Charlotte

Chapter 15

"Rose is going to be pissed," I told Lissa as we were sitting across from each other, nervously waiting for Rose to wake up. We were in the chapel attic, and Lissa was crying, even though she wasn't all that upset. Right before the others caught up, Lissa hadn't even given it a second thought before stooping down and healing Rose. Her skull sealed up, leaving just a scratch to explain the blood, and her ankle heeled as well. Dimitri had picked her up to carry to the clinic, and I almost had laughed by the dozens of times I heard her murmuring about practice. 

"Maybe not," she said. "If you don't tell her." 

I raised my eyebrow at her. These two and their secrets. "She's smart enough to figure it out, and then both of us are in trouble." 

"Well, I wasn't just going to let her brain bleed. We've come so far. And she'd be just as upset about missing out on training." 

"I guess..." I sighed. I seemed to do that a lot around here. I felt so out of control. 

"You okay?" We both turned to see Christian approach. 

"Yeah," Lissa said, wiping her eyes and pulling away the hair that was matted to her face. "Just...a lot is happening." 

The tender way that they were looking at each other made my lips turn up. I struggled to activate whatever power this was within me. I needed to see some light. Something that wasn't so bleak and grey. I was satisfied when they started to glow, their white/yellow lights tinged with other colors that spread out before me like an open book. This was what love looked like. Even though I had no concept of how this light worked, that much I could just feel. I decided to excuse myself before they started making out. I went back to my room, not really interested in the other goings on of St. Vladimirs. 

The next day I was shocked to find Lissa coming out of the clinic with stitches and a bandage on her arms and she was in a very bad mood with Rose. "What happened?" I demanded. She glared at me and kept walking. "Lissa!" I grasped her by her arm by mistake and she yelped and yanked it away from me. 

"Rose told Dimitri about me cutting. Dimitri told Kirova. And now I have to see a counselor and take SSRI's." 

I gaped at her. "Wow...I...Lissa you've been cutting again?" The only time I had known about what when we found the rabbit, and I'd completely forgotten about her doing that to herself. I felt like such a bad friend. "What happened after I left yesterday? I though you and Christian were..." 

"We were," She said. "We did...kiss. But...I don't know, it's just that after healing Rose and everything...it's getting harder to control and I can't just not help people, Charlie. The people that I care about tend to get hurt, or worse, end up dead, and I'm sick of it happening! Not only that, but Christian and I got into an argument about Andre. He's telling lies about how Andre took advantage of Mia, and that's why she hates me." 

I shifted uncomfortably, letting her vent. 

"Andre was so good! He'd never hurt someone like that," she finished, fighting back tears again. I pulled her into my arms and played with her hair as a way to calm her down. It worked and she pulled away, sniffling. "I'm sorry." 

"No need to apologize," I say with a soft smile. I understood, I really did. 

"People are going to be talking about us again," she whispered miserably. "There was a boy in the clinic when they brought me in. He saw everything." 

Sympathy shot through me for her and Rose. They just couldn't catch a break. "It'll pass. Just hold your head up high and ignore them." 

Lissa gave a dry laugh. What was worse, I came to find out later in the day, was that nobody actually knew why Lissa was in the clinic and had been making up their own stories. It was widely noticed that Lissa was ignoring Rose, and so the 'Blood Whore' comments started up again. I nearly got into three fights because of them, which in turn got me called a 'worthless feeder.' Whatever. What really shocked me was that people were going around theorizing that the Dragomir princess had gotten knocked up and needed an abortion.