Shadow Kiss

Shadow Kiss is a vampire novel by the American writer Richelle Mead and the third book in her Vampire Academy series.

Rose is a dhampir, a half-vampire trained to protect the Moroi, the living vampires who rule her world and who are hunted by the undead Strigoi. Her last year at the academy should be about passing the qualifying exam, but she comes back from the summer unable to settle: she freezes during a practice attack, she has flashes of the friend who died, and she is secretly in love with her instructor Dimitri. The novel also has to carry the politics of the school, where the trial of a man who experimented on Lissa is approaching and where the students' own families are divided. Mead writes the series from Rose's point of view, with her voice mixing training detail, gossip and grief, and the attack that closes the middle of the book changes what she thinks she is for.

The plot is built around the bond that lets Rose feel Lissa's thoughts and pain, and the book asks what a guardian owes to the person she is guarding.