Dimitri Belikov is twenty-five and it's not that his life feels stagnant… it's just… that. He feels as though his soul has grown dusty, hidden away on a shelf like all the books around him. He longed to pull himself off the shelf, brush the cover, and start anew. But for what? By now, stagnancy is his routine.

Ivan lives, and so the butterfly's wings flap; Dimitri is a faithful guardian to his friend and is not there to save Rose from getting expelled. Under her father's wing, she vows to become so great a guardian that the Moroi have no choice but to make her Lissa's guardian one day. She's off to study St Basil's Academy in Russia; evidently they think they can whip anyone into shape.