I nodded, still dejected, and we walked out of the building together. With grim reluctance, I parted with her when the time came, letting her go off to the guardians' building while I headed toward my room. As soon as she was out of my sight, I immediately slipped into her head, watching through her eyes as she walked through the perfectly manicured grass. The bond was still a little hazy but growing clearer by the minute.

Her feelings were a jumble. She felt bad for me, guilty that she'd had to refuse me. At the same time, she was anxious to visit Dimitri. She needed to see him too–but not in the same way I did. She still had that feeling of responsibility for him, that burning urge to protect him.

When she arrived at the building's main office, the guardian who'd stopped me gave her a nod of greeting and then made a quick phone call. A few moments later, three guardians entered and gestured for Lissa to follow them into the depths of the building. They all looked unusually grim, even for guardians.

"You don't have to do this," one of them told her. "Just because he keeps asking . . ."

"It's fine," she said with the cool, dignified air of any royal. "I don't mind."

"There'll be plenty of guards around just like last time. You don't need to worry about your safety."

She gave all of them a sharp look. "I was never worried about it to begin with."

Their descent into the building's lower levels brought back painful memories of when Dimitri and I had visited Victor. That had been the Dimitri I'd had a perfect union with, the Dimitri who understood me entirely. And after the visit, he'd been enraged at Victor's threats against me. Dimitri had loved me so much that he'd been willing to do anything to protect me.

A key card-protected door finally allowed access to the holding level, which consisted mostly of a long hallway lined with cells. It didn't have the depressing feel that Tarasov had had, but this place's stark and steel-lined industrial air didn't exactly inspire warm and fuzzy feelings.

Lissa could hardly walk down the hall because it was so crowded with guardians. All that security for one person. It wasn't impossible for a Strigoi to break through a cell's steel bars, but Dimitri was no Strigoi. Why couldn't they see that? Were they blind?

Lissa and her escort made their way through the crowd and came to a stop in front of his cell. It was as cold looking as everything else in this prison area, with no more furnishings than were absolutely required. Dimitri sat on the narrow bed, his legs drawn up to him as he leaned into a corner of the wall and kept his back to the cell's entrance. It wasn't what I had expected. Why wasn't he beating at the bars? Why wasn't he demanding to be released and telling them he wasn't a Strigoi? Why was he taking this so quietly?

"Dimitri."

Lissa's voice was soft and gentle, filled with a warmth that stood out against the harshness of the cell. It was the voice of an angel.

And as Dimitri slowly turned around, it was obvious he thought so too. His expression transformed before our eyes, going from bleakness to wonder.

He wasn't the only one filled with wonder. My mind might have been tied to Lissa's, but back across Court, my own body nearly stopped breathing. The glimpse I'd gotten of him last night had been amazing. But this . . . this full-on view of him looking at Lissa–at me–was awe-inspiring. It was a wonder. A gift. A miracle.

Seriously. How could anyone think he was a Strigoi? And how could I have possibly let myself believe the Dimitri I'd been with in Siberia was this one? He'd cleaned up from the battle and wore jeans and a simple black T-shirt. His brown hair was tied back into a short ponytail, and a faint shadow across his lower face showed that he needed to shave. Probably no one would let him get near a razor. Regardless, it almost made him look sexier-more real, more dhampir. More alive. His eyes were what really pulled it all together. His death white skin–now gone–had always been startling, but those red eyes had been the worst. Now they were perfect. Exactly as they used to be. Warm and brown and long-lashed. I could have gazed at them forever.

"Vasilisa," he breathed. The sound of his voice made my chest tighten. God, I'd missed hearing him speak. "You came back."

As soon as he began approaching the bars, the guardians around Lissa started closing rank, ready to stop him should he indeed bust through. "Back off!" she snapped in a queenly tone, glaring at everyone around her. "Give us some space." No one reacted right away, and she put more power into her voice. "I mean it! Step back!"

I felt the slightest trickle of magic through our link. It wasn't a huge amount, but she was backing her words with a little spirit-induced compulsion. She could hardly control such a large group, but the command had enough force to make them clear out a little and create space between her and Dimitri. She turned her attention back to him, demeanor instantly changing from fierce to kind.

"Of course I came back. How are you? Are they . . ." She cast a dangerous look at the guardians in the hall. "Are they treating you okay?"

He shrugged. "Fine. Nobody's hurting me." If he was anything like his old self, he would have never admitted if anyone was hurting him. "Just a lot of questions. So many questions." He sounded weary, again . . . very unlike a Strigoi who never needed rest. "And my eyes. They keep wanting to examine my eyes."

"But how do you feel?" she asked. "In your mind? In your heart?" If the whole situation hadn't been so sobering, I would have been amused. It was very much a therapist's line of questioning–something both Lissa and I had experienced a lot of. I'd hated being asked those questions, but now I truly wanted to know how Dimitri felt.

His gaze, which had so intently focused on her, now drifted away and grew unfocused. "It's . . . it's hard to describe. It's like I've woken up from a dream. A nightmare. Like I've been watching someone else act through my body–like I was at a movie or a play. But it wasn't someone else. It was me. All of it was me, and now here I am, and the whole world has shifted. I feel like I'm relearning everything."

"It'll pass. You'll get more used to it, once you settle back into your old self." That was a guess on her part, but one she felt confident of.

He inclined his head toward the gathered guardians. "They don't think so."

"They will," she said adamantly. "We just need more time." A small silence fell, and Lissa hesitated before speaking her next words. "Rose . . . wants to see you."

Dimitri's dreamy, morose attitude snapped in a heartbeat. His eyes focused back on Lissa, and I got my first glimpse of true, intense emotion from him. "No. Anyone but her. I can't see her. Don't let her come here. Please."

Lissa swallowed, unsure how to respond. The fact that she had an audience made it harder. The best she could do was lower her voice so the others wouldn't hear. "But . . . she loves you. She's worried about you. What happened . . . with us being able to save you? Well, a lot of it was because of her."

"You saved me."

"I only did the final piece. The rest . . . well, Rose did, um, a lot." Say, like, organizing a prison break and releasing fugitives.

Dimitri turned from Lissa, and the fire that had briefly lit his features faded. He walked over to the side of the cell and leaned against the wall. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and then opened them.

"Anyone but her," he repeated. "Not after what I did to her. I did a lot of things . . . horrible things." He turned his hands palm-up and stared at them for a moment, like he could see blood. "What I did to her was worst of all–especially because it was her. She came to save me from that state, and I . . ." He shook his head. "I did terrible things to her. Terrible things to others. I can't face her after that. What I did was unforgivable."