Sydney Sage and Adrian Ivashkov

“	I know I'm not supposed to say this," he said. "But I think I love you more than ever.	”
—Adrian to Sydney, in The Indigo Spell

Sydney Sage and Adrian Ivashkov's love is deep and complicated, and it is one of the central focuses of the spin-off series Bloodlines.

Appearances

Vampire Academy Series

Spirit Bound

Sydney Sage first sees Adrian Ivashkov on a security tape from Las Vegas when Rosemarie Hathaway was there to turn Dimitri Belikov back into a Dhampir. When Sydney sees Adrian, she tells Rose that she thinks he's cute.

Last Sacrifice

Adrian first sees Sydney at the Royal Moroi Court when Sydney is captured along with Sonya at the Mastranos'. Adrian describes her as looking 'uptight' after she leaves with the other Alchemists. He later mentions her as one of the "victims" of Rose's happy ending.

Bloodlines Series

Bloodlines

When she is sent to Palm Springs to protect Jillian Mastrano Dragomir, Sydney Sage once again sees Adrian Ivashkov as she comes with them to bring Jill to Palm Springs. At first, Sydney dislikes Adrian because he is a Moroi, but later on, they become friends when she finds him smoking outside of Clarence's house. They begin talking, and when Sydney calls him brilliant, Adrian begins to tease her and screams out that Sydney thinks he is brilliant.

One night, Sydney is woken up by Jill, who tells her to go get Adrian, who is stuck at Long Beach after a night of partying. Sydney goes to pick him up and comforts him, but she tells him that drinking doesn't take away anything. It is during this time that she also finds out that Adrian brought Jill back from the dead, making her Shadow-Kissed, which she finds brave and selfless of Adrian.

They quickly become friends as Sydney spends large amounts of time at Clarence's house; she notes that she likes spending time with Adrian. Together, they help each other find out the reason for the tattoos at Nevermore when Adrian distracts the tattooist for Sydney while she investigates. Sydney offers to help Adrian get out of Clarence's home and into his own place, and she also helps him enroll in college for art. Together, they find out that Keith has been the one giving vampire blood to Nevermore for the tattoos.

At Jill's fashion show, Sydney and Adrian bicker with each other. In the end, they became close friends. After all the shenanigans, Sydney accommodates Adrian in an apartment. She later visits his apartment, where Adrian says that Sydney's eyes are beautiful, that she is beautiful, and also that he can paint those.

The Golden Lily

Sydney and Adrian seem to have grown closer, as shown by him sending her a text that makes her laugh, which is said to be a rare thing. When Sydney comes to Clarence's house, Adrian is overjoyed to see her and even gives her a diet coke that he promised to give her. While back at Amberwood, Trey Juarez sets Sydney up with his friend Brayden Cartwright, who is said to be her intellectual match. When Sonya asks Sydney to give up her blood to be tested on, Adrian becomes highly protective of her and tells them that they cannot as she doesn't want to, which Sydney feels grateful towards him for.

Adrian asks her to drive him to San Diego to meet his father so that he can get in contact with his imprisoned mother. Sydney agrees to drive him and accompanies him to see his father, where she witnesses Nathan Ivashkov rip up everything Adrian has ever done or tried to do. At this point, Sydney defends Adrian by telling Nathan that his son is a special person. To cheer him up, she buys him a slushy but also buys herself one to please him, despite her not eating anything with sugar in it. She also states that the slushy is sugar-free, even though she says it coats her mouth in sugar. She questions if it was worth it for Adrian, and then realizes it was worth it for her.

When back in Palm Springs, Sydney asks Sonya and Dimitri to talk to Lissa about convincing Nathan that Adrian is trying to improve; due to this, Nathan gives his son money and a car. At the Halloween dance, Adrian calls Sydney and asks her to drive him back to his apartment because he is drunk. She leaves her date with Brayden to take Adrian home, where the power is out. He tells her that he drinks to keep the Spirit at bay or else he will go insane, but Sydney tells him he is not going to go that way. Adrian asks her why she asked Sonya and Dimitri to help him, and she tells him that she wanted to help him because she felt helping him was a good thing. They nearly share a kiss, but the power returns. He says that he doesn't like Brayden because when he saw her, he wouldn't say she was "historically inaccurate", he would say "You're the most beautiful creature walking this earth".

They both sign up for a self-defense class, but Adrian is reluctant to touch Sydney and eventually quits. Adrian's car is a manual, but he pretends he doesn't know how to drive a manual in order to spend time with Sydney, as he has fallen deeply in love with her.

After Brayden breaks up with Sydney, she instantly goes over to Adrian's, where he confronts her about her eating habits, but she corners him about his lying regarding manual driving. To this, Adrian tells her that he made up things just so that he could spend time with her. Afterwards, Adrian kisses Sydney, and she kisses him back, thinking that when she kisses Adrian, all thoughts of logic and reason leave her mind. However, she breaks off the kiss and tells him that they can't be together because she is human and he is a vampire, along with her beliefs in the system of the Alchemist. Adrian tells her that he is the only one who truly and perfectly understands her, but despite this, Sydney walks away, looking back at Adrian as her heart breaks.

The Indigo Spell

Sydney continues to avoid Adrian, and he is moody around her because of her rejection. When catching a plane to Philadelphia, Sydney is seated next to Adrian when the flying company changes her flight. Adrian tells her that he will continue to love her from afar, despite her not loving him. Sydney argues with him on that, to which he tells her that she is already half-way in love with him.

At the wedding, Sydney comments that Adrian looks extremely attractive in his formal outfit; when he sees her, he smiles and nods at her. The color of her dress matches the color of his suit. During the ceremony, Sydney continually looks over at Adrian. At the reception, Adrian offers her a dance with him, to which she agrees. When two drunken Moroi men insult Adrian's late great-aunt, Tatiana, he becomes angry, but Sydney brings him out of his Spirit Darkness. People throughout the wedding commented that Sydney and Adrian looked like they belonged together.

Sydney asks Adrian to come with her to magic practice with Jackie, where he gives her advice. After finding Marcus Finch, Adrian sees a bruise on Sydney and immediately attacks Marcus, saying that everything about her has to do with him. Later, Sydney is able to convince him to heal Marcus, but as a deal, Adrian heals Sydney, to which she agrees.

When at a college party, in an attempt to protect young witch Lynne Titus, Adrian makes her a college t-shirt, and this proceeds them sharing a passionate kiss, during which Sydney even allows him to kiss her neck, despite him being a vampire, displaying her complete trust in Adrian. When she finds out the next day that Adrian has given her a hickey, she angrily tells him to never kiss her again.

When looking through some rooms at a bed-and-breakfast, they lay down on the bed in the velvet room, where Adrian reads her aura. He tells her that every time he touches her, the color deepens, and they nearly kiss. However, they are interrupted by Alicia.

Sydney asked a few days later if Adrian had kept her cross necklace, realizing he must have dropped it in the velvet room. While Sydney is trying to shrug it off, he gets sad knowing how much it means for her. He later gifted her a wooden cross with morning glories, which she accepted and smiled at.

When Sydney begins to have nightmares in which she believes that Veronica is looking for her, she is brought to a Spirit Dream with Adrian, where they play board games to pass the time.

Sydney invites Adrian to come with her when she is practicing magic, where she creates a Callinasta (mini dragon); they subsequently become its "parents" because the creature is loyal to whoever it sees first.

Adrian gives Sydney advice on seducing Ian Janson in order to get access to St. Louis to steal video footage for Marcus. After this, in a subsequent spirit dream, Adrian asks her to change her clothes to the outfit that she wore to St. Louis. This leads to them passionately kissing on top of a table with silverware and pieces of china; while kissing on the table, they break several pieces of china. This annoys Adrian, and he changes the scenery to his bedroom, where things become hot and heavy. Sydney seems to want to have sex with Adrian, but he says he wants to have sex with her more romantically and not in a spirit dream.

After noticing that Jill saw and felt everything that happened in the dream, Sydney breaks it off with Adrian, which causes an argument between the two. Adrian becomes heartbroken when Sydney tells him that she is going with Marcus to Mexico to escape the Alchemists completely. But after a talk with Wolfe, Sydney changes her mind, along with a letter Jill gave her from Adrian that she tried to open three times. Sydney tells Marcus she can't go with him because she realized she was in love with Adrian.

Opening the letter and finding a long series of numbers, Sydney works out that they are coordinated to Malibu, where she finds Adrian at an ancient Roman and Greek museum. She admits that she loves him, after which they share another passionate kiss. They become a couple and have dinner at a fondue restaurant, where they watch the sunset while holding each other. When returning to Amberwood, Adrian kisses her goodnight and promises to call her first thing in the morning. Sydney says she is walking on air and is disappointed because she has to leave Adrian.

The Fiery Heart

Sydney and Adrian have been dating for a month. Having visited each other through Spirit Dreams and Sydney's independent study periods. Confronted with the thought of taking their relationship to the next level, Sydney begins to take contraceptive pills. Soon Adrian is overcome with full revenge from Spirit after using it heavily in Dallas, Texas, when taking blood from Dhampir Olive Sinclair, who had been turned back from a Strigoi. Sydney panicked when hearing that Adrian had fallen off the wagon and drank heavily, even to the point where he was arguing with a pawnshop owner who he had given his aunt Tatiana's cufflinks to for two hundred dollars to look after. When returning to Adrian's apartment, Sydney finds out that Adrian had been hearing his aunt Tatiana's voice. They begin to argue that Adrian needs outside help, but Adrian denies this because he can't cut himself off from Spirit. To this, Sydney broke down in tears, completely overcome with fear that Adrian would eventually use too much and die or be locked up. Adrian becomes anxious that Sydney is going to break up with him because he made her cry, but Sydney tells him that she loves him and she would never break up with him. She confesses that she's scared that Adrian will eventually go insane or kill himself. After finally realizing that he did need help, though without telling Sydney, he visits a psychiatrist who gives him mood stabilizers to keep the spirit from completely taking over.

Not long after that, Adrian and Sydney are invited to the Royal Moroi Court by Queen Lissa, who needs both Adrian and Sydney's help with the blood that was taken by Olive Sinclair. On the plane trip to Court, the sexual tension had risen incredibly between the two, to the point where they would secretly touch each other and exchange glances throughout the flight. Once at Court, Sydney feels that she finds it more strange that she is dating a royal than a Moroi. After Adrian and Sydney have been settled into their rooms, Adrian secretly visits Sydney's room. They began to make out, and Sydney decided that she may be ready to physically advance her relationship with Adrian, but she couldn't shake the feeling that kept stopping her. Adrian decides to take her out for breakfast, where he will point out the buildings in Sydney. Once at the breakfast bar, they are visited by three Moroi men who are considered friends of Adrian. These so called friends go on to attack Sydney, but before any damage is done, Adrian shows up to protect her using 'treejitsu' a fake martial art. Then Lars, Wesley, and Brent are arrested. After this incident, Queen Lissa orders Neil, Adrian, and Sydney back to Palm Springs so they are no longer in danger. On the ride back, the gang is involved in a car wreck, but none of them is harmed. They stay in a bed and breakfast, and that is where Adrian and Sydney finally do it.

Silver Shadows

Everything has changed. Sydney has been taken by the Alchemists, and Adrian has no way to find out if she is okay or rescue her. Adrian's mother makes a reappearance and drags Adrian out of his drunken stupor, which he has been in ever since the night when Sydney was taken, and takes him to court. That is where he meets a temptation from his past. Fellow Spirit user, Nina Sinclair. But Adrian never stops thinking about Sydney, and when Marcus and he were able to visit Sydney's sister Carly's college and get a lead from her, the lead that Carly gave them was Keith, who was now out of re-education and residing in Boise, Idaho. Keith Darnell gives them a lead, and they are finally able to locate Sydney in Death Valley. Sydney was being tortured by Alchemist Grace Sheridan when Adrian was able to get two inmates to start fires, which made everyone evacuate. Meanwhile, Marcus and his crew are taking over the facility, and Adrian is rescuing Sydney from 'Persuasion' which is essentially a torture chamber. Afterwards, Marcus and all the inmates are on their way to a safe house, and Sydney and Adrian are on their way to Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, they stay in a hotel, and when Alchemists turn up, Sydney makes an SUV blow up so she can escape. Then they head to the Witching Hour, a Moroi-run hotel where Adrian is seen as very important, as he is royal. They give him protection there. While in Las Vegas, Adrian and Sydney get married, with Adrian selling Tatiana's cufflinks so he can afford the wedding. When the registrar calls Sydney Mrs. Ivashkov, she smiles and explains to Adrain that she always thought she'd keep her maiden name. They go to the top of a hotel and leave Las Vegas in a helicopter, and then a royal Moroi private jet takes them to Royal Moroi Court, where Alchemists are waiting to try and annul the marriage, but Adrian and Sydney refuse. After that, Lissa grants them refuge, and the Alchemists are escorted off the court grounds. When Adrian and Sydney wake up the next morning, they find that Jill is missing.

The Ruby Circle

TBA

Trivia

According to Mead, the couple is supposed to fall in love since the first book of Bloodlines, not Spirit Bound.

• Their relationship is even more forbidden than Rose and Dimitri's, since while dhampirs being together in the long run is not entirely unknown, Moroi/human relationships are completely taboo (The Keepers being one exception).
• Both Sydney and Adrian have a strained relationship with their fathers and care deeply about their mothers.
• For the fans of the Bloodlines Series, Sydney and Adrian have been named "Sydrian," which is a combination of Sydney and Adrian's names.
• Sydrian came third in the Best Fictional Couples, losing to Romitri (Rose and Dimitri) in the second to last round.
• Sydney and Adrian share a "flower" in their relationship: a Morning Glory. This is strangely linked, as the month for the flower morning glory is September, the same month that the Bloodlines Series began.