RPOV
It was two weeks after Ela's only sibling Varya's fifth birthday, and the day before we were due to set off for Worlds for the final time, when Lissa made her play.
I called her in response to her letter that had arrived by courier this morning, giving her a piece of my mind while the girls were at the gym. Ela was getting ready for her final Worlds showcase and Varya was getting in some final training privates before her first elite competition team tryouts.
"Lissa, my daughters are not political puzzle pieces. They are not going to be a sideshow for your current inability to solve your problems. We will come back but give us three weeks not three days. Ela has her last Worlds this weekend and we leave tomorrow. There is a reason we brought them up in the real world, a reason we ran, a reason we hid."
How she'd found out about Ela even with Smoed's profile, I couldn't figure out. And how she found out about Varya was even more of a mystery.
"I'm after you. Ela can have her competition but then she's mine. All four of you are." Uh oh.
"Lissa. It's the darkness speaking. I've been keeping an eye on it. You've got as much as you did the night of the Jesse Zeklos incident and you need to fight it yourself. I'm not fighting all your battles for you." I tugged just a little but it didn't want to move. It was too ingrained, too much a part of her and she didn't want to fight it.
"Yeah right, Rose."
"Lissa at least recognise it's there. I can't pull if you don't."
"I can't, Rose."
"Lissa. Give up the darkness or give up your rule." She released the darkness on reflex, and it slammed into me. "Atta girl." The smile was evident in my voice.
"Rose. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
"Stop fawning—you're the queen. Now can you see my daughters as their own people with their own life, not a political power play?"
"Yes. Can I at least meet them?"
"Okay. As long as we get to come back home to Cali."
"Deal."
"See you soon." We disconnected and I felt the darkness starting to rear its ugly head. I was amazed it hadn't immediately disintegrated my mental wall.
"Roza. Roza? Did you just take the darkness from Lissa? You know why you haven't done that since the cabin." Yeah we ended up with our first daughter.
"She was going to use Ela and Varya as a political power play. As a sideshow." The bitterness was dripping off my words, scorn oozing into my icy tone.
"Oh Roza. Can you even see me?" In all honestly, not really. It really was like the cabin, except it was just a black haze of resentment, not bloodlust or anything else.
"Not really. It's like there's a screen in front of my eyes. I know you're there but can only see a faint outline. You're out of focus."
"Come on you." Uh oh. That was dangerous. That was the 'we're going to bed' cue.
"If you think you're getting another child out of this you've got another thing coming my love."
He grabbed my hand and the haze started to lighten but it wasn't quite enough.
"You know we haven't been that lucky since Varya, and we still don't understand how she was possible." Just replaying the fight through the darkness that led to Ela lightened the haze further. He started coming into focus when I replayed the part of the night that was responsible for Ela's conception.
"Dimitri. Just mentioning that night is helping."
"Good. Now come here," he murmured seductively before he pulled me into our room and threw me on the bed like he had that night... and I won the fight. The haze was gone and the world became brighter.
"Damn you, Dimitri! You always know what to do and say."
"Oh shut up!" He pulled me back up to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
"Are you really going to do what I think you are?" My answer was being thrown back on the bed and the same leg hitched over his waist.
"We can't," he echoed the cabin.
"I know." And I was right. It was the cabin all over again.
"You really wanted to do that didn't you?"
"Hmmm. It was a good night that night."
"Ohh come on! Nearly getting caught after the test, Jesse, the darkness and that was all before. The attack and rescue and almost losing you all came after. How do you call that a good night?"
"Because I let that moment shine through the others. I didn't let it get marred. You forget, I almost lost you too."
"Again. Damn you!" I smacked him playfully.
"Love you too, Roza!" He returned the playful tone. "Come on. We've got a Court and Worlds trip to pack for."
"You love seeing Ela compete don't you?"
"Yes. I do. At Worlds especially. She's in her element. She lives, eats and breathes Cheer. She's a part of the Smamily. She gets to use everything our genetics and training gave her for something positive. Something fun. Sure she started killing at fourteen but Cheer has helped her through. Her life is as yours should have been at her age. Parties, dances, boys and fun. She doesn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders. She's popular for all the right reasons. And Varya is following in her footsteps."
"Hmm. I know. That's because we didn't bring them up with the 'they come first' mantra. We teach them to kick Strigoi ass 'cause we guessed even in sunny Cali they'd be a target. We taught them to defend themselves. That's not to say they aren't like me when I was their ages—being able to comprehend things well beyond their years."
"They just don't have to let it be their sole focus."
"Exactly. They know enough of the Moroi world but we let them live in the human."
"I just wish you could have had the chance to let loose like they've had."
"Dimitri. By the time I was fifteen I was bound to my best friend—the last Dragomir, and destined to be her guardian. I had a mother who avoided me like the plague. I was being hunted by the then Dashkov prince. By the time I was nineteen I had been dragged back by you. And fallen totally and irreversibly in love with my then totally inappropriately hot and sinfully attractive older mentor and future guarding partner. Made my first kills, lost a best friend, and made my aforementioned totally inappropriately hot mentor my lover. Whom I then ran away with, because he'd knocked me up with his impossible but miraculous baby, and then had said baby. Not exactly in the same league."
"Ugh. Point taken. Even with my father I had it easy compared to you. No wonder we bring the girls up the way we do."
"Exactly."
"You know I love you right?"
"Yup. I think you've told me once or twice."
"Rose!"
"Comrade. I love you too. Although if we get another child out of this you've got hell to pay!"
"I doubt we're going to get another child out of this."
Boy was he wrong. We ended up with twins.
"Dimitri Belikov!"
"What's wrong, Roza?"
"Damn you! Damn you and your fucking warrior swimmers to the deepest pits of hell! It's twins!" I cursed in Russian in our kitchen once the girls were occupied by one another in a room where they were unable to hear us.
I'd just come home from my three month scan.
He hadn't been able to come as he was homeschooling Varya while supervising the final preparations for Ela's wedding tomorrow. She and Harrison Drozdov had taken one look at each other and Dimitri and I knew we'd have a wedding to plan, we just hadn't thought it would be so soon after their first meeting.
"Fuck! I've got twice the hell to pay don't I?" he swore under his breath in English.
"Yup. I love Ela and Varya but I'm extremely glad Ela's an adult already."
"I know you..." he decided not to finish that sentence when he saw my death glare. The problem was, he was right—I was actually looking forward to once more doubling the number of kids we had. Besides, I just missed having a baby in the house and I was relieved that Ela wasn't the one responsible for bringing said baby home.