Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess :a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earths magic. Her best friend Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir : a guardian whose blood is a powerful blend of vampire and human. Rose's life is deicated to protecting Lissa from the dangerous Strigoi-the fiereset vampires, who will stop at nothing to make Lissa one of them. After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimirs' s Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be. But inside the iron gates, life is even mors fraught with danger... and Strigoi are always close by.