It was something of a mystery how a couple of teenage girls had managed to escape detection for two years, especially when one of them was a privileged Moroi princess and the other a delinquent dhampir with a disciplinary file so long that it broke school records.

This isn't a Christmas special! This is my life. In the real world, miracles and goodness just don't happen.

He almosted smiled. "There you go again. Why? Why do yo keep helping me?" There were a million answers on my lips, everything from It's the right thing to do to I don't know. Instead, I said, "Because I want to.

See? There it is again. My flame in the dark.

It was the most convulted, ridiculous piece of logic I'd heard in awhile... It was something I would have come up with.

I felt a strange fluttering sensation in my chest. Butterflies, cardiac arrest . . . it was hard to say what exactly.

I’d said it before and meant it: Alive or undead, the love of my life was a badass.