Hope is a Four Letter Word - Complete

Chapter Seven

By Friday Rose had a new routine; up at 4 pm to filch food then head to sit outside the wards with Mason. Attend classes and then training during lunch. More classes and then back out to Mason.

At first, she'd found maintaining a connection with him tiring; until she'd discovered the more darkness she took from Lissa, the easier it became. And taking darkness from Lissa was easily done because right now she was making shitloads of it. Between her spirit work with Adrian and Ms. Carmack, and her resentful feelings towards Rose, Lissa was making shadows hard and fast.

Rose had managed to avoid Adrian until Friday lunchtime when he'd learned via Eddie where Rose was hiding.

"Stay away from me," Rose snapped when Adrian walked into the otherwise vacant gym wearing a sympathetic expression.

"Come on little Dhampir... Talk to me. Please?" he implored. He was keeping up his nonchalant façade, but it gutted him to see Rose devoid of light and joy. Belikov hadn't just broken her heart; he'd broken her spirit.

"What about? How the man I loved decided I wasn't good enough? How he took my heart and my virginity and less than forty-eight hours later decided I wasn't worth his time? That instead he chose to be Tasha's man? No thanks, Adrian," she sneered. "Funnily enough, I like to keep those thoughts close to my chest. I use them to torture myself through those long nights when I can't sleep," she spat at him derisively.

Her statement had the ring of truth because it was the truth. Waking or sleeping Dimitri's betrayal preyed on her mind. Combined with the anger and resentment she felt from the darkness, Rose was constantly feeling desolate. In fact, the only time she had any peace was when she was with Mason.

"Lissa thinks you're angry with her because she didn't include you in an invite to a royal party the other night," he started, thinking to appeal to Rose through her friendship with the Moroi Princess.

"Of course she does," Rose said bitterly. "Because no one would ever think I might have a love life; that I'd be loved and special to someone. And they'd be right. I don't have a love life. I thought I did, but I was just another stupid Dhamp chick used for sex and then discarded. I just didn't think a dhampir guy would do that. I didn't think he would do that. Guess I know better now, right?!"

Adrian flinched. The bitterness and self-derision were crushing.

"What happened?"

"We trained Monday after classes, and everything was great. He went to see Tasha after that, and on Tuesday morning he told me he loved me but it was too dangerous for us to be together and he left me. He flew out before breakfast with Tasha; he'd accepted her offer to be her guardian."

"There must be more to it than that?" Adrian asked in confusion.

"No. That really was it. He fed me a whole heap of bullshit about loving me and wanting to protect me, but it was all over in minutes."

"I would never have foreseen him doing that. I'm so sorry, Rose," Adrian said, and she could tell he really meant it.

"Not as sorry as I am," Rose replied, pulling on her gloves and turning her back to him, moving to the punching bag. "Now please leave me alone. I don't want to talk, and I don't want to think."

As soon as the final bell rang on Friday afternoon, Rose took off to the graveyard and the ward line. The guardians were used to seeing her out there by now. Alberta had put the word out she was to be observed but not interrupted unless necessary, but she had stepped up the number of guardians posted to that side of the campus.