IF YOU'D ASKED ME six months ago, I would have said there was no way I'd be happy to run into Mia Rinaldi at the Royal Court. She was a year younger than me and had held a grudge against Lissa since freshman year—a grudge so big that Mia had gone to great extremes to make life miserable for us. She'd done a good job. Jesse and Ralf's rumors about me had been a result of her efforts.

But then Mia had gone with us to Spokane and been captured by the Strigoi. And, just like for Christian and Eddie, that had changed everything. She'd seen the same horrors the...