richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

Nineteen
IT'S HARD TO SAY WHAT finally made me do it. I'd held on to so many secrets for so long,
doing what I believed best protected Lissa. But hiding her cutting did nothing to protect her. I
hadn't been able to make her stop—and really, I now wondered if it was my fault she'd ever
started. None of this had happened until she healed me in the accident. What if she'd left me
injured? Maybe I would have recovered. Maybe she would be all right today.
I stayed in the clinic while Dimitri went to get Alberta. He hadn't hesitated for a second when I
told him where she was. I'd said she was in danger, and he'd left immediately.
Everything after that moved like some sort of slow-motion nightmare. The minutes dragged on
while I waited. When he finally returned with an unconscious Lissa, a flurry arose at the clinic,
one everyone wanted me kept out of. She had lost a lot of blood, and while they had a feeder on
hand right away, rousing her to enough consciousness to drink proved difficult. It wasn't until
the middle of the Academy's night that someone decided she was stable enough for me to visit.
"Is it true?" she asked when I walked into the room. She lay on the bed, wrists heavily
bandaged. I knew they'd put a lot of blood back into her, but she still looked pale to me. "They
said it was you. You told them.”
"I had to," I said, afraid to get too close. "Liss…you cut yourself worse than you ever have.
And after healing me…and then everything with Christian…you couldn't handle it. You needed
help.”
She closed her eyes. "Christian. You know about that. Of course you do. You know about
everything.”
"I'm sorry. I just wanted to help.”
"What happened to what Ms. Karp said? About keeping it all secret?”
"She was talking about the other stuff. I don't think she'd want you to keep cutting yourself.”