Coming Home to You (VA - Romitri)

Chapter 23: Alberta POV

I wasn't sure what was going on with Rose, but I knew that Dimitri would let me know if he was really worried. Right now he seemed satisfied with Rose brushing it off. We'd have to see how she was tomorrow.

I was pretty impressed with how they'd sorted it so that Rose and Dimitri could be together and still guard. I hoped it worked out as smoothly as Lissa seemed to think it would. I was still a bit curious about the details of the arrangement.

"So," I spoke, breaking the silence we'd fallen into after Christian's suggestion. "We know what Rose and Dimitri are doing after grad, but what about the rest of you guys? Mia?" The quiet girl wanted so desperately to be included in their group, and she and Eddie seemed to be developing feelings for one another. What would they do? I wondered.

"I'm hoping to find a job at court." she said thoughtfully. "I'm not sure exactly what I want to do – something to do with scheduling or record-keeping. I'm really good at planning and organizing."

"Ooh," said Lissa, "If I do become queen, I'll get to appoint my own staff. And I'll definitely need help planning and organizing things. You wouldn't believe the number of parties, dinners, and events the Queen has to organize. Would you be interested?"

"Oh, that would be perfect!" Mia clapped her hands.

I snorted. "Well, there's one of you sorted. What about you, Eddie?"

"I'd like to stick close to Mia," he said hesitantly, "so maybe I'll ask to be assigned to court."

"Oh, you can do better than that, Eddie!" exclaimed Rose. You could be part of Lissa's palace guard." She was right. Eddie always sold himself short, but he was a very promising guardian. In his class, he was second only to Rose. I had no doubts that he'd pull in a number of offers.

"Oh, good idea, Rose!" Lissa said, "And since I'll need a replacement for Dimitri, anyway, even if I don't become queen, I can ask for you. Would you like to be Rose's guarding partner?"

Wow. She really did have them all sorted. I wondered how long she'd plotted ahead of time to try and keep them together. She really was suited to being Queen.

"Really?" Eddie asked excitedly, "Oh, Lissa, that would be amazing!"

"Yeah," Rose added, "that would be perfect Liss. He's the only other guardian I trust with your life, anyway. Except for Dimitri, of course."

I laughed. "So, basically you're all going to follow Lissa around. What about you, Christian?"

"I go where Lissa goes."

And so does Dimitri then. She really is quite brilliant.

"Well then," I said, "Lissa, where are you going? So I know where to find all the rest of these guys?"

I could hear the smile in her voice. "To court." she answered. "They're right, you know. I most likely will be the next queen. I'll have to train for a while before I take up the job, though. The Queen is going to allow me to go to college while I'm learning the ropes. We settled on LeHigh – it's close enough to court to make it fairly easy to go back and forth, and it's a really good school."

"So we will be seprated, for awhile, anyway." Rose said, disappointment lacing her words.

I knew it was the best solution that she could hope for, and that she likely knew it, too. I also knew that she would miss Dimitri terribly. But she would see him fairly often – Lissa wouldn't want to be apart from Christian for too long. Of course, the Princess proved me wrong yet again.

"Nope." said Lissa cheerfully. "The Queen and I had a long discussion about this. One of my conditions for accepting her nomination to the throne was that I am not going to give up Christian. Not even while I'm in school. So he'll be enrolling at LeHigh as well.