How It All Goes Down
- A couple days later, Lissa's psyched because her uncle Victor is taking her and Natalie off campus to go shopping. And the other good news: she asked him to let Rose and Camille join them.
- The girls are talking about the trip when Rose notices another dead animal in Lissa's stuff—this time a dove. She has to pull her friend away from healing it.
- Natalie shows up and asks the girls about it, and wonders aloud why people keep doing this to Lissa.
- It's a good question, and one Rose thinks she knows the answer to. She's pretty sure at this point that whoever's behind the slue of dead animals also knows about the raven Lissa healed in the woods. Why else would they keep sending them to her?
- When she gets to Headmistress Kirova's office, she finds out she will get to go shopping with Lissa and Victor—the only catch is that she'll be there as a guardian in training. Dimitri will be the lookout, and she'll be up close and personal so she can blend in. That way the girls will be protected at all times.
- On the way to the mall, Dimitri and Rose are going over their plan for what they'd do if their Morois were under attack, and Dimitri tells her that killing a Strigoi is a lot harder than she thinks… After all, she might know who they are.
- Say what? Since Strigoi become that way by choice, chances are she's seen or heard of them before. Like Ms. Karp—she chose to become a Strigoi and her lover had to hunt her down. Yikes.
- Rose already knew that, but Lissa didn't. She can tell her friend didn't let her in on that secret, but isn't sure why.
- Even so, Rose thinks if she were a Strigoi that she'd want to die so she didn't hurt Morois, so she'll try to think of it that way. She's doing them a favor by killing them.
- All of this killing talk is kind of a downer, so Victor changes the subject. He's more interested in Lissa than his own daughter, Natalie anyway, and Rose notices that Natalie desperately wants his attention.
- Rose flashes back to right before they left again: Lissa was really broken up about what Wade did to the feeder, and then about Rose getting in trouble for hurting school property. Lissa decided Wade had to pay.
- This scared Rose to death—she'd never heard her sweet friend talk like that before. Then she'd thought of how Ms. Karp became a Strigoi, and worried the same thing would happen to Rose. She knew she had to save her friend, to get her out of the Academy and away from these people.
- At the mall, the girls shop at Macy's and try on outfits. Lissa wants to get Rose into a slinky, tight-fitting dress, but Rose won't leave her to try it on. One perk of being a royal is a big bank account, so Lissa buys it anyway.
- When the girls look at jewelry, though, Lissa can't afford the rose necklace that Rose tries on, so they leave it and go back to the car.
- On the way home, Rose asks Dimitri if he saw her new dress, and when he says he did, she can tell he liked it. She drifts to sleep on the way home, warm from being told she did a job well done.
- Back at the Academy, Rose walks on a wooden bench when—suddenly—it breaks and her leg snaps, twists, and gets all distorted out of shape.
- Then she blacks out.