Chapter 2
In which Headmistress Kirova is Not a Fan of Rose, Dimitri Ponytail is SO MUCH MORE INTO ROSE THAN I SUSPECT HE REALLY WANTED TO BE AT THIS STAGE, and Rose doesn't hit ANYONE AT ALL.
RIGHT THEN when we left off, our heroines had been cornered by a vampire guy who had been watching their bedroom window and whom Rose had instantly found v attractive and also it turned out that LISSA WAS A VAMPIRE PRINCESS????
Ponytail Guy introduces himself as Dimitri Belikov and takes Rose and Lissa to the airport to get them on a plane back to the vampire academy. He makes them sit apart because he is like THEY WILL JUST TRY TO ESCAPE AGAIN JFC and although Rose is like YOUR LACK OF TRUST IN YOUR KIDNAPPING TECHNIQUES IS WORRYING ON A NUMBER OF LEVELS she goes with it. She also thinks about trying to escape from the plane but rules it out. Note how rather than, you know, immediately dismissing an IN AIR ESCAPE as impossible she takes the time to consider her options before deciding the odds are not in her favour. (This makes her more practical than Steve McGarrett of the Hawaii 5-0 task force. In one episode he RESCUED A MAN FROM CERTAIN DEATH WHILST ALSO HIMSELF PARACHUTING TO THE GROUND. It was PERFECT.)
Rose isn't giving up on escaping entirely though:
"We weren't getting off this plane until it landed in backwoods Montana. I'd have to think of something then, something that involved getting past the Academy's magical wards and ten times as many guardians. Yeah. No problem."
And although she's being sarcastic, I already have NO DOUBTS that Rose is going to TRY AND MAKE A PLAN ANYWAY.
(I just went looking for a gif in my giant gif folder to accurately represent how much I love Rose but it turns out I have like 90% ANGERED OR SARCASTIC gifs, which.... probably should not have been as much of a surprise as it was.)
Oh, and remember how in the last chapter Rose could totally ~~~feel Lissa's feelings~~~? Yeah, she can apparently also GET INSIDE HER BODY (easy, grandma.) I mean like this:
"Her emotions grew so strong that for a moment, I had the disorienting sensation of sitting in her seat - in her skin even. It happened sometimes, and without much warning, she'd pull me right into her head.And what could be more platonic and not soulbonded than that?
While she's in Lissa's body (hush now), Rose notices that their captor/guardian, Dimitri Ponytail, has molnija marks on the back of his neck.
~~~*~~~BOOK SPECIFIC VOCAB TIME~~~*~~~
Molnija marks: "two streaks of jagged lightning ending in an X symbol", molnija marks are tattoos that represent the number of Strigoi that the vampire has killed. (The Strigoi are the bad vampires? I THINK? The book hasn't told us flat out yet.) Our friend Dimitri Ponytail has six molnija marks. No idea if this is impressive or not.
~~~*~~~END OF BOOK SPECIFIC VOCAB TIME~~~*~~~
Dimitri Ponytail also is marked as a guardian. This mark looks like "a twisting line, sort of like a snake" and is above the molnija marks. That's one busy neck he's got there.
Rose comes back to herself and is a bit like o.O about slipping into Lissa's mind because it (understandably) freaks Lissa out every time it happens. Unfortunately, neither of them can control when it happens or how long it lasts. ROSE HAS A BRILLIANT SOLUTION TO THIS THOUGH:
"[Lissa] saw it as an invasion of privacy, so I usually didn't tell her when it happened."
None of the books or myths or whatever on the guardian/moroi bond say anything about this weird-ass SOUL MERGING so Lissa and Rose have just been like EH SEEMS FINE and gone about their lives.
Just before this plane of fun lands, Dimitri Ponytail switches places with the guardian sitting next to Rose and asks if Rose was really going to attack the whole team he brought with him. When Rose is like WELL DUH, Dimitri is... more impressed than I am feeling a rational person would be. DIMITRI SUDDENLY GOES UP IN MY ESTIMATION. REGARD:
"Doing that... protecting her like that - it was very brave." He paused. "Stupid, but brave."(I read this chapter once through before reading it again for this recap and let me tell you, this time through I suddenly EXTREMELY NEED TO KNOW HOW LONG IT IS GOING TO TAKE BEFORE ROSE AND DIMITRI PONYTAIL BANG.)
Anyway, Dimitri Ponytail asks why Rose did it and Rose is just like BECAUSE I AM HER GUARDIAN and Dimitri is like WELL FAIR ENOUGH and omfg they are both insane people to whom that is a valid answer skhkg I am suddenly so much more invested in their inevitable romance.
So, the plane finally lands just outside the Academy grounds in Montana and they are all checked out by guards to make sure they're not rampaging Strigoi (I am feeling more solid that they are the bad vampires now) and then they all head into the school just as the sun sets. This is the beginning of the school day for the vampire students because they are living a reversed day because of how they are ~~creatures of the night~~.
IT IS AT THIS POINT I MUST CONFESS A THING: I LOVE all this kind of detail. Like, in the Malory Towers books, I am there INHALING all the information about how the classes work and where the dorms are and how many students there are in each class etc etc. I love the beginning of all the Harry Potter books when they all get their timetables and my favourite HP book is Order of the Phoenix basically because it is the one with the most incidental information in it.
The school is divided up into campuses, primary for younger students and secondary for older , and the secondary campus that our gang are on is split into upper and lower schools. Rose says the architecture is v churchy and the dhampir dorms are by the academic buildings + gym while the moroi dorms are by the admin buildings. GOOD TO KNOW. The whole thing is super isolated because of how it's in RURAL MONTANA. This probably comes in handy what with having a bunch of baby vamps around. TELL ME ABOUT THE BLOODLUST RULES, BOOK. I MUST KNOW ALL THE WORLD RULES <.<
The guardians are taking Rose and Lissa to see Headmistress Kirova and they march them straight through the main commons, which, it being the beginning of the school day, is PACKED with students, which Rose CORRECTLY identifies as UNNECESSARILY CRUE.L Everyone turns to stare and Rose picks out some people that are probably going to be important later so here they are:
AARON: dude that Lissa dated but was never that into despite his interest in her. I don't see that going badly at all.
CAMILLE CONTA: the Regina George.
NATALIE: Lissa's near-cousin (not sure how "near-cousin" works but w/e A RELATION.)
UNNAMED GIRL WHO LOOKS LIKE A DOLL: Aaron's apparent new girlfriend, who looks v young and about whom Rose is a bit like WOW LADY CHILL ON THE DEATH STARES AT LISSA so I am sure that will ALSO all be fine. AH, GOOD TIMES.
In the headmistress' office, the rest of the guardians fuck off to do, idk, their actual jobs somewhere else, and Rose and Lissa are left with Angry Headmistress Kirova ("sharp-nosed and grey-haired", tall, slim, Moroi, Generally Displeased with Rose); Alberta, the head of the school's guardians, and our good friend Dimitri Ponytail.
BUT NO that is not everyone in the room - Rose's dhampir senses have let her down and she hasn't noticed another dude in the room. This is Prince Victor Dashkov, who Rose last saw looking much better than he currently does. Right now, he's shaking and pale despite only being forty. He has some kind of terminal vampire illness that Rose doesn't elaborate on but ANYWAY he is there to be like LISSA HELLO YOU ARE BACK and he also is nice to Rose, which makes me INSTANTLY suspicious that he is going to be our Secret Villain. TIME WILL TELL IF I AM RIGHT. He's Lissa's uncle in the family friend sense of the word but he was there for her after her parents died, thinks Rose, which basically means he HAS to be evil, right? CURSE HIS SUDDEN AND INEVITABLE POTENTIAL BETRAYAL.
Headmistress Kirova interrupts this reunion to get started on her version of the We Are Very Disappointed in You speech known well to all teachers, parents, and humans in the world, which culminates in her laying the entire blame on Lissa and Rose running away from school squarely on Rose. She's all YOU DIDN'T DO YOUR DUTY - this is not going to go well - and Rose LEAPS UP and is like I DID AND I DID IT GREAT ACTUALLY and everyone else in the room is like MAYBE NOW IS NOT THE TIME, ROSE, and Kirova agrees because the end result of her "you are selfish and irresponsible and could have got Lissa killed" rant is that she is totally going to kick Rose out of school.
I mean, okay, there's some stuff about how the strigoi want to kill off the royal Dragomir family, of which Lissa is the princess, and if they die out then the strigoi would be super powerful or some such not-yet-explained-fully world-building, but, like - Rose has a point. Lissa isn't dead! She must have been at least a BIT guarded if she hasn't been Bad Vamped in the two years they've been gone, right? RIGHT.
Headmistress Kirova is totally not with me on Team Rose and is adamant that she is going to expel Rose, even when Lissa is like YOU CAN'T and Rose snarks that, cool, what is she going to do, send Rose to her father (I am sensing some YA Protagonist Parental Issues TM) or would the headmistress prefer her to be a blood whore and NO OF COURSE NOT INSOLENT CHILD YOU ARE OUT OF LINE and oh thank god Dimitri Ponytail is speaking up to stop this slanging match.
He's all, ROSE AND LISSA HAVE A BOND. Which he has worked out just from watching them. CREEP MUCH, DIMITRI PONYTAIL? Anyway, Rose and Lissa don't contradict him and even Headmistress Kirova is a bit taken aback by this rare thing and Dimitri Ponytail totally uses this to casually be like, "oh yeah, the best guardians all had bonds with their moroi" and Headmistress Kirova is spitting mad about having to say anything even remotely nice about Rose but EVENTUALLY it works out that Rose gets to stay ENTIRELY because Dimitri Ponytail says he will give her extra training sessions to get her back up to scratch from all the school time she's missed.
Somewhere in that two page back and forth, Rose gets off a crack about Dimitri Ponytail being cheap foreign labour because he has a Russian name, and then immediately feels shitty about it. Most Moroi and their guardians are of Russian descent, she says, except Rose herself, who is part Scottish on her mother's side and she's "been told" that her Moroi dad was Turkish.
We also learn that guardian numbers have gone down recently, and female guardians are getting increasingly rare, so Headmistress Kirova should be EXTRA reluctant to expel Rose. She seems to be wavering still, though, so Lissa STEPS UP AND DOES SOMETHING DUMB, WOW, LISSA:
"Using compulsion on another Moroi was dangerous - especially in front of witness."I would probably also add "ESPECIALLY ON YOUR HEADMISTRESS" to that list of objections but Rose does not seem to care so much about that. I imagine this display of rule-breaking from her hot co-runaway soulbonded BFF is only Super Easy to Handle for PUNCH FIRST, QUESTION LATER Rose.
Whether it's the compulsion or otherwise, Headmistress Kirova agrees to let Rose stay, on the conditions that she go nowhere other than class, training, and meals, and has extra training sessions with Dimitri Ponytail.
Dimitri Ponytail, by the way, is now also Lissa's official guardian and Rose is not. I SEE NO WAY THIS COULD ALL GO WRONG AT ALL.
Rose tries to check out what Dimitri's opinion is on all this, considering he didn't volunteer to give these extra sessions but he did agree to them, essentially saving her ass, but he's not giving anything away. What a useful time to pull a Darcy.
Lissa, on the other hand, is sending Rose NOTHING BUT "BURNING ENCOURAGEMENT" through their bond. I am choosing to decide it's a combination of BOTH THESE THINGS that makes Rose accept. She's staying at the Academy!
Chapter 3: in which Plot Begins to be Explained.
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