o_18vdqvms59ejr2105d16v1lb03m.pdf

She nodded.
"Rose?”
We both looked up at Dimitri's looming form. I hoped he hadn't heard the part about us leaving.
"You're late for practice," he said evenly. Seeing Lissa, he gave a polite nod. "Princess.”
As he and I walked away, I worried about Lissa and wondered if staying here was the right
thing to do. I felt nothing alarming through the bond, but her emotions spiked all over the place.
Confusion. Nostalgia. Fear. Anticipation. Strong and powerful, they flooded into me.
I felt the pull just before it happened. It was exactly like what had happened on the plane: her
emotions grew so strong that they "sucked" me into her head before I could stop them. I could
now see and feel what she did.
She walked slowly around the commons, toward the small Russian Orthodox chapel that served
most of the school's religious needs. Lissa had always attended mass regularly. Not me.
I had a standing arrangement with God: I'd agree to believe in him—barely—so long as he let
me sleep in on Sundays.
But as she went inside, I could feel that she wasn't there to pray. She had another purpose, one I
didn't know about. Glancing around, she verified that neither the priest nor any worshippers
were close by. The place was empty.
Slipping through a doorway in the back of the chapel, she climbed a narrow set of creaky stairs
up into the attic. Here it was dark and dusty. The only light came through a large stained-glass
window that fractured the faint glow of sunrise into tiny, multicolored gems across the floor.
I hadn't known until that moment that this room was a regular retreat for Lissa. But now I could
feel it, feel her memories of how she used to escape here to be alone and to think. The anxiety
in her ebbed away ever so slightly as she took in the familiar surroundings. She climbed up into
the window seat and leaned her head back against its side, momentarily entranced by the
silence and the light.