as it did. After all, it wasn’t like I would’ve gotten to spend much time with him anyway this weekend. But the thought of the physical distance between us hit me acutely. Even when we weren’t together, I always had a sense of him being nearby—even if “nearby” meant across town at Carlton. In Palm Springs, I felt in control, like I could measure the steps between us or imagine strands of light connecting us no matter where we were. But Texas was out of my reach, out of my control. Adrian had left our safe haven—such as it was—and was out in the world, adrift.



At least I hadn’t had to lie to Zoe about canceling our outing together. Neil had needed a ride to the airport, and figuring out how to prevent Strigoi turning was a huge priority among the Alchemists, one we certainly wanted to help the Moroi with. When Zoe asked why Neil couldn’t have just taken a taxi, I gave her the same excuse I’d given him and Adrian: that I needed to see them off in person. Since Zoe believed most Moroi and dhampirs were sketchy and unreliable, this story worked.



It also gave me a little free time to stop at a New Age store on the way back and procure a few potential rocks and crystals to attempt elemental binding in. Although I had a lot of theoretical ideas about what might replace the boleite, I wasn’t having much luck with anything yet. There was still time before Marcus surfaced, but I worried I wouldn’t be able to deliver on my promises to him if I couldn’t figure this out.



I stopped by Ms. Terwilliger’s classroom with my purchases and found her grading tests at her desk. She gave me a brief glance and returned to her paperwork, not even needing to ask why I was there. I shut the door—after first putting on the KNOCK, PLEASE sign she’d made—and set to work.



Earth and fire were my two best elements so far, but for these trials, I stuck to the former. It was easier to brush dirt off my hands if anyone showed up than it was to cover up the smell of smoke. I worked on my first stone, zircon, and although I felt the transfer of magic into it, something seemed a little off. I took it to Ms. Terwilliger for confirmation since she was more adept than I was at sensing magic within objects and people. She held up the zircon to the light and studied it for several long moments before shaking her head.



“There’s some in there, but not nearly as much as I sensed you summoning over there. It didn’t all make it in.” She handed the stone back. “It might be sufficient for your needs, but I’m guessing you’d probably want as much as you can get.”