Blood Promise recap

Rose leaves St. Vladimir's before graduating and travels alone through Russia to find Dimitri, now a Strigoi, and keep the promise they made each other. Escorted reluctantly by the human Alchemist Sydney Sage and watched by a dangerous Moroi called Abe Mazur, she reaches Dimitri's hometown of Baia and tells his family he is dead. Living among the Belikovs, she meets Mark and Oksana, a bonded pair who teach her what her link to Lissa is doing to her, while through the bond she watches Lissa fall in with a charming new friend named Avery Lazar. Rose joins a group of young dhampirs hunting Strigoi in Novosibirsk, and the hunts go badly. Dimitri finds her first. He takes her prisoner in a Strigoi-run estate, feeds on her, and spends weeks trying to persuade her to let him turn her so they can be together. Rose gets hold of a stake, escapes, and confronts him on a bridge, staking him and watching him fall into the river. She returns home in time to see Avery exposed as a spirit user trying to force a bond on Lissa, and is reconciled with her. Then a letter arrives from Dimitri: he survived, and he is coming for her.

Previously: Rose Hathaway is a dhampir novice bonded to her best friend Lissa Dragomir, the last of a royal Moroi line, because Lissa unknowingly used spirit magic to bring Rose back from death; Rose feels Lissa's emotions, can enter her mind, and absorbs the madness spirit produces. Rose loves her instructor, the guardian Dimitri Belikov, and the two of them spent two years refusing to act on it. Victor Dashkov, who once kidnapped Lissa to force her to heal him, has been convicted and imprisoned. After a friend was killed in front of Rose in Spokane she began seeing ghosts, and learned that having died and returned leaves her open to the dead. Mason's ghost warned her that Strigoi were massing outside St. Vladimir's, and the warning came too late. The wards were broken by humans working for the Strigoi, the school was overrun, and captives were dragged into caves nearby. Rose and Dimitri had finally admitted they were in love and spent one night together hours before the attack. In the rescue Dimitri was bitten and taken alive, which means he was awakened as a Strigoi. Rose refused to accept it, abandoned her graduation and her bond with Lissa, and left for Russia to hunt him down and keep the promise that neither of them would be left undead.

Rose is alone in Russia, moving between cities, hunting Strigoi in the places they gather and killing the ones she can take on. She has no legal standing, no money to speak of and no support, and she gets information by making herself useful to people who would rather she was not there. The bond still works: she can drop into Lissa's head at will and does it obsessively, watching her friend grieve and rage at being abandoned, while Lissa has no way of reaching back. Rose has concluded that a newly awakened Strigoi would go home, and sets out to reach Dimitri's family in Siberia, both to look for him and to tell them what happened to him.

Rose is picked up by the Alchemists, the secretive human order that hides vampire activity from the rest of the world, and a young Alchemist named Sydney Sage is ordered to take her across the country. Sydney finds everything about Rose unnatural and says so. On the way, Rose is noticed by Abe Mazur, a rich and widely feared Moroi who wants to know exactly what she is doing in Russia and refuses to explain his interest. They reach Baia, a town of dhampir families, where Rose finds Dimitri's mother Olena, his grandmother Yeva, and his sisters. She tells them he is dead rather than what she believes to be true, they hold a memorial for him, and they insist she stay.

Rose settles into the Belikov house and into a town that treats her arrival as an event. She grows close to Dimitri's youngest sister Viktoria and unsettled by Yeva, who watches her constantly. She also meets Mark and Oksana, a married couple bonded exactly as Rose and Lissa are, who explain what the darkness passing through the bond does over years and show her that a spirit user can pull it back out again. Through the bond, Rose watches Lissa befriend Avery Lazar, the new headmaster's daughter, and start drinking and going out with her, drifting away from Christian and from her spirit lessons with Adrian. Rose is thousands of miles away and can do nothing about it but watch.

Rose grows restless in Baia and leaves for Novosibirsk with Denis and a group of unpromised young dhampirs who have refused guardian assignments in order to hunt Strigoi on their own terms. They are enthusiastic and badly trained, and the raids Rose leads them on go wrong; people are hurt, and the group is not equal to what it is picking fights with. What Rose does confirm is that the city has a large, organized Strigoi population working out of one place, protected and well run in a way that Strigoi are not supposed to manage, and that Dimitri is among them.

The hunts collapse. The group is outmatched, Rose separates from them, and her attempts to reach Dimitri on her own terms fail one after another. Watching from a distance, she confirms that he is not a mindless killer: he is running things, thinking clearly, and has lost none of what made him formidable alive. She keeps hunting anyway. Meanwhile, in Lissa's head, the situation at school has curdled. Lissa is drinking, using spirit carelessly, sliding away from everyone who knew her before, and her behaviour no longer feels like her own, though Rose has no way to say so.

Dimitri finds Rose before she finds him, and does not kill her. He takes her to a fortified estate outside the city run by Galina, the Strigoi who trained him when he was a novice, and keeps her there as a prisoner. He feeds on her regularly, which floods her with the euphoria a vampire bite produces and leaves her dulled and compliant between visits. He gives her expensive things, talks to her with recognizable affection, and presses her steadily towards one request: that she let him kill her properly and awaken her, so that the two of them can be together permanently. Rose stops being able to tell how much of her hesitation is the bite and how much is her.

Rose stops refusing openly and starts planning. She works out the estate's routines, plays along enough to be given freedom of movement, and eventually gets hold of a silver stake. She fights her way out. Through the bond she also finally sees what has been happening at St. Vladimir's: Avery Lazar has been using compulsion on Lissa the whole time, cutting her off from Christian and Adrian, and Avery is not what she pretends to be. Rose gets clear of the estate knowing that Dimitri will come after her rather than let her leave the country, and that she will not get a second chance at him.

Rose meets Dimitri on a bridge over a river outside the city, lets him come close enough to take her, and stakes him through the chest. He falls over the rail into the water and is not recovered. Believing it done, she goes home. At the Academy the truth about Avery has come out: she is a spirit user with two bondmates already, her brother Reed and her guardian Simon, and she was trying to force a third bond onto Lissa. The attempt fails and Adrian breaks Avery's mind with spirit to stop it. Rose and Lissa are reunited and begin repairing what Rose broke by leaving. Rose is calmer than she has been in a year, and grieving properly for the first time. Then a letter arrives, written in Dimitri's hand: the stake did not kill him, the river did not either, and he is going to come and find her.

Rose gets hold of a silver stake and escapes the estate, and Dimitri comes after her. She meets him on a bridge over a river outside the city, lets him get close, and drives the stake into his chest; he goes over the rail and into the water, and she cannot recover the body. Believing it finished, she goes home. Through the bond she has already seen the truth about Avery Lazar: Avery is a spirit user with two bondmates of her own, her brother Reed and her guardian Simon, and she has been using compulsion on Lissa in an attempt to force a third bond, isolating her from Christian and Adrian first. The attempt is broken, and Adrian uses spirit to shatter Avery's mind and end it. Rose reaches the Academy afterwards, apologizes to Lissa, and is forgiven, and the two of them begin repairing what Rose broke when she left. Rose has changed: she is a Strigoi killer many times over, she understands the bond and its darkness in a way she did not before, and she has grown attached to Dimitri's family, who now know how he died. Then a letter reaches her in his handwriting. He survived the river, he is not going to stop, and he intends to find her.