When we both had glamorous hands, we proudly held them up side by side. "You look gorgeous, darling," she declared, affecting a sophisticated air.

Laughing, we went off to the massage area. Lissa had originally scheduled us for extensive massages, but the manicure had cut into a chunk of that time. So we modified the full-body massage into a foot massage, which was just as well since we couldn't have put on robes or any other changes of clothes with our nails still wet. All we had to do was remove our shoes and roll up our pants. I sat down in a chair while my feet soaked in warm, bubbling water. Someone put something into the tub that smelled like violets, but I didn't pay much attention. I was too entranced by my hands. They were perfect. The manicurist had buffed and hydrated them to silky softness, and my nails had been transformed into gleaming gold ovals.

"Rose," I heard Lissa say.

"Hmm?" The lady had also put a clear coat of nail polish over the gold. I wondered if that would give the nails a longer lease on life.

"Rose."

Sensing that Lissa wanted my undivided attention, I finally looked up from my awesome hands. She was grinning from ear to ear. I could feel that excited news burning in her again, the secret she'd had while we'd been walking over here.

"What's up?" I asked.

She nodded downward. "Rose, this is Ambrose."

I glanced absentmindedly toward the masseuse at my feet. "Hey, Ambrose, how's it—" I cut myself off before the words holy crap or whoa left my lips.

The guy massaging my feet couldn't have been much older than me. He had curly black hair and muscles everywhere. I knew this for a fact because he was shirtless and offered us both a good view of his sculpted pecs and biceps. His deep golden skin was a color achievable only by excessive time in the sun, indicating he was human. The bite marks on his neck confirmed it. A pretty boy feeder. Very pretty.

His attractiveness was almost unreal, though. Dimitri was gorgeous, but he had little flaws that made him that much more gorgeous. Ambrose was too perfect, like a piece of art. I didn't want to throw myself into his arms or anything, but he was certainly nice to look at.

Lissa, still worried about my love life, had apparently thought this was exactly what I needed. Her masseuse was female.

"It's very nice to meet you, Rose," said Ambrose. He had a musical voice.

"It's nice to meet you too," I said, suddenly self-conscious as he lifted my feet out of the water and toweled them off. I was especially self-conscious of the appearance of my feet. They weren't gross or anything, since they weren't usually exposed to the elements like my hands. I just kind of wished they'd been polished up too if this male model was going to handle them so much.

Lissa, astute enough to sense me being flustered, could barely stop from laughing. I heard her thoughts in my head: Cute, huh? I cut her a look, refusing to voice my thoughts out loud. He's Tatiana's personal masseuse. That practically makes you royalty. I sighed loudly to let her know she wasn't as funny as she thought she was. And when I say personal, I mean personal.

I jerked in surprise, accidentally kicking one of my feet out. Ambrose's deft hands caught it before I hit him in his pretty face, thankfully. I might not have been able to communicate telepathically but I was pretty sure there could be no question to Lissa that the look on my face said, You can't be serious because if you are, you're in big trouble.

Her grin widened. I thought you'd like that. Pampered by the queen's secret lover.

Pampered wasn't exactly the word that came to mind. Looking at Ambrose's young, beautiful features, I just couldn't picture him getting it on with that old hag. Of course, that denial might have just been my brain's way of refusing to acknowledge that someone who had touched her was now touching me. Ew.

Ambrose's hands were checking out my calves along with my feet, and he struck up a conversation about what elegant legs I had. His dazzling white smile never left his face, but most of my answers were curt. I still couldn't get over the thought of him and Tatiana together.

Silently, Lissa groaned. He's flirting with you, Rose! she thought to me. What are you doing? You can do better than that. I went to all this trouble to get you the hottest guy here, and this is what I get!

This one-sided-conversation thing was becoming a pain in the ass. I wanted to tell her that I'd never asked for her to rent out this guy for me. In fact, I suddenly had images of the queen calling me in for another meeting to yell at me for having a nonexistent affair with Ambrose too. Wouldn't that be perfect?

Ambrose continued smiling as he rubbed the soles of one foot with his thumbs. It hurt—but in a good way. I hadn't realized how sore that spot was. "They go to such trouble to make sure you wear the right black and white clothes, but no one ever thinks about your feet," he mused. "How are you supposed to stand around all day and still manage roundhouse kicks and cat stances in bad shoes?"

I was about to tell them that he really didn't need to keep worrying about my feet, but something odd suddenly struck me. "Roundhouse kicks" and "cat stances" weren't top-secret guardian terms. Anyone could Google "martial arts" and find out about those kinds of things. Still, it wasn't the kind of topic I'd expect a Moroi to casually throw around, let alone a feeder. I studied Ambrose closer, noting the way his dark eyes so carefully darted around and observed everything. I recalled his fast reflexes in stopping my kick.

I felt my jaw start to drop, and I shut it before I looked like an idiot.

"You're a dhampir," I breathed.

CHAPTER 16

"So are you," he teased.

"Yeah, but I just thought—"

"That I was human? Because of the bite marks?"

"Yeah," I admitted. No point in lying.

"We all have to survive," he said. "And dhampirs are good at figuring out ways to."

"Yeah, but most of us become guardians," I pointed out. "Especially men." I still couldn't believe he was a dhampir— or that I hadn't spotted it right away.

Long ago, dhampirs had been born from humans and Moroi getting together. We were half-vampire, half-human. Over time, Moroi started keeping themselves separate from humans. Humans grew too plentiful and no longer needed Moroi for magic. Moroi now feared they'd become human experiments if ever discovered. So no more dhampirs were being made that way, and in a bizarre genetic twist, dhampirs getting together with dhampirs couldn't make more dhampirs.

The only way my race kept reproducing was through Moroi mixing with dhampirs. Normal logic would make you think that a dhampir and a Moroi would make children who were ¾ Moroi. Nope. We came out with perfect dhampir genes, half and half, mixing some of the best traits of both races. Most dhampirs came from dhampir women and Moroi men. For centuries, these women had sent their kids off to be raised somewhere else, so that the mothers could go back to being guardians. That's what mine had done.

Over time, though, some dhampir women had decided they wanted to raise their children themselves. They refused to be guardians and instead banded together in communities. That's what Dimitri's mother had done. Lots of ugly rumors surrounded these women because Moroi men often visited in the hopes of getting cheap sex. Dimitri had told me that a lot of these stories were exaggerated and that most dhampir women weren't that easy. The rumors came from the fact that these women were almost always single mothers who had no contact with their kids' fathers—and because some dhampirs would let Moroi drink blood during sex. It was a kinky, dirty thing in our culture and was where the nickname for these non-guardian dhampirs had come from: blood whores.