Dimitri's birthday was tomorrow and Devon and I were so busy with the preparations. Things were absolutely hectic. And we were so hoping Dimitri didn't enter the party room or else we'd be absolutely screwed. We had set up a lot of people outside the room to make sure Dimitri didn't end up wandering down here. Although I couldn't think of a reason why he would. But who knows.

The room was absolutely huge and so we had a lot of work to do. Mary, Pam and the rest of the cooking staff were very busy cooking and baking. Devon and I were directing everyone where to set everything up. And all of Rovana was very pumped for tomorrow.

Everyone, except Dimitri because he had absolutely no clue. I'm surprised that we were actually able to keep it a secret for this long. Now, we just needed to make sure it remained that way until tomorrow night.

I was helping set up the balloons when someone came running warning us of Dimitri. He was coming down here. "Isabella go! Distract him!" Devon yelled causing me to groan. Why did it have to be me? Honestly.

"Isabella go right now!" Devon exclaimed, causing me to run out immediately. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do and I was starting to panic.

As I was running, I bumped hard into Dimitri not noticing him as I was too busy thinking about how to distract him. Dimitri immediately wrapped his arms around my waist, preventing me from falling.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going." I immediately said, giggling nervously.

He smiled down at me. "It's all good." He replied.

"Dimitri, um I was uh wondering if..." I stopped talking because I had no idea what to say. "If you could um..."

"If I could what?" He asked, waiting patiently for me to say it.

"Um, you know I actually forget what I was going to say. I hate when that happens! It's so annoying!" I exclaim, in fake annoyance.

"Yeah, I hate when that happens. Let me know when you remember." He said, before he removed his arms around my waist. "Well I'll be off now-"

"No!" I exclaimed, grabbing onto his arm to make sure he didn't go near the party room.

"No?" He asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"I'm not letting go of you. Not until you make it up to me." I said, standing in front of him.

"Make it up to you? For what?" He asked confused.

"For that little stunt you and Thomas pulled on me. That was so unfair! You are so paying for that!" I exclaimed, tightening my grasp on his arm.

"Ok fine, your highness. What would you like for me to do?" He said, mocking me with a small amused smile on his face.

"So you're basically saying I'm the Queen! Which means you have to listen to everything I say!" I exclaim as I let go of his arm, causing him to laugh at me.

"Yeah the Queen of losers but okay." Dimitri said chuckling at the look I gave him right then. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was kidding." He said, raising both his hands in surrender.

"Good, you should be." I stated, satisfied.

"Um, you do realize I was only kidding about the Queen part. You could never be a Queen. But don't worry, you're still a loser." Dimitri said, leaning against the wall.

"You know what Dimitri? I'd make an amazing Queen! In fact, I bet I could rule Rovana better than you can!" I exclaimed causing Dimitri to burst out laughing. "Okay what's so damn funny?" I demanded, crossing my arms across my chest.

"Nothing." He said, trying to hold his laughter in.

"You're so annoying!" I complained causing him to laugh again. I waited for his laughter to die down before speaking again.

"Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about something." I said, turning serious. Dimitri noticed my change in expression and became serious too, waiting for me to continue. "I wanted to talk about your issue." I said and he sighed, once he realized I was talking about the Shadow problem.

"Have you been feeling pain lately?" I asked and he shook his head no.

"It's stopped. For now." He said, sighing as he ran his fingers through his hair. "It could start again soon, if I don't listen to the Shadow."

"Dimitri, we need to find a way to drive the Shadow out of you! I know you've done everything but I'm sure there is something. Didn't demons and humans come together in the past and almost defeat all the Shadows? So if it could be done in the past, then it can be done now!" I exclaimed, noticing a very small, barely noticeable spark of hope light up in Dimitri's eyes before it instantly died down.

"That's very true Isabella, but no one knows how they accomplished that in the past." Dimitri said, sighing.

"Yes but if people in the past could figure it out, then so can we." I protested causing Dimitri to nod his head in agreement.

"I guess so." He said, halfheartedly.

"Come on Dimitri, we'll figure it out. We can!" I said causing Dimitri to think hard about something.

"You do realize that whatever people did in the past only got rid of 90% of the Shadows. The 10% that were occupying people's bodies remained safe and alive. So the Shadow inside me is completely safe, as long as he's inside me." Dimitri explained.

"God damnit!" I exclaimed in frustration. Why was this so hard? Why couldn't the answer just come to us, instead of us having to go look for it? Because at the rate we were going, the Shadow will completely take over Dimitri. And I can't let that happen. I won't let it happen.

"I told you Isabella, there's nothing we can do." Dimitri said causing me to glare up at him.

"If you keep that attitude up, then yes, there will be nothing we can do about it!" I said angrily. "So stop giving up! We can find a solution, and we will!"

"You have too much hope Isabella. You should never have so much hope that it leaves you all disappointed in the end." Dimitri said with a bitter look on his face.

"And you have too little hope! Hope is what drives us to accomplish our goals. If we lose all hope, then we give up and become the disappointment ourselves. If we had hope and then failed, we'd know that we at least tried. Then there wouldn't be that little part of ourselves wondering what could have happened if we actually did try." I said sternly, making sure to look him straight in his eyes so he fully understood what I was trying to say.

"Isabella, please-"

"Don't 'Isabella please' me! We're going to the library and are going to do some research on the Shadows. We'll first go through some books and then search on the internet." I explained, causing a confused expression to settle on Dimitri's face.

"What's the internet? Is it like a vaneret?" Dimitri asked and I slowly nodded my head, as I recalled how Devon said he was going to search something up on the vaneret a couple days ago. He had then pulled his laptop out, so I assumed the vaneret is the demon version of the internet.

Dimitri groaned as I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the library. "Why do we have to go through books? All books on the Shadows have been burned." Dimitri said, causing me to shake my head.

"That's just what everyone thinks. Just like everyone thought all the Shadows were extinct. So there could be books out there that haven't been burned. There has to be! And if there aren't any in your library, then we'll just have to find the books somewhere else." I said, as I kept dragging him to the library.

******

I spent a lot of time with Dimitri in the library, searching and searching and we actually found quite a lot. It wasn't all useful stuff, but we did find more than I expected. We even found a book on Shadows online, which we ordered. We're hoping the book actually has true facts and not fake stuff, because that would be useless and a waste of time and money.

We found some stuff on the internet, or vaneret as Dimitri likes to say. It said that there is definitely a way to get rid of Shadows, even those residing inside someone. Except that there is no known written account on how to do so. We found a lot of basic stuff that we already knew, such as humans and demons joining forces to defeat the Shadows. We also found some websites claiming that the people who managed to defeat all those Shadows, didn't actually know how they did it. It just happened somehow. And the way how, is a mystery to everyone.

The main thing I got out of that was to get humans and demons to join forces. And maybe that's what we needed to do again. Except it would be very hard for the humans to agree, especially because of the large amount of humans that were murdered by Dimitri.

And besides, it was the Shadow inside of him that we needed to get rid of. That's what was causing the biggest problem at the moment. This was definitely going to take way longer than I had anticipated. I needed to talk to Esther about this sometime soon. Hopefully, she'll tell me something useful, even if it is a little vague.

Devon had told me to meet up with him because he was going to tell me the plan for tomorrow. As I was walking out of my room, I noticed a rose attached to the door with a golden note. I sighed as I took it. Kenneth seriously needed to stop. I wasn't getting back together with him, no matter how hard he tried. I was willing to be friends with him but it seems as that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

I opened the note and began reading what it said.

I love you, Izzie.

That's what it simply said, causing me to chuck the note with all the rest in a drawer. He was calling me Izzie now and I didn't like it. I didn't want Kenneth calling me that. Only certain people can call me that, like Thomas and Dimitri.

I took the rose and put them in a vase with the rest. I was surprised that the old ones didn't die yet. Maybe because these roses were different than the ones you can find on Earth.

I then walked out my room and found Devon waiting for me downstairs near the party room. "So what's the plan?" I asked, as I was really tired and just wanted to go to sleep.

"Ok well, you'll obviously get ready with all the girls first. I ordered dresses for all of you, so you better like the dress because you're not getting any other option." Devon said causing me to nod my head.

"Anyways, when you're ready, you will go up to Dimitri's room and stand outside his door. I will cut the power off, so all the lights in the castle will turn off, surrounding you in darkness. Then you'll knock on Dimitri's door, claiming you're scared of the dark." Devon said causing me to protest.

"I am not going to say I'm scared of the dark! That'll make me look like a complete wuss." I exclaimed causing Devon to sigh in annoyance.

"Well too bad, you're going to pretend to be scared of the dark. Then Dimitri's going to come out and he'll take you downstairs because whenever the power runs out, the backup power usually hits and the lights downstairs turn on. But since I'll be purposely turning the power off, I'll make sure the backup power doesn't turn on. Instead I'll be keeping the lights on in the party room and that's where Dimitri will lead you, because you'll both notice the light on there. And then when you both enter the room, we'll all surprise him and sing happy birthday to him. Okay?" He asked and I nodded my head, yawning.

"This better work." I said and Devon nodded his head saying it would, as long as I kept up with the plan and made Dimitri think I was actually very scared.

* * * * * *