A broken heart

Chapter 4

I was confused. "What?"

A nightmarish thought suddenly occurred to me. "Is there something wrong with my Roza?!! Is she all right?!!! Is she sick?!!!!"

When the thought that there could possibly be something wrong with my Roza entered my mind. I was completely petrified; I was almost completely frozen with my fear for her. In fact, I was on the very precipice of a full blown panic attack. Dhampir and moroi didn't often get sick, but when we did it was always VERY serious.

My chest was painfully tight, I felt like my heart and stomach were rolling and twisting into knots, just as my heart was also pounding painfully at the very same time. I could hear the blood rushing through my body as it roared in my ears, my breathing was erratic, I was nauseous, and it was getting worse by the moment. It actually felt like I couldn't get any oxygen into my lungs at all. And my hands had already started to tremble and sweat with the fear that wracked through my entire body all of the sudden.

I know that that does not make me weak. It only means that I am afraid for the one person in this entire world that it would completely destroy me if I were to ever loose. Regardless of what some people in the world think; moroi, humans and dhampir alike showing your emotions does not make you a weak person.

Showing your emotions is not weakness, that is love. Fear does not equal weakness, at all. The weakness was being afraid to show her exactly how I feel about her. Exactly how much that I love her. That had been my weakness all along. My Achilles heel so to speak.

Alberta smiled once again, and she even smiled wider this time. When she saw my physical reaction to the possibility that there could possibly be something wrong with my Roza.

"No, no she is perfectly healthy. Exceptionally so actually, even for a dhampir. But Rose has known, since she was eight years old, that she can't ever become a guardian. Although that has never stopped her from trying and succeeding at being the very best novice at the academy. Just like she was before she and Lissa left the academy and is so again thanks to you and your training. Let me explain something to you."

I just nodded as I tried to pull myself back together.

"When Rose found out who her father is, she got in touch with him. And after they got to know each other a little, over the phone, he came to campus for a few months. Dimitri..."

She looked around to make sure that no one could or would overhear us. She even went so far as to take a couple of steps closer to me and to lower her voice into a whisper.

"Rose is a secret princess, who is next in line for the throne."

I gasped. "But she is a dhampir."

"Yes, she is. But you know, just as well as the rest of us do. That there are a few, a very select few, of the royal families who actually recognize some of their dhampir relatives as royals to their lines."

"Yes, you're right, I do know that. I think that they should all do that. But some of them still think that they are too good to do that, that they are just that much better than we are."

I was starting to worry because my sorry and pathetic excuse for a sperm donor is a Ivashkov. So I am just hoping and praying that my Roza is from a different family.

"Can I ask which family?"

"Why?"

I sighed, "because my pathetic and sorry excuse for a father is a member of the Ivashkov family."

She smiled like she had already known that but was just waiting for me to admit to it. And she probably did and was knowing Alberta Petrova as I do, sometimes Alberta was as sagely as my own babushka. Of course, it is also entirely possible that it is in my personal file. (grandmother)