Spirit Bound recap

Rose finishes her final trials and graduates from St. Vladimir's while living under Dimitri's written promise that he will come for her. Told that a Strigoi was once restored to life, she traces the story to Robert Doru, a spirit user who can only be reached through his half-brother Victor Dashkov, so Rose, Lissa, Christian, Eddie and Adrian break Victor out of a Moroi prison. Robert explains the method: a silver stake charmed with spirit, driven into a Strigoi's heart by a spirit user strong enough to hold the magic. Before they can plan anything, Dimitri and a group of Strigoi ambush them and take Rose and Lissa. In the confrontation that follows, Lissa uses the charmed stake on Dimitri, and he is restored to life as a dhampir who remembers everything he did. Back at Court he is imprisoned, refuses to defend himself, and tells Rose that his love for her is gone. Queen Tatiana passes a law sending novices into service at sixteen and Rose confronts her publicly over it. Shortly afterwards the queen is found murdered with a silver stake, the evidence points squarely at Rose, and Rose is arrested for the assassination.

Previously: Rose Hathaway is a dhampir bonded to her best friend Lissa Dragomir, the last of a royal Moroi line, because Lissa used spirit magic to bring her back from death as a child. Rose feels Lissa's emotions, can enter her mind, and absorbs the madness spirit leaves behind. Rose and the guardian Dimitri Belikov fell in love against every rule they lived by, and hours after they finally acted on it, Strigoi broke the wards of St. Vladimir's Academy, overran the school and took Dimitri alive, awakening him as a Strigoi. Rose abandoned her graduation and went to Russia to keep the promise they had made each other. There she met the Alchemist Sydney Sage, who keeps vampires hidden from humans, a powerful Moroi called Abe Mazur who took an unexplained interest in her, and Dimitri's family, whom she told he was dead. Dimitri found her first, held her prisoner, fed on her, and spent weeks trying to persuade her to let him turn her. Rose escaped, met him on a bridge and staked him into the river below. At home, Lissa's new friend Avery Lazar was exposed as a spirit user trying to force a bond on her, and Adrian broke her mind to stop it. Rose and Lissa reconciled. Then a letter arrived in Dimitri's handwriting: he survived, and he is coming for her.

Rose is back at St. Vladimir's finishing the trials that stand between her and a guardian's promise mark, and passing them is the least of what is on her mind. Dimitri's letter says he will find her, and she believes it. She is dating Adrian, who knows perfectly well what he is competing with and is trying anyway, and she is managing the darkness that comes through the bond from Lissa with mixed success. Lissa has forgiven her for leaving, though not completely, and is planning for college and for the political future her family name forces on her. Rose spends her nights waiting for a Strigoi to come through a window.

Rose graduates, is marked as a guardian, and goes with the others to the Royal Court, where the Moroi world's politics are conducted at close quarters. Her mother Janine attends, and Abe Mazur, who has followed Rose home from Russia, makes himself part of her life without explanation. Rose's assignment is not the one she wanted: Hans Croft, who runs Court security, puts her on menial duty. At Court she also meets Mikhail Tanner, a guardian who has spent years hunting the Strigoi a woman he loved chose to become, and who repeats a rumour Rose has heard once before, that somewhere there is a way to bring a Strigoi back to what they were.

Rose chases the rumour and it holds up. A spirit user named Robert Doru is said to have restored a Strigoi to life, and Robert is in hiding and reachable only through his half-brother, Victor Dashkov, who is serving a life sentence in a Moroi prison. Queen Tatiana, who has never liked Rose, is meanwhile pushing a law through the Council to send novices into guardian service at sixteen, which is being read by dhampirs as a decision to spend their children faster. Rose puts a plan to the others that she knows is indefensible: to reach Robert, they have to get Victor out. She also learns what Abe Mazur has never bothered to say outright: he is her father.

Rose, Lissa, Christian, Eddie and Adrian break Victor Dashkov out of prison, using Lissa's compulsion where force will not work and going to considerable trouble to keep their identities out of it. Victor cooperates because it suits him, is contemptuous of all of them, and leads them to Las Vegas, where Robert is living. Robert is badly damaged by spirit and hard to hold to a subject, but he confirms the method: a silver stake charmed with spirit, driven into a Strigoi's heart by a spirit user strong enough to carry the magic through. Lissa is strong enough. Nobody can tell them what the restored person is afterwards.

Before the group can decide anything, Dimitri finds them. Strigoi ambush them and Rose and Lissa are taken. Dimitri has not changed his mind about what he wants: Rose awakened and beside him permanently, and Lissa is useful leverage. What he does not account for is the stake Lissa has already charmed with spirit. When he is close enough, she drives it into his chest, and the magic does what Robert said it would. Dimitri is alive again, a dhampir, on his knees, with every memory of what he did while he was Strigoi intact and nothing to put between himself and it.

Dimitri is taken back to the Royal Court and locked up while Moroi society argues about whether a restored Strigoi is safe, whether the restoration is even real, and what precedent it sets. He does not argue for himself. He is certain he deserves to be caged and says so to anyone who will listen, and he will not see Rose. Victor and Robert use the confusion to disappear. Queen Tatiana forces her age law through the Council over loud opposition, and Rose confronts her about it in public, in front of witnesses, in terms that leave nobody in any doubt about what she thinks of the queen.

Rose finally gets to Dimitri, and it goes badly. He tells her plainly that what he felt for her is finished, that his guilt leaves no room for it, and that she should stop coming. Days later, Queen Tatiana is found murdered in her own rooms, killed with a silver stake. Guardians come for Rose almost immediately: she quarrelled with the queen publicly, a witness places her near the scene, and the stake used is traced back to her. She is arrested and charged with assassinating the monarch, an offence that carries a death sentence. Her friends are shut out of the investigation, Dimitri is still in a cell of his own, and Rose is taken away with no idea who put the weapon in her name.

Dimitri is restored to life by a spirit-charmed stake and brought back to the Royal Court, where he is imprisoned while the Moroi argue about whether a former Strigoi can ever be trusted. He does not argue in his own defence. He remembers everything he did while he was Strigoi, including what he did to Rose, and he has decided he is owed nothing. When Rose finally reaches him he tells her plainly that whatever he felt for her is gone and will not come back, and refuses to see her again. Meanwhile Queen Tatiana forces through the law lowering the age of guardian service to sixteen, and Rose confronts her about it publicly and furiously in front of witnesses. Days later Tatiana is found dead in her rooms, killed with a silver stake. The evidence lines up against Rose: her public clash with the queen, a witness placing her nearby, and a murder weapon traced back to her. She is arrested at Court and charged with assassinating the queen, a capital crime, with her friends locked outside the process and no obvious way to prove where the stake came from.