♡

✨Veli | She/her✨ Request are slow

[velieditss]

The flower in your garden…

⚔︎ 𝔄 𝔪𝔢𝔡𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔞𝔩 𝔤𝔦𝔯𝔩 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞 𝔪𝔬𝔡𝔢𝔯𝔫 𝔩𝔦𝔣𝔢 ⚔︎

♞ Rebeca but you can call me Veli ♞

•22•

•Request are open•

ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ✧.*

❤︎ In love with romance

❤︎ an admirer of the bravery

❤︎ honoured by passion

Welcome to my passion diary, here you will find any couple, gentleman or lady that I have fallen in love with and maybe you too, so please, minors, don't tempt my patience.

ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ✧.*

🃑 Ao3

🃑 Masterlist

🃑 Kofi

[velieditss]

Until death do us part

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Summary: A wedding shrouded in devotion and fire: between eternal vows and glances that seal destinies, you and Vlad unite soul and crown, consecrating your love as an oath that transcends life and time.

Wc: 4.8K

Warnings: 18+ mdni, unprotected sex, lost of virginity, tit play? (I don’t now, I just love a man yearning)

An: Happy Halloween!! After two weeks of labour exploitation, final exams for my last year of college, and a quick visit and stay in hospital, I can say that I am alive and back!! This request is for my Wattpad sweethearts who have been waiting for me to pay attention to them for a long time. If you have also sent me a request... I will upload yours soon, don't worry. I love you all very much and thank you for your patience.

Masterlist

Your entrance was fit for a queen, yet within your breast beat the heart of a mere woman. The very air seemed to bow as you passed, and the bells poured their solemn song upon the streets like a rain of bronze blessings. Each peal did not merely announce your arrival; it hammered the death of one age and the dawn of another. Men, women, and children chanted your name, yet in their voices was not only jubilation; there was a blind faith, an adoration that verged upon the divine and which, for an instant, rendered you as powerful as you were vulnerable. Flowers burst into petals at your feet, an ephemeral and fragrant carpet the wind seemed to weave solely to honour you. The soldiers guarding you did so with the martial reverence of those who protect a being beyond their comprehension. You were no maiden, no common bride: you were the heart of a kingdom and, for one man alone, his only reason for existence.

As you crossed the threshold of the church, the doors, tall as centuries, groaned open, unleashing a gust of cold air that kissed your skin not as a whisper, but as the very breath of history. For a moment, the world outside faded. The murmur of the multitude was extinguished, drowned by the sound of your own heart, a slow and tremulous drum beating the measure of your destiny. You felt something within you, the last seed of the girl you had been, break open to make way for the sprouting woman you were to become.

Incense floated in the penumbra, a veil of sanctity that your very step illuminated. Your gown, woven with threads of sunlight, flowed like a liquid current of light, and every fold glittered, stealing fire from the votive candles. The gaze of the congregation fixed upon you, they bowed, but your eyes were only for the figure waiting at the end of the nave.

Vlad.

His eyes, a blue as deep and tempestuous as the northern sea, lifted to yours, and in them was no trace of the warrior prince, the sovereign of iron will. There was only the devotion of a man who beholds, at last, his own salvation. Upon his face was no doubt, no pride, but a tenderness so intense it seared your soul. An intensity that promised his love would be both a refuge and an eternal fire.

When he saw you, the world lost its contours, its logic. His lips parted, a near-imperceptible gesture that betrayed how your mere presence had stolen his breath. And in that instant, you felt it: that invisible thread, that shared pulse beating in the space between you, a secret known only to you both.

He extended his hand to you. A hand, firm and pale, whose marks told tales of battles and an ancestral lineage. And yours, tremulous and warm, surrendered to his with the certainty of the dawn yielding to the horizon. In that first contact, skin against skin.

It was desire and absolution, strength and vulnerability, all as one.

Then, the priest spoke. His grave voice resonated beneath the vaults, and the sacred words—"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…"—wove themselves with the crackle of the candles.

But you scarce heard him. The altar, the relics, the stained glass that cut the light into blades of colour… all blurred into a distant dream.

You saw only him. His gaze was your only world.

And then, unable to contain yourself, you smiled at him. It was not the conscious smile of a queen for her people, nor that of a bride for foreign eyes. It was *that* smile of yours, the very same you had gifted him long before your mind understood what your soul already knew: that he was the man with whom you yearned to share not just one life, but all that might ever exist.

When the moment for the vows arrived, the words flowed from your lips with a terrifying ease.

"You are the storm I was never afraid of, and the peace my soul never knew it craved. I am not merely giving myself to you, for I have been yours since the beginning of time. I am choosing you, Vlad Tepes. Before this altar, before God and our kingdom, I choose you. I vow to be your sword and your shield, your sanctuary and your strength. I will walk with you in sunlight and stand with you in the deepest shadows. My love for you is not a fleeting emotion; it is the very core of my existence. I am yours, completely and eternally, bound to you in this life and in every life that may follow."

To pronounce the oath that would bind you in life and, if need be, beyond death, was the simplest and truest promise you had ever made.

His eyes, glistening with a raw, unchecked emotion, held yours captive. His voice, usually so commanding, was a low, fervent whisper meant for you alone with your name.

"From the moment I saw you, I knew the emptiness had been a prelude to your light. You are not just my wife; you are the resurrection of my heart, the purpose forged from my every sin and battle. I vow to honor you as my queen, cherish you as my wife, and protect you as the most vital part of my own soul. No kingdom, no throne, no power will ever hold a fraction of the meaning you hold for me. My life is yours. My name is yours. My eternal fidelity is yours. I am bound to you, body and soul, until death do us part."

Your hands, now firm, clung to his as anchors in a silent storm. You felt the coolness of his skin and the heat of your blood merge into a single torrent. To speak his name was not a mere sound, it was an invocation, a key closing the circle of your destiny. You swore to stand by him in every joy and every shadow, until Time itself, exhausted, should surrender and part you.

The ceremony advanced, a river of rituals towards its culmination. And then, when the Archbishop proclaimed your union with a voice that rumbled in the stone—"…I declare you husband and wife"—the world held its breath.

He did not wait. There was no protocol that could contain the torrent of his waiting. You are his wife.

His hands rose to frame your face. His palms became the most tender of sanctuaries. His touch was at once firm and infinitely delicate, as if he were holding the very essence of light.

And then, he inclined his head.

His kiss was not a simple seal; it was a consecration.

It was the first kiss of Vlad, the Voivode, with his wife. It was soft yet deep as the abyss in his eyes. In that contact, there was not only unleashed passion, there was a silent oath that pierced flesh and engraved itself directly upon the soul. It was not merely the kiss of a man to a woman; it was the promise of the warrior to his only love, of the eternal being to his reason for existing through eternity.

As you parted, the air that filled your lungs was new. The world remained, yet nothing was the same. You had ceased to be "you" and had become "we." And in the stillness that followed, there was only the echo of his lips upon yours and the absolute certainty that, finally, everything had begun.

Upon stepping from the sacred gloom into the castle corridors, a boundless energy, too long contained, was unleashed in a torrent of pure jubilation.

The solemnity shattered like a spell felt his arms encircling you, and from your throat sprang a crystalline laugh that flooded the ancient stone, a sound so vital and carefree it seemed to restore the soul to those walls.

He lifted you into the air as if you were light as the petals that hours before had kissed your feet. The world became a whirl of lights and shadows as he spun with you, possessed by an ecstasy as primitive as it was powerful. No protocol held value, no other glance held meaning. There existed only the vertigo of his embrace and the promise of his lips seeking yours.

When they found them, the kiss was as ardent and possessive as the first had been reverent. He leaned over you, arching you backwards in a perfect, daring curve, and in that total surrender, with blood singing in your ears, only one mundane concern managed to filter into your ecstasy.

"My crown!" you murmured against his lips, unable to suppress a smile that belied all protest.

Your hand, clumsy and joyous, did its utmost to keep the heavy diadem of gold and gems in its place, the symbol of your rank which in that moment seemed the most frivolous thing in the world. He broke the kiss for but a moment, his blue eyes shining with amused mischief and a love so vast it made you dizzy still.

"Damn the crown," he murmured, his voice a hoarse, loving echo that coursed through you like a shiver of desire. "The only crown that matters is this," he added, letting his lips brush your forehead with a sweetness that contrasted with the ferocity of his embrace. "The place where resides the woman who has just crowned me king of her own heart."

It was a wonderful, intoxicating madness, absolute and wholly yours. A happiness so complete it defied words, for it had transcended language to claim every fibre of your being. You did not understand how he had managed to conquer every corner of your heart, but you knew it with the same certainty with which you knew the sun would rise at dawn: just as he was irrevocably yours, you were, and always had been, the most precious possession of his soul.

With a deliberate slowness, almost reverent, you brought your fingers to his chin. Your thumb traced the line of his jaw, a gesture of tenderness and adoration that mapped a territory already known, already beloved. Your eyes drank from his, travelling the familiar landscape of his lips, the abyssal intensity of his gaze, as if you were etching every detail for the eternity they now, at last, had permission to share.

"You always were," you whispered, your voice a thread of sound. "You were always the king of my heart, Vlad. Only now..." A shy smile, filled with the complicity of all shared secrets and stolen glances, played upon your lips. "Now I need not hide it. The entire world may see."

His eyes, for an instant, seemed to mist with an emotion so raw and powerful it stole your breath. It was the vulnerability of the warrior who, before the truth of your love, let all his defences fall.

"And I love you," he confessed, and the words sounded not as a simple declaration, but as a vow more sacred than any uttered at the altar. "I love you with a fervour that terrifies me. You are the heartbeat that returns life to my veins, the light that banishes the darkness of my nights. To love you is the only and truest law of my existence."

No further words could contain the storm of feeling his confession had unleashed. His seeking of your lips was not a kiss, but a reaffirmation.

When you finally parted, breathless, your forehead resting against his, a fanfare of trumpets sounded and the world outside returned to your bubble as a distant rumour.

"They await us," you murmured against his lips, your voice still tremulous from the intensity of the moment.

He gave a broad, carefree smile, an expression that made the years of war and darkness seem but a fleeting bad dream.

"Let them wait," he whispered, but then a spark of pure mischief shone in his blue eyes. "Or not."

Before you could question him, he bent and, with one fluid and powerful motion, swept you into his arms as if you were little more than a feather. A stifled cry of surprise and delight escaped your lips as your arms instinctively encircled his neck.

"Vlad!"

"Hush, my queen," said he, and his voice was a caress filled with pride. "A royal entrance demands a royal extravagance."

And thus, carried in the arms of your husband, you made your entrance into the great hall of the banquet. The massive oak doors were thrown wide and an explosion of sound enveloped you: the roar of hundreds applauding, the thunderous cheers of the boyars and soldiers, and the joyous melodies of the minstrels filling the vault with lutes and flutes. It was not a procession; it was a conquest. He, your Voivode, carrying you as his most precious spoil of war, and you, radiant and laughing, the queen who crowned his sweetest victory.

The hall was an ocean of light and colour. Immense fires crackled in the hearths, and hundreds of candles glittered in the gold of the tapestries hanging from the stone walls, where scenes of the hunt and ancient legends seemedq to spring to life with the dancing shadows. The long tables groaned with an abundance worthy of legend: boars roasted with apples in their mouths, golden loaves, mountains of winter fruits and rivers of red wine that gleamed like rubies in silver goblets.

But the true magic lay not in the opulence, but in the joy. A palpable happiness hung in the air, a spirit of celebration that united lord and servant in a single dance of jubilation. And at the centre of that universe, were you.

You were the living image of pure love, the embodiment of a fairytale sprung to life. He, with his sovereign's bearing, softened his gaze only for you. You, with your grace, found rest only in his arms. You danced until your feet burned, a spinning, joyous dance where the world narrowed to his eyes and the firmness of his hand at your waist. Your laughter—his, low and husky; yours, crystalline—intertwined and were lost within the music, a sound sweeter than any melody.

The guests toasted again and again. "To the Voivode Vlad and his Queen! Long life and prosperity!"

The final toast still echoed in the hall when, with a conspiratorial smile towards Vlad, you withdrew amidst applause. Your ladies led you to the nuptial chambers, where the gown woven with threads of sun was replaced by a robe of the finest white linen, simple and light.

Seated on the edge of the conjugal bed, a goblet of red wine held between your hands, you waited. The silence here was different, a sweet nervousness that made your blood pulse more fiercely. Whatever was to transpire this night, it would be for a future you had so often been told was impossible.

The door opened with a soft creak and he was there, framed within it. The fire from the hearth gilded the contours of his body, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and the firm line of his jaw. Your heart, already beating furiously, quickened to an almost painful rhythm.

The overwhelming certainty of how his mere presence filled the chamber with a warmth that prickled your skin.

A roguish smile, full of a newly discovered confidence, curved upon your lips. You brought the goblet to them and took a slow, deliberate sip, never taking your eyes from him.

"My lord husband," you said, your voice low, laden with a playful tone that was an invitation in itself.

Vlad's eyes, which already watched you with intensity, darkened with desire. One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile.

"My lady wife," he replied, and the two simple words resonated like a caress in the penumbra.

He advanced then, with the deliberate slowness of a predator savouring the moment before the feast. Your pulse quickened, feeling the air thicken around him. When he stood before you, you expected him to take your hand to help you rise, but to your surprise, he did not touch you. Instead, he knelt.

It was a gesture of such profound and powerful humility that it stole your breath. The feared Prince of Wallachia, on his knees before you. His hands came to rest with infinite tenderness upon your thighs, over the white fabric of your robe. The heat of his palms seared through the cloth, an intimate brand that affirmed his possession.

"I missed you," he confessed, his voice a husky whisper, a breeze laden with storm. His gaze, fixed on yours, burned with a devotion that bordered on worship.

A slight, nervous laugh escaped your lips. "It was only a few minutes, my love." You brought your fingers to his hair to sweep it back from his face.

"Minutes," he repeated, as if the word tasted of gall. One of his hands rose to caress your cheek, and you leaned your face into his touch. "Every instant I breathe in this world without you at my side is an eternity in hell. It is as if the sun itself refuses to rise, leaving me in a cold twilight." His thumb traced the line of your lower lip. "You are the beat of my heart, the air in my lungs. Without you, I am but a shadow, and shadows cannot love. They cannot live."

His words, as possessive as they were desperate, only served to stoke the fire burning within you.

Without a sound, you brought your hands to his face, framing that countenance you had loved even before understanding why.

"Now you have an entire lifetime to ensure you never become a shadow again, my lord," you whispered, bringing your face closer to his. "Your life, and mine. Entwined forever."

The groan that emerged from his chest was pure, satisfied yearning. It was the final surrender to a love that consumed and redeemed him in the same breath.

And when his arms encircled you, drawing you against his hard, muscular body, and his parted lips met yours, your consciousness abruptly stilled. It was a kiss unlike all others, because he knew where it would end: a kiss of exquisite restraint, of pagan hunger.

His tongue swept over your lips, urging them to part, insisting, and when they did, he plunged into your mouth. His hands slid restlessly, possessively, up and down your back, over your breasts, tracing your spine, pressing you firmly against his hardened thighs, and you felt yourself slowly falling into a dizzying abyss of sensuality and awakened passion. With a silent moan of helpless surrender, you wrapped your arms around his neck, clinging to him for support.

Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you felt your robe slip away, and then the touch of his palms against your swollen breasts, the sudden increase of fire in each searing kiss. Arms like bands of steel encircled you, lifted you, cradled you, and then carried you to the bed, laying you gently upon the cool sheets. Abruptly, the warmth, the security of his arms, his body and his mouth withdrew.

Emerging slowly from the dreamy stupor in which you had deliberately sought refuge from the reality of what was to come, the cool air touched your skin. He was standing by the bed, removing his clothes, and a tremor of alarmed admiration shook you. In the firelight, his skin resembled oiled bronze, and the heavy muscles of his arms, shoulders and thighs rippled as his fingers went to the fastening of his breeches. He was splendid, you realised, magnificent.

Swallowing a knot of awe, it finally dawned upon you that this man was your husband, yours alone.

The bed dipped under his weight, and you could not maintain your composure. You never could, not when it came to him. You stretched your arms to feel the heat of his chest beneath your palms and to look directly into those blue depths that somehow conquered your heart each time they met yours.

Vlad was not so hasty. Stretching out beside you, he gave a light kiss to your ear and, with gentleness but determination, pushed aside the little that prevented him from seeing you completely. His breath caught as he beheld you in all your naked splendour. A blush stained your skin from your hair to your toes as he gazed upon you. Without thought, he voiced his thoughts aloud. “Have you any conception of your own beauty?” he whispered, his voice husky, as his gaze drifted slowly upward to your enchanting countenance, tracing the hue and light of your hair, which lay in luxuriant waves upon the pillow. “Or of the depth of my desire for you?”

A tremor, born of awe and sweet anticipation, coursed through you as his hand came to rest upon your cheek, his thumb caressing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that belied the fervour in his smouldering regard.

“Open your eyes, my love,” murmured Vlad, and his voice was like rough velvet, laden with a desire that resonated in the penumbra. “I wish to look upon you. I wish for you to look upon me.”

Your eyelids, heavy with pleasure, lifted slowly, and you found yourself captive to his blue gaze, an ocean of stormy devotion. His hand slipped from your cheek to your neck, and then, with a reverent possessiveness, to your bosom, where his palm curved about your gentle swell. A tremulous sigh escaped your lips.

“Don’t fear,” he murmured, as his fingers found your nipple and stroked it with a deliberate slowness, tracing circles of fire that made you arch your back. “Never fear my love.”

His mouth then descended upon yours, not as a conquest, but as a question. The first contact, soft as a butterfly’s wing, sent a shiver of pure pleasure down your spine. Then, his tongue traced the contour of your lips, beseeching entry, tempting with a patience that was both torture and ecstasy. And when you yielded, when your lips parted for him, his kiss became deep, moist, and hungry, a feast of shared tastes and mingling souls.

“Kiss me,” he pleaded, his voice ragged, and you obeyed, tangling your hands in his hair, returning every caress with an urgency you knew not you possessed. A growl of pure satisfaction vibrated in his chest, and his arm closed about your waist, pressing you against the evident, firm proof of his desire.

When he finally parted his lips from yours, his breath was a ragged gasp against your skin, and you felt the very blood singing in your veins, each beat of your heart a drum marking the rhythm of this new, glorious madness. With fingers that could scarcely be stilled, you touched his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, feeling the texture of his skin beneath your fingertips.

Your gaze then travelled downward, and in the faint light, you glimpsed the marks that furrowed his torso. They were not mere scars; they were maps of battles, histories of pain which your heart read with a pang of agony. Without thought, your fingers followed the path of one such mark, the longest, that drew most perilously near his heart.

He held his breath, watching you, awaiting the revulsion or pity he had ever found in the eyes of others. But in your eyes, there was none of that—only a reflected sorrow, an empathy so profound it clouded your vision with unshed tears.

“My God, how you have suffered,” you whispered, your voice fractured with emotion.

And before he could react, you bent forward, and your lips, soft as petals, touched each of those marks in turn, kissing them, as if by that simple act you could absorb his ancient pain and grant him succour. A violent tremor shook him. “For you,” he growled, his voice rough, charged with a raw emotion. “All the pain of my past… for you, it is transmuted into light.”

His control shattered.

With a hoarse moan, his hands tangled in your hair and he turned you gently, placing you beneath him. “My love,” he murmured, again and again against your skin, kissing every inch he could reach: your eyelids, your brow, the line of your jaw, before reclaiming your mouth with a passion that left you breathless.

His mouth descended to your breast, and the world dissolved into sensation. His tongue and lips toyed with your nipples until they were hard and sensitive, and every suckle, every caress, made you moan and writhe, your hands clutching his shoulders as anchors in a sea of pleasure. His hands, meanwhile, roamed your form, tracing lines of fire from your hips to the inner softness of your thighs, urging you to open for him.

A vestige of nervousness made you tighten your legs, but he answered with a whisper against your skin. “Trust in me,” he murmured, and his fingers found the very core of your desire, touching, stroking, preparing you with a skill that drove you to distraction. “I shall make you feel only pleasure, this I vow.”

You yielded to his words, to his caresses, and as your muscles relaxed, his fingers delved into your warmth, an expert intruder that found a rhythm which made your body arch from the bed. Sensations mounted within you, a sweet, burgeoning pressure that made you forget all but his name upon your lips.

He settled over you then, and through a fog of desire, you saw his face, marked by an inner struggle, his muscles taut with the strain of holding back. His hands slid beneath your hips, tilting you towards him, and you felt the heat of his manhood pressing against your very entrance.

“You are mine,” he whispered, and in his eyes there was no doubt, only an absolute truth. “For ever.”

And then, with a slowness that was both a blessing and a torment, he sheathed himself within you.

A stifled moan, a pang of sharp, unknown pain, and your nails dug into his arms. He stilled at once, frozen, his gaze seeking yours with a heart-rending concern.

“Breathe, my love,” he begged, his brow resting against yours, his very frame trembling with the effort of stillness. “Only breathe. I have you.”

He waited, patient as the night, until your body acclimated to his incredible fullness, until the pain ebbed and was replaced by a sensation of union so profound it filled your eyes with tears. Only then, when a sigh of acceptance escaped your lips, did he begin to move.

It was an ancient dance, a primal rhythm your body recognised at once. Slow at first, each thrust a deep caress that explored every secret part of your being. Then, as your breath quickened and your hips began to move in unison with his, his rhythm intensified.

Pleasure built within you, a rising tide that threatened to sweep all before it. Your names mingled in the air, a mantra of desire and surrender. Your gazes remained locked, and in his blue eyes you saw not the dreaded Voivode, but the man who was surrendering utterly, as vulnerable to your love as you were to his.

“Vlad,” you cried out, and it was a torn sound, a plea and an affirmation.

It was his undoing. With a guttural groan that was your name, he sank into you one final time, deep and complete, and you came undone. The wave of pleasure broke, shaking your body with countless spasms, a blinding ecstasy that made you cry out as his own release filled you with warmth, sealing your union in the most primal and sacred of ways.

He collapsed beside you, panting, and immediately wrapped his arms around you, pulling you against his sweaty chest. His heart beat strongly against your ear, a wild rhythm that gradually calmed. His lips found your forehead, your hair, your shoulder, in a rain of silent kisses that said more than any words.

Beneath your cheek, you heard the heavy, rhythmic thumping of his heart, and you swallowed hard to hold back a knot of painful emotion.

As if your need to hear his voice had been communicated to him, he spoke:

"Did I hurt you too much?"

You shook your head and, after two attempts, managed to whisper: "No."

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"You didn't hurt me."

He asks, his eyes searching your face for any signs that you might regret this or that you’re somehow hurt. But there was nothing that made you regret this decision.

Not being by his side, nor having married him.

Somehow, you knew you were meant to be together forever.

[velieditss]

Until death do us part

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Summary: A wedding shrouded in devotion and fire: between eternal vows and glances that seal destinies, you and Vlad unite soul and crown, consecrating your love as an oath that transcends life and time.

Wc: 4.8K

Warnings: 18+ mdni, unprotected sex, lost of virginity, tit play? (I don’t now, I just love a man yearning)

An: Happy Halloween!! After two weeks of labour exploitation, final exams for my last year of college, and a quick visit and stay in hospital, I can say that I am alive and back!! This request is for my Wattpad sweethearts who have been waiting for me to pay attention to them for a long time. If you have also sent me a request... I will upload yours soon, don't worry. I love you all very much and thank you for your patience.

Masterlist

Your entrance was fit for a queen, yet within your breast beat the heart of a mere woman. The very air seemed to bow as you passed, and the bells poured their solemn song upon the streets like a rain of bronze blessings. Each peal did not merely announce your arrival; it hammered the death of one age and the dawn of another. Men, women, and children chanted your name, yet in their voices was not only jubilation; there was a blind faith, an adoration that verged upon the divine and which, for an instant, rendered you as powerful as you were vulnerable. Flowers burst into petals at your feet, an ephemeral and fragrant carpet the wind seemed to weave solely to honour you. The soldiers guarding you did so with the martial reverence of those who protect a being beyond their comprehension. You were no maiden, no common bride: you were the heart of a kingdom and, for one man alone, his only reason for existence.

As you crossed the threshold of the church, the doors, tall as centuries, groaned open, unleashing a gust of cold air that kissed your skin not as a whisper, but as the very breath of history. For a moment, the world outside faded. The murmur of the multitude was extinguished, drowned by the sound of your own heart, a slow and tremulous drum beating the measure of your destiny. You felt something within you, the last seed of the girl you had been, break open to make way for the sprouting woman you were to become.

Incense floated in the penumbra, a veil of sanctity that your very step illuminated. Your gown, woven with threads of sunlight, flowed like a liquid current of light, and every fold glittered, stealing fire from the votive candles. The gaze of the congregation fixed upon you, they bowed, but your eyes were only for the figure waiting at the end of the nave.

Vlad.

His eyes, a blue as deep and tempestuous as the northern sea, lifted to yours, and in them was no trace of the warrior prince, the sovereign of iron will. There was only the devotion of a man who beholds, at last, his own salvation. Upon his face was no doubt, no pride, but a tenderness so intense it seared your soul. An intensity that promised his love would be both a refuge and an eternal fire.

When he saw you, the world lost its contours, its logic. His lips parted, a near-imperceptible gesture that betrayed how your mere presence had stolen his breath. And in that instant, you felt it: that invisible thread, that shared pulse beating in the space between you, a secret known only to you both.

He extended his hand to you. A hand, firm and pale, whose marks told tales of battles and an ancestral lineage. And yours, tremulous and warm, surrendered to his with the certainty of the dawn yielding to the horizon. In that first contact, skin against skin.

It was desire and absolution, strength and vulnerability, all as one.

Then, the priest spoke. His grave voice resonated beneath the vaults, and the sacred words—"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…"—wove themselves with the crackle of the candles.

But you scarce heard him. The altar, the relics, the stained glass that cut the light into blades of colour… all blurred into a distant dream.

You saw only him. His gaze was your only world.

And then, unable to contain yourself, you smiled at him. It was not the conscious smile of a queen for her people, nor that of a bride for foreign eyes. It was *that* smile of yours, the very same you had gifted him long before your mind understood what your soul already knew: that he was the man with whom you yearned to share not just one life, but all that might ever exist.

When the moment for the vows arrived, the words flowed from your lips with a terrifying ease.

"You are the storm I was never afraid of, and the peace my soul never knew it craved. I am not merely giving myself to you, for I have been yours since the beginning of time. I am choosing you, Vlad Tepes. Before this altar, before God and our kingdom, I choose you. I vow to be your sword and your shield, your sanctuary and your strength. I will walk with you in sunlight and stand with you in the deepest shadows. My love for you is not a fleeting emotion; it is the very core of my existence. I am yours, completely and eternally, bound to you in this life and in every life that may follow."

To pronounce the oath that would bind you in life and, if need be, beyond death, was the simplest and truest promise you had ever made.

His eyes, glistening with a raw, unchecked emotion, held yours captive. His voice, usually so commanding, was a low, fervent whisper meant for you alone with your name.

"From the moment I saw you, I knew the emptiness had been a prelude to your light. You are not just my wife; you are the resurrection of my heart, the purpose forged from my every sin and battle. I vow to honor you as my queen, cherish you as my wife, and protect you as the most vital part of my own soul. No kingdom, no throne, no power will ever hold a fraction of the meaning you hold for me. My life is yours. My name is yours. My eternal fidelity is yours. I am bound to you, body and soul, until death do us part."

Your hands, now firm, clung to his as anchors in a silent storm. You felt the coolness of his skin and the heat of your blood merge into a single torrent. To speak his name was not a mere sound, it was an invocation, a key closing the circle of your destiny. You swore to stand by him in every joy and every shadow, until Time itself, exhausted, should surrender and part you.

The ceremony advanced, a river of rituals towards its culmination. And then, when the Archbishop proclaimed your union with a voice that rumbled in the stone—"…I declare you husband and wife"—the world held its breath.

He did not wait. There was no protocol that could contain the torrent of his waiting. You are his wife.

His hands rose to frame your face. His palms became the most tender of sanctuaries. His touch was at once firm and infinitely delicate, as if he were holding the very essence of light.

And then, he inclined his head.

His kiss was not a simple seal; it was a consecration.

It was the first kiss of Vlad, the Voivode, with his wife. It was soft yet deep as the abyss in his eyes. In that contact, there was not only unleashed passion, there was a silent oath that pierced flesh and engraved itself directly upon the soul. It was not merely the kiss of a man to a woman; it was the promise of the warrior to his only love, of the eternal being to his reason for existing through eternity.

As you parted, the air that filled your lungs was new. The world remained, yet nothing was the same. You had ceased to be "you" and had become "we." And in the stillness that followed, there was only the echo of his lips upon yours and the absolute certainty that, finally, everything had begun.

Upon stepping from the sacred gloom into the castle corridors, a boundless energy, too long contained, was unleashed in a torrent of pure jubilation.

The solemnity shattered like a spell felt his arms encircling you, and from your throat sprang a crystalline laugh that flooded the ancient stone, a sound so vital and carefree it seemed to restore the soul to those walls.

He lifted you into the air as if you were light as the petals that hours before had kissed your feet. The world became a whirl of lights and shadows as he spun with you, possessed by an ecstasy as primitive as it was powerful. No protocol held value, no other glance held meaning. There existed only the vertigo of his embrace and the promise of his lips seeking yours.

When they found them, the kiss was as ardent and possessive as the first had been reverent. He leaned over you, arching you backwards in a perfect, daring curve, and in that total surrender, with blood singing in your ears, only one mundane concern managed to filter into your ecstasy.

"My crown!" you murmured against his lips, unable to suppress a smile that belied all protest.

Your hand, clumsy and joyous, did its utmost to keep the heavy diadem of gold and gems in its place, the symbol of your rank which in that moment seemed the most frivolous thing in the world. He broke the kiss for but a moment, his blue eyes shining with amused mischief and a love so vast it made you dizzy still.

"Damn the crown," he murmured, his voice a hoarse, loving echo that coursed through you like a shiver of desire. "The only crown that matters is this," he added, letting his lips brush your forehead with a sweetness that contrasted with the ferocity of his embrace. "The place where resides the woman who has just crowned me king of her own heart."

It was a wonderful, intoxicating madness, absolute and wholly yours. A happiness so complete it defied words, for it had transcended language to claim every fibre of your being. You did not understand how he had managed to conquer every corner of your heart, but you knew it with the same certainty with which you knew the sun would rise at dawn: just as he was irrevocably yours, you were, and always had been, the most precious possession of his soul.

With a deliberate slowness, almost reverent, you brought your fingers to his chin. Your thumb traced the line of his jaw, a gesture of tenderness and adoration that mapped a territory already known, already beloved. Your eyes drank from his, travelling the familiar landscape of his lips, the abyssal intensity of his gaze, as if you were etching every detail for the eternity they now, at last, had permission to share.

"You always were," you whispered, your voice a thread of sound. "You were always the king of my heart, Vlad. Only now..." A shy smile, filled with the complicity of all shared secrets and stolen glances, played upon your lips. "Now I need not hide it. The entire world may see."

His eyes, for an instant, seemed to mist with an emotion so raw and powerful it stole your breath. It was the vulnerability of the warrior who, before the truth of your love, let all his defences fall.

"And I love you," he confessed, and the words sounded not as a simple declaration, but as a vow more sacred than any uttered at the altar. "I love you with a fervour that terrifies me. You are the heartbeat that returns life to my veins, the light that banishes the darkness of my nights. To love you is the only and truest law of my existence."

No further words could contain the storm of feeling his confession had unleashed. His seeking of your lips was not a kiss, but a reaffirmation.

When you finally parted, breathless, your forehead resting against his, a fanfare of trumpets sounded and the world outside returned to your bubble as a distant rumour.

"They await us," you murmured against his lips, your voice still tremulous from the intensity of the moment.

He gave a broad, carefree smile, an expression that made the years of war and darkness seem but a fleeting bad dream.

"Let them wait," he whispered, but then a spark of pure mischief shone in his blue eyes. "Or not."

Before you could question him, he bent and, with one fluid and powerful motion, swept you into his arms as if you were little more than a feather. A stifled cry of surprise and delight escaped your lips as your arms instinctively encircled his neck.

"Vlad!"

"Hush, my queen," said he, and his voice was a caress filled with pride. "A royal entrance demands a royal extravagance."

And thus, carried in the arms of your husband, you made your entrance into the great hall of the banquet. The massive oak doors were thrown wide and an explosion of sound enveloped you: the roar of hundreds applauding, the thunderous cheers of the boyars and soldiers, and the joyous melodies of the minstrels filling the vault with lutes and flutes. It was not a procession; it was a conquest. He, your Voivode, carrying you as his most precious spoil of war, and you, radiant and laughing, the queen who crowned his sweetest victory.

The hall was an ocean of light and colour. Immense fires crackled in the hearths, and hundreds of candles glittered in the gold of the tapestries hanging from the stone walls, where scenes of the hunt and ancient legends seemedq to spring to life with the dancing shadows. The long tables groaned with an abundance worthy of legend: boars roasted with apples in their mouths, golden loaves, mountains of winter fruits and rivers of red wine that gleamed like rubies in silver goblets.

But the true magic lay not in the opulence, but in the joy. A palpable happiness hung in the air, a spirit of celebration that united lord and servant in a single dance of jubilation. And at the centre of that universe, were you.

You were the living image of pure love, the embodiment of a fairytale sprung to life. He, with his sovereign's bearing, softened his gaze only for you. You, with your grace, found rest only in his arms. You danced until your feet burned, a spinning, joyous dance where the world narrowed to his eyes and the firmness of his hand at your waist. Your laughter—his, low and husky; yours, crystalline—intertwined and were lost within the music, a sound sweeter than any melody.

The guests toasted again and again. "To the Voivode Vlad and his Queen! Long life and prosperity!"

The final toast still echoed in the hall when, with a conspiratorial smile towards Vlad, you withdrew amidst applause. Your ladies led you to the nuptial chambers, where the gown woven with threads of sun was replaced by a robe of the finest white linen, simple and light.

Seated on the edge of the conjugal bed, a goblet of red wine held between your hands, you waited. The silence here was different, a sweet nervousness that made your blood pulse more fiercely. Whatever was to transpire this night, it would be for a future you had so often been told was impossible.

The door opened with a soft creak and he was there, framed within it. The fire from the hearth gilded the contours of his body, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and the firm line of his jaw. Your heart, already beating furiously, quickened to an almost painful rhythm.

The overwhelming certainty of how his mere presence filled the chamber with a warmth that prickled your skin.

A roguish smile, full of a newly discovered confidence, curved upon your lips. You brought the goblet to them and took a slow, deliberate sip, never taking your eyes from him.

"My lord husband," you said, your voice low, laden with a playful tone that was an invitation in itself.

Vlad's eyes, which already watched you with intensity, darkened with desire. One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile.

"My lady wife," he replied, and the two simple words resonated like a caress in the penumbra.

He advanced then, with the deliberate slowness of a predator savouring the moment before the feast. Your pulse quickened, feeling the air thicken around him. When he stood before you, you expected him to take your hand to help you rise, but to your surprise, he did not touch you. Instead, he knelt.

It was a gesture of such profound and powerful humility that it stole your breath. The feared Prince of Wallachia, on his knees before you. His hands came to rest with infinite tenderness upon your thighs, over the white fabric of your robe. The heat of his palms seared through the cloth, an intimate brand that affirmed his possession.

"I missed you," he confessed, his voice a husky whisper, a breeze laden with storm. His gaze, fixed on yours, burned with a devotion that bordered on worship.

A slight, nervous laugh escaped your lips. "It was only a few minutes, my love." You brought your fingers to his hair to sweep it back from his face.

"Minutes," he repeated, as if the word tasted of gall. One of his hands rose to caress your cheek, and you leaned your face into his touch. "Every instant I breathe in this world without you at my side is an eternity in hell. It is as if the sun itself refuses to rise, leaving me in a cold twilight." His thumb traced the line of your lower lip. "You are the beat of my heart, the air in my lungs. Without you, I am but a shadow, and shadows cannot love. They cannot live."

His words, as possessive as they were desperate, only served to stoke the fire burning within you.

Without a sound, you brought your hands to his face, framing that countenance you had loved even before understanding why.

"Now you have an entire lifetime to ensure you never become a shadow again, my lord," you whispered, bringing your face closer to his. "Your life, and mine. Entwined forever."

The groan that emerged from his chest was pure, satisfied yearning. It was the final surrender to a love that consumed and redeemed him in the same breath.

And when his arms encircled you, drawing you against his hard, muscular body, and his parted lips met yours, your consciousness abruptly stilled. It was a kiss unlike all others, because he knew where it would end: a kiss of exquisite restraint, of pagan hunger.

His tongue swept over your lips, urging them to part, insisting, and when they did, he plunged into your mouth. His hands slid restlessly, possessively, up and down your back, over your breasts, tracing your spine, pressing you firmly against his hardened thighs, and you felt yourself slowly falling into a dizzying abyss of sensuality and awakened passion. With a silent moan of helpless surrender, you wrapped your arms around his neck, clinging to him for support.

Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you felt your robe slip away, and then the touch of his palms against your swollen breasts, the sudden increase of fire in each searing kiss. Arms like bands of steel encircled you, lifted you, cradled you, and then carried you to the bed, laying you gently upon the cool sheets. Abruptly, the warmth, the security of his arms, his body and his mouth withdrew.

Emerging slowly from the dreamy stupor in which you had deliberately sought refuge from the reality of what was to come, the cool air touched your skin. He was standing by the bed, removing his clothes, and a tremor of alarmed admiration shook you. In the firelight, his skin resembled oiled bronze, and the heavy muscles of his arms, shoulders and thighs rippled as his fingers went to the fastening of his breeches. He was splendid, you realised, magnificent.

Swallowing a knot of awe, it finally dawned upon you that this man was your husband, yours alone.

The bed dipped under his weight, and you could not maintain your composure. You never could, not when it came to him. You stretched your arms to feel the heat of his chest beneath your palms and to look directly into those blue depths that somehow conquered your heart each time they met yours.

Vlad was not so hasty. Stretching out beside you, he gave a light kiss to your ear and, with gentleness but determination, pushed aside the little that prevented him from seeing you completely. His breath caught as he beheld you in all your naked splendour. A blush stained your skin from your hair to your toes as he gazed upon you. Without thought, he voiced his thoughts aloud. “Have you any conception of your own beauty?” he whispered, his voice husky, as his gaze drifted slowly upward to your enchanting countenance, tracing the hue and light of your hair, which lay in luxuriant waves upon the pillow. “Or of the depth of my desire for you?”

A tremor, born of awe and sweet anticipation, coursed through you as his hand came to rest upon your cheek, his thumb caressing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that belied the fervour in his smouldering regard.

“Open your eyes, my love,” murmured Vlad, and his voice was like rough velvet, laden with a desire that resonated in the penumbra. “I wish to look upon you. I wish for you to look upon me.”

Your eyelids, heavy with pleasure, lifted slowly, and you found yourself captive to his blue gaze, an ocean of stormy devotion. His hand slipped from your cheek to your neck, and then, with a reverent possessiveness, to your bosom, where his palm curved about your gentle swell. A tremulous sigh escaped your lips.

“Don’t fear,” he murmured, as his fingers found your nipple and stroked it with a deliberate slowness, tracing circles of fire that made you arch your back. “Never fear my love.”

His mouth then descended upon yours, not as a conquest, but as a question. The first contact, soft as a butterfly’s wing, sent a shiver of pure pleasure down your spine. Then, his tongue traced the contour of your lips, beseeching entry, tempting with a patience that was both torture and ecstasy. And when you yielded, when your lips parted for him, his kiss became deep, moist, and hungry, a feast of shared tastes and mingling souls.

“Kiss me,” he pleaded, his voice ragged, and you obeyed, tangling your hands in his hair, returning every caress with an urgency you knew not you possessed. A growl of pure satisfaction vibrated in his chest, and his arm closed about your waist, pressing you against the evident, firm proof of his desire.

When he finally parted his lips from yours, his breath was a ragged gasp against your skin, and you felt the very blood singing in your veins, each beat of your heart a drum marking the rhythm of this new, glorious madness. With fingers that could scarcely be stilled, you touched his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, feeling the texture of his skin beneath your fingertips.

Your gaze then travelled downward, and in the faint light, you glimpsed the marks that furrowed his torso. They were not mere scars; they were maps of battles, histories of pain which your heart read with a pang of agony. Without thought, your fingers followed the path of one such mark, the longest, that drew most perilously near his heart.

He held his breath, watching you, awaiting the revulsion or pity he had ever found in the eyes of others. But in your eyes, there was none of that—only a reflected sorrow, an empathy so profound it clouded your vision with unshed tears.

“My God, how you have suffered,” you whispered, your voice fractured with emotion.

And before he could react, you bent forward, and your lips, soft as petals, touched each of those marks in turn, kissing them, as if by that simple act you could absorb his ancient pain and grant him succour. A violent tremor shook him. “For you,” he growled, his voice rough, charged with a raw emotion. “All the pain of my past… for you, it is transmuted into light.”

His control shattered.

With a hoarse moan, his hands tangled in your hair and he turned you gently, placing you beneath him. “My love,” he murmured, again and again against your skin, kissing every inch he could reach: your eyelids, your brow, the line of your jaw, before reclaiming your mouth with a passion that left you breathless.

His mouth descended to your breast, and the world dissolved into sensation. His tongue and lips toyed with your nipples until they were hard and sensitive, and every suckle, every caress, made you moan and writhe, your hands clutching his shoulders as anchors in a sea of pleasure. His hands, meanwhile, roamed your form, tracing lines of fire from your hips to the inner softness of your thighs, urging you to open for him.

A vestige of nervousness made you tighten your legs, but he answered with a whisper against your skin. “Trust in me,” he murmured, and his fingers found the very core of your desire, touching, stroking, preparing you with a skill that drove you to distraction. “I shall make you feel only pleasure, this I vow.”

You yielded to his words, to his caresses, and as your muscles relaxed, his fingers delved into your warmth, an expert intruder that found a rhythm which made your body arch from the bed. Sensations mounted within you, a sweet, burgeoning pressure that made you forget all but his name upon your lips.

He settled over you then, and through a fog of desire, you saw his face, marked by an inner struggle, his muscles taut with the strain of holding back. His hands slid beneath your hips, tilting you towards him, and you felt the heat of his manhood pressing against your very entrance.

“You are mine,” he whispered, and in his eyes there was no doubt, only an absolute truth. “For ever.”

And then, with a slowness that was both a blessing and a torment, he sheathed himself within you.

A stifled moan, a pang of sharp, unknown pain, and your nails dug into his arms. He stilled at once, frozen, his gaze seeking yours with a heart-rending concern.

“Breathe, my love,” he begged, his brow resting against yours, his very frame trembling with the effort of stillness. “Only breathe. I have you.”

He waited, patient as the night, until your body acclimated to his incredible fullness, until the pain ebbed and was replaced by a sensation of union so profound it filled your eyes with tears. Only then, when a sigh of acceptance escaped your lips, did he begin to move.

It was an ancient dance, a primal rhythm your body recognised at once. Slow at first, each thrust a deep caress that explored every secret part of your being. Then, as your breath quickened and your hips began to move in unison with his, his rhythm intensified.

Pleasure built within you, a rising tide that threatened to sweep all before it. Your names mingled in the air, a mantra of desire and surrender. Your gazes remained locked, and in his blue eyes you saw not the dreaded Voivode, but the man who was surrendering utterly, as vulnerable to your love as you were to his.

“Vlad,” you cried out, and it was a torn sound, a plea and an affirmation.

It was his undoing. With a guttural groan that was your name, he sank into you one final time, deep and complete, and you came undone. The wave of pleasure broke, shaking your body with countless spasms, a blinding ecstasy that made you cry out as his own release filled you with warmth, sealing your union in the most primal and sacred of ways.

He collapsed beside you, panting, and immediately wrapped his arms around you, pulling you against his sweaty chest. His heart beat strongly against your ear, a wild rhythm that gradually calmed. His lips found your forehead, your hair, your shoulder, in a rain of silent kisses that said more than any words.

Beneath your cheek, you heard the heavy, rhythmic thumping of his heart, and you swallowed hard to hold back a knot of painful emotion.

As if your need to hear his voice had been communicated to him, he spoke:

"Did I hurt you too much?"

You shook your head and, after two attempts, managed to whisper: "No."

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"You didn't hurt me."

He asks, his eyes searching your face for any signs that you might regret this or that you’re somehow hurt. But there was nothing that made you regret this decision.

Not being by his side, nor having married him.

Somehow, you knew you were meant to be together forever.

[velieditss]

I absolutely adore all your Vlad content!! If you think you would enjoy writing it, could I humbly request a snippet for the scene where Vlad seeks Mina out following the carnival and she finally remember her past life?

PS. Thank you for feeding my current obsession with this devastating character🫶

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Mina

Summary: Caught between reason and a desire that defies all logic, Mina faces a presence from the past that reopens wounds and awakens impossible memories. On a night marked by music and destiny, the line between love and condemnation dissolves, revealing a bond that neither time nor death could break.

An: Babes, I've had a really tough week and I warn you that this one will be one of those too. This request is the only thing I've been able to work on and that I've really liked enough to upload. I hope to find some calm over the next few days so I can continue working on the other requests and the series I still have pending. I swear I'm giving it my all.

Wc: 4K

Masterlist / Kofi

The door closed behind her with a sharp thud, followed by the faintest gasp, half sob, half breath, as Mina pressed her brow against the wooden frame, her palms trembling against its cold surface. Her heart beat furiously beneath her ribs, wild and ungoverned, as though it sought escape from the anguish that had taken hold of her. She willed herself to stillness, whispering silent words of reason, of propriety, of duty. Anything that might silence the aching confusion that swelled within her chest.

But reason faltered. The pain was too strange, too consuming to be mastered by logic alone.

The small satchel slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a dull sound, scattering a few loose belongings across the worn boards. From somewhere below, faint and muffled, came Jonathan’s groans, a reminder of reality, of the life she had vowed to return to. The sound should have anchored her. Instead, it struck her like a blow.

Her gloves came off next, stripped from her hands with a gesture more of defiance than relief. They landed beside the fallen bag and there, peeking from its half-open mouth, she saw it: the edge of the little gilded box.

The gift.

For an instant she could not move. The sight of it sent a chill coursing through her, as though it still carried his touch, his scent, his unearthly calm. It gleamed faintly in the lamplight, that delicate contrivance of brass and gold, so deceptively innocent, so cruelly beautiful.

A gift from the very man who had torn her world asunder. The same who had looked upon her with a gentleness that no man had ever shown her, not even Jonathan.

He had given it to her without hesitation, his voice soft, his eyes shadowed with a sorrow she could not comprehend. “It once belonged to my wife” he had murmured.

She tried to refuse but he seemed so confident that she could do nothing but accept it. And he smiled, the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.

Mina’s breath caught in her throat. The melody of that memory—the low timbre of his words, the subtle curve of his smile—lingered in her mind like a haunting refrain.

Reaching for the box with hands that no longer obeyed her. The metal was cool beneath her touch, yet it seemed to pulse faintly, alive with some hidden energy. Her reflection wavered upon its polished surface, ghostly and uncertain, as though she no longer recognized the woman who stared back at her.

With trembling fingers, she lifted the lid.

At once, the mechanism stirred, a swift succession of clicks and whirs, and the melody burst forth, clear, resounding, alive. The notes swelled through the chamber, echoing off the walls like waves of light, until every corner seemed to pulse with its rhythm. It was no mere tune; it was a summons, a spell woven of memory and longing.

Mina’s breath caught as the sound wrapped itself around her, slipping through the marrow of her bones. Her pulse quickened to its measure, and, before she knew it, her feet began to move. Slowly, hesitantly at first, she turned in place, one, two steps —the music guiding her as though she were not mistress of her own body. The box rested delicately in her hands, glinting in the lamplight, its song growing stronger with every turn.

Then she heard it.

A laugh, faint, distant, yet impossibly near. It trembled through the air like the echo of a bell. She stilled, listening. Another laugh followed, lighter, brighter, and she knew it then with a shuddering certainty. It was hers.

Fragments began to bloom behind her eyes, at first blurred, like half-formed dreams glimpsed through mist. Then sharper, clearer. A room washed in pale morning light. The silken rustle of sheets. She saw herself, laughing, breathless, falling back upon a bed as unseen hands caught her by the waist. The ghost of her own laughter intertwined with another’s, low and tender.

The scene shifted, swift as a heartbeat. She was dancing now, her skirts swirling as she turned, her hands captured in another’s, the same unseen man. Their movements were light, almost childlike in joy, and her heart ached with a recognition she dared not name. She smiled at him—oh, how she smiled—with a warmth so pure, so unguarded, that tears gathered in her eyes.

And then she saw him.

Only the outline of a man, his form haloed in shadow and gold. But as he drew nearer, the mist began to part, and she felt it before she truly saw him: the quiet gravity of his presence, the ache of familiarity that pierced her to the soul.

He raised his hands.

and laid them gently against her cheeks. They were warm. Real.

Her breath hitched. The world reeled. And when she dared open her eyes, she saw him, Vlad, standing before her, his gaze deep and sorrowful, the living echo of every vision she had just beheld.

Mina gasped, the sound sharp and desperate, stumbling backward until her spine struck the wall. The music box in her grasp, its melody faltering.

He was there.

Not memory, not illusion.

The man she should have hated, the man she could not forget.

“What are you doing?” Mina’s voice was a frayed thread of sound as she pressed herself behind the carved armchair, its bulk a flimsy fortress against the vision before her. Her heart was a wild bird beating against the cage of her ribs. “Do not take another step—or I shall scream.” The threat felt childish, a weapon of the mundane against the profoundly supernatural.

“Mina,” Her name on his lips was not a sound, but a caress, a low, sorrowful murmur that seemed to vibrate in the very air, “do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.”The words were gentle, but his presence was an avalanche, threatening to bury all her resolve.

A sudden, sharp rap upon the door shattered the delicate, terrifying spell.

“Yes?” Mina answered quickly, her gaze darting toward the sound, a flush of shame heating her cheeks.

“Miss, I believe I was perfectly clear about the rules of this house,” came the landlady’s sharp, nasal voice from the corridor. “No music after eight o’clock.”

“Please forgive me,” Mina managed, breathless, “I had not noticed the hour.”

A pause—then, a grudging, “Good,” and the footsteps receded down the hall.

The silence they returned to was heavier, more intimate. She turned back. He was still there, standing by the window, bathed in the faint, trembling light of the streetlamps beyond the glass. He looked as composed, as unearthly serene, as he had hours before at the carnival, a king in exile surveying a common world.

“Now, sir,” she whispered, the command losing its force, barely daring to raise her voice above the frantic rhythm of her own pulse, “if you are indeed the gentleman you claim to be, you will leave this room at once.”

Vlad inclined his head, the gesture slow, courtly. “As you wish,” he said, lowering his gaze in a show of submission that felt like another, more subtle form of dominance. He took a single, silent step toward the door. “My regards.”

“No! Not that way!” she cried, rushing forward before he could touch the handle. The most common sense would tell her to let him go, that the person who hurt Jonathan would be found by those who were hunting him, but deep down, she couldn't allow it. Mina didn't want him to get hurt. “Go the way you came.”

For a heartbeat he only regarded her, his eyes dark as ink, reading the fear and the unspoken fascination warring within her. Then, without a word, he turned toward the window.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, panic, cold and sharp, creeping back into her tone.

He unlatched the panes and drew them open. The hinges groaned a protest, and a gust of the night, cold and smelling of damp stone, flooded the room, snatching her breath. He stepped onto the balcony, the hem of his coat whispering secrets against the floor.

“Wait! What are you doing? You cannot jump—it’s too high!” The concern in her voice was a betrayal, and she hated herself for it.

“Mina,” he said softly, without turning, his profile etched against the bruised sky, “I have waited almost four hundred years merely to see you again. If you wish me gone, I shall go.” The statement was so absurd, so terrifyingly sincere, it stripped her of all coherent thought.

“Yes!” she blurted, too quickly, too harshly, a desperate attempt to claw back control. “Now leave!”

He placed one foot upon the stone ledge again, a man preparing to step off the edge of the world.

“No! I forbid you to kill yourself out of my window!”

He turned his head slightly, the faintest ghost of a smile touching his lips, a flicker of dark amusement in the abyss of his sorrow. “Would you rather I die elsewhere?”

“Yes—no—yes!” The words tangled helplessly upon her tongue, a perfect mirror of the chaos within her soul.

He stepped down from the ledge, calm as ever, and crossed the room toward her. His every movement was deliberate, graceful, inevitable. Mina retreated until the wall pressed its cold truth against her spine, trembling, pointing at him with a quivering indignation that was rapidly crumbling to dust.

“You lied to me,” she whispered.

“Not even once,” he answered, his voice low and certain, a stone dropped into the well of her doubt.

“You sought to seduce me, as you have done with all your victims!” She flung the words at him, wanting them to wound, to prove his monstrosity.

“You are right,” he admitted simply, disarming her completely. From his pocket, he drew a small crystal vial, catching the lamplight. “This is the perfume. But I never used it with you.” And with that, he cast it into the hearth. It shattered, scattering a thousand glittering fragments across the stone like fallen stars. The room filled with a faint, dying sweetness—a cloying, floral ghost—then only the honest scent of smoke remained. He did not flinch.

“I've been told,” she said, voice breaking, “you drink the blood of your victims.” She forced herself to say it, to name the horror.

“It is true,” he murmured, stepping closer, the space between them now charged with a terrifying intimacy, “but you are not my victim.”

Another step. And another. She stood against the wall now, breath ragged, her eyes wide and glistening, a butterfly pinned by the intensity of his gaze.

“You are my beloved.”

“What?” The word fell from her lips as a prayer and a denial all at once, a sound of pure, uncomprehending shock.

“My one and only,” he said, his voice a quiet ruin of longing, stripped bare of all artifice. “My true love.”

“Who are you to speak to me so?” she demanded, a final, feeble spark of defiance.

“My damned Mina,” he replied, the words soft, an endearment and an epitaph. “I am a dead man—condemned by God’s will to live.”

A tremor passed through her; her chest rose in shallow gasps. “Why would God do such a thing?”

“Because He took you from me.” His eyes were endless darkness, holding universes of pain. “So I cursed Him and abandoned him. And contrary to what they believe, I do not crave blood.”

Her knees threatened to give way. He reached up, his touch unbearably tender, and with the pad of his thumb, wiped a single, perfect streak of red from beneath her nose—a trace of blood she had not known was there. He brought it to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers, a gesture of such intimate sacrilege that it stole the air from her lungs.

“Even if yours,” he whispered, the words a dark, sensual

Mina flinched, her hand rising instinctively to her face.

“Without it,” he said quietly, “it, I would be a repulsive old man, which you would hardly dare to look at.”

“These are just words,” she breathed. “Charming words… meant to deceive me.”

“You are right. Words can deceive.” His smile—small, sorrowful, sincere—barely touched his mouth. “But hands never lie.”

Before she could draw back, he took her hand in his.

A jolt, sharp and blinding, coursed through her body—a surge of warmth, of recognition, of unbearable clarity. The world spun; a gasp escaped her lips.

“I will tell you the truth,” he said softly, his thumb stroking her palm, a touch that felt more familiar than her own heartbeat, “about myself—and about you.”

Her vision blurred. Those hands, that voice, that gaze—she knew them. Knew them beyond memory, beyond reason, in the silent, ancient places of her soul.

“About who we truly are.”

Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over without permission. The storm she had denied all her life, the profound loneliness that had been her constant companion, finally broke within her.

“They will tell you,” he continued, his voice a lament weaving through the tapestry of her shattered past, “how they loved…”

Her breath shuddered. He drew closer, his words a low, unrelenting rhythm against her skin, each one a key turning in a lock she never knew she possessed.

“…to caress your face, your neck, your hips…”

Her heart pounded in answer, a drumbeat to a dance she had forgotten. Every word awakened a vision—a touch in a sun-drenched garden, a whisper in a moonlit chamber, a life that had once been hers, pulsating with a joy so acute it was a kind of pain.

“Do you remember,” he asked, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath cool against her heated skin, “the last thing you said to me?”

A tear slid down her cheek, a saline pathway to the past.

“You said: take care of yourself, my prince… my king.”

A light bloomed behind her eyes—blinding, merciful, annihilating. The truth did not approach her; it unfolded within her, like dawn breaking after centuries of night, illuminating the ruins of a palace she had never stopped inhabiting.

“My love,” she breathed, her voice trembling. “Because I cannot survive without you.”

And she knew. At last, she knew. The faces, the laughter, the pain—all of it returned, not as fragments, but as a flood. She saw him as he had been, vibrant and mortal, and as he was now, the eternal echo of her greatest joy and deepest sorrow.

“Oh, my love…” she whispered, closing the infinitesimal distance between them. Her hands rose to his neck, drawing him down, and she kissed him—fiercely, desperately, a kiss of reclamation and absolution—pouring into that single, searing touch all the lifetimes of love and loss that bound them, a chain of souls across the centuries.

A single, crystalline tear slipped from his eye and fell upon her cheek, warm against her skin, indistinguishable from her own. It was the first drop of rain after an eternal drought.

The kiss began as hers—a desperate, furious act of reclamation, a dam breaking after a lifetime of unknowing solitude. It was all the confusion, the betrayal, the aching pull she could no longer deny, given form and fire. She poured everything into that kiss, her fingers tangling in the hair at his nape, anchoring herself to the storm.

But for him, the moment her lips met his, the world ceased its turning.

Four centuries of silence shattered. Four hundred years of a hollowed-out existence, of wandering a world painted in shades of ash, of hearing only the echo of his own damned footsteps. The memory of her voice had been a torment, a beautiful ghost that haunted his every waking moment. To have her now, not as a memory or a phantom conjured by a music box, but as warm, breathing, vital flesh in his arms… it was an absolution so profound it was agony.

His response was not one of gentle reciprocation, but of raw, unvarnished need. A sound, low and guttural, tore from the depths of his being—the sound of a soul finally, after an eternity of starvation, being fed. If her kiss was a question, his was the answer, centuries in the making.

He did not merely kiss her back; he drank her in, as a man dying of thirst falls upon a desert spring. His arms, which had held her with a ghost’s restraint moments before, now locked around her, crushing her to his chest. He could feel the frantic, living beat of her heart against the stillness of his own, a rhythm more sacred than any prayer. This was no phantom. This was real.

He kissed her as he had never dared, even in the height of their first life. Then, he had been a prince, bound by courtly love and mortal decorum. Now, he was a force of nature, a creature of timeless longing unleashed. There was no art, no practiced seduction in this kiss—only a frantic, soul-deep verification. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again, his hands moving from her back to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking her jawline as if to memorize its contour, to feel the truth of her bones beneath her skin.

He broke the kiss only to breathe her in, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes screwed shut as if in prayer. "Elisabeta," he whispered, the name a broken relic of a past life. Then, "Mina," he breathed, a testament to the woman she was now. The two names, two souls, one love, intertwined forever in his heart.

He pulled her back into the fortress of his embrace, burying his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the scent of her—a fragrance of lavender, night air, and the singular, intoxicating essence of her. It was the scent of home, a home he had been exiled from for longer than nations had stood.

"Inima Mea," he murmured against her skin, the old, beloved words—My Heart—rising from a past even more distant. "My wife. My love." The words were not spoken, but wept, each one a stone lifted from the tomb of his heart.

He held her so tightly it bordered on pain, as if he could fuse their beings together through sheer force of will, ensuring no God, no curse, no turn of fate could ever prise her from him again. The four centuries of anguish, the weight of his damnation, the countless sunrises he had cursed—it all dissolved in the warmth of her breath on his neck, in the solid, miraculous reality of her in his arms. It had not been a punishment. It had been a long, dark road, and it had led him here, back to her.

His lips slotted over hers with a finality that stole the air from her lungs. For a terrifying, exhilarating second, the courteous gentleman from the carnival was utterly gone, replaced by the raw, untamed essence of the man who had waged wars and cursed God. There was nothing of the careful suitor in the way he moved now. He took as if she were his divine right, voracious as a starved man at a feast. His tongue, his teeth, the desperate sound in his throat—it was all a concerted assault to collapse the last of her walls, to scour away four centuries of separation in a single, searing touch.

And she, Mina Murray, the picture of English propriety, crumbled headfirst into the abyss with him.

But he was still her Vlad, the echo that had haunted her soul long before she knew his name, so she held on, her fingers twisting into the dark silk of his hair.

A ragged groan, a sound of pure, undiluted agony and ecstasy, was torn from his chest when he felt her surrender. The touch lit a path through the frozen desolation of his being, a bright, screaming finally that resonated in the very core of his damned soul. His hand slid to the back of her neck, the other gripping the curve of her waist: both acts of possession, strong as iron shackles, yet to her, they felt like a homecoming.

“I missed you so much,” she mouthed against his lips, her voice a ruin of need.

His answer was not in words, but in the desperate crush of his embrace, a silent scream of agreement that resonated in the very air around them.

“I want to be with you forever,” she breathed, the statement a vow that felt more true than any she had ever spoken in a church.

Her hands framed his face, her eyes, dark pools of frantic devotion, beseeching him. “Take me,” she pleaded, rising on her toes to reclaim his mouth, her kisses now a desperate litany against his lips, his jaw, the cool, pale column of his throat. She was offering herself, not as a sacrifice, but as a sovereign reclaiming her throne. “I want you to take me… Now!”

A tremor of exquisite agony wracked his frame. “You have your whole life ahead of you,” he managed, his voice a ragged thing, the argument a feeble shield against the tsunami of her will. His thumb stroked her cheekbone with a tenderness that threatened to unmake her completely, a gesture so at odds with the ferocity of his desire.

But she was relentless in her surrender. She captured that stroking thumb, pressing a fervent kiss to its tip, her gaze never wavering from the storm in his eyes. It was a silent promise, a ratification of every unspoken vow.

“I want to be your flesh, in your blood…” A pause, heavy with the weight of the choice, of the death and rebirth it signified. “Please.” The word was a final key turning in the lock of his resistance. With a shuddering sigh of utter abandon, Mina offered him her throat, her head falling back in a gesture of supreme trust, baring the fragile, pulsing vessel of her life to him. The lamplight caressed the pale, vulnerable line of her neck, an altar awaiting its sacrament. “Please, my husband.”

The term, my husband, spoken not as a question but as a truth, shattered the last of his resolve. A low, guttural sound, part pain, part prayer, escaped him. His fingers, trembling with a restraint, moved to sweep the dark silk of her hair aside, his gaze devouring the sight of her offered throat. The scent of her—of life, of lavender, of her—rose to meet him, an intoxicating perfume that clouded all reason.

His body was a battlefield, every instinct screaming to claim what was so freely, so passionately offered, while the ghost of his love for her screamed to protect her from the darkness he embodied.

“My love…” she murmured, a siren’s call that pulled him inexorably closer.

He was lost. He was found.

He bent his head, his cool breath a ghost against the fevered skin of her neck. “My love” she whispered again, the words a final benediction.

Then, his lips parted. The sharp, piercing pain was instantaneous, a bright, white-hot spark that quickly melted into a torrent of unimaginable sensation. It was not an invasion, but a consummation. A wave of piercing pleasure, so profound it bordered on agony, radiated from the point of contact, flooding every nerve, every fiber of her being. It was a feeling of being utterly claimed, irrevocably bound, and terrifyingly, gloriously alive.

A series of ragged, breathy gasps fell from her lips, her fists clenching in the fabric of his coat, not to push him away, but to anchor herself against the dizzying vortex of feeling. She did not fight it; she welcomed it, her body arching against his as a flower seeks the sun. It was an ecstasy that tasted of pain, a liberation that felt like a chains, a dance of shadow and light that promised forever in its terrifying, beautiful embrace. She was not being drained; she was being remade. Fused. Completed.

[velieditss]

I absolutely adore all your Vlad content!! If you think you would enjoy writing it, could I humbly request a snippet for the scene where Vlad seeks Mina out following the carnival and she finally remember her past life?

PS. Thank you for feeding my current obsession with this devastating character🫶

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Mina

Summary: Caught between reason and a desire that defies all logic, Mina faces a presence from the past that reopens wounds and awakens impossible memories. On a night marked by music and destiny, the line between love and condemnation dissolves, revealing a bond that neither time nor death could break.

An: Babes, I've had a really tough week and I warn you that this one will be one of those too. This request is the only thing I've been able to work on and that I've really liked enough to upload. I hope to find some calm over the next few days so I can continue working on the other requests and the series I still have pending. I swear I'm giving it my all.

Wc: 4K

Masterlist / Kofi

The door closed behind her with a sharp thud, followed by the faintest gasp, half sob, half breath, as Mina pressed her brow against the wooden frame, her palms trembling against its cold surface. Her heart beat furiously beneath her ribs, wild and ungoverned, as though it sought escape from the anguish that had taken hold of her. She willed herself to stillness, whispering silent words of reason, of propriety, of duty. Anything that might silence the aching confusion that swelled within her chest.

But reason faltered. The pain was too strange, too consuming to be mastered by logic alone.

The small satchel slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a dull sound, scattering a few loose belongings across the worn boards. From somewhere below, faint and muffled, came Jonathan’s groans, a reminder of reality, of the life she had vowed to return to. The sound should have anchored her. Instead, it struck her like a blow.

Her gloves came off next, stripped from her hands with a gesture more of defiance than relief. They landed beside the fallen bag and there, peeking from its half-open mouth, she saw it: the edge of the little gilded box.

The gift.

For an instant she could not move. The sight of it sent a chill coursing through her, as though it still carried his touch, his scent, his unearthly calm. It gleamed faintly in the lamplight, that delicate contrivance of brass and gold, so deceptively innocent, so cruelly beautiful.

A gift from the very man who had torn her world asunder. The same who had looked upon her with a gentleness that no man had ever shown her, not even Jonathan.

He had given it to her without hesitation, his voice soft, his eyes shadowed with a sorrow she could not comprehend. “It once belonged to my wife” he had murmured.

She tried to refuse but he seemed so confident that she could do nothing but accept it. And he smiled, the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.

Mina’s breath caught in her throat. The melody of that memory—the low timbre of his words, the subtle curve of his smile—lingered in her mind like a haunting refrain.

Reaching for the box with hands that no longer obeyed her. The metal was cool beneath her touch, yet it seemed to pulse faintly, alive with some hidden energy. Her reflection wavered upon its polished surface, ghostly and uncertain, as though she no longer recognized the woman who stared back at her.

With trembling fingers, she lifted the lid.

At once, the mechanism stirred, a swift succession of clicks and whirs, and the melody burst forth, clear, resounding, alive. The notes swelled through the chamber, echoing off the walls like waves of light, until every corner seemed to pulse with its rhythm. It was no mere tune; it was a summons, a spell woven of memory and longing.

Mina’s breath caught as the sound wrapped itself around her, slipping through the marrow of her bones. Her pulse quickened to its measure, and, before she knew it, her feet began to move. Slowly, hesitantly at first, she turned in place, one, two steps —the music guiding her as though she were not mistress of her own body. The box rested delicately in her hands, glinting in the lamplight, its song growing stronger with every turn.

Then she heard it.

A laugh, faint, distant, yet impossibly near. It trembled through the air like the echo of a bell. She stilled, listening. Another laugh followed, lighter, brighter, and she knew it then with a shuddering certainty. It was hers.

Fragments began to bloom behind her eyes, at first blurred, like half-formed dreams glimpsed through mist. Then sharper, clearer. A room washed in pale morning light. The silken rustle of sheets. She saw herself, laughing, breathless, falling back upon a bed as unseen hands caught her by the waist. The ghost of her own laughter intertwined with another’s, low and tender.

The scene shifted, swift as a heartbeat. She was dancing now, her skirts swirling as she turned, her hands captured in another’s, the same unseen man. Their movements were light, almost childlike in joy, and her heart ached with a recognition she dared not name. She smiled at him—oh, how she smiled—with a warmth so pure, so unguarded, that tears gathered in her eyes.

And then she saw him.

Only the outline of a man, his form haloed in shadow and gold. But as he drew nearer, the mist began to part, and she felt it before she truly saw him: the quiet gravity of his presence, the ache of familiarity that pierced her to the soul.

He raised his hands.

and laid them gently against her cheeks. They were warm. Real.

Her breath hitched. The world reeled. And when she dared open her eyes, she saw him, Vlad, standing before her, his gaze deep and sorrowful, the living echo of every vision she had just beheld.

Mina gasped, the sound sharp and desperate, stumbling backward until her spine struck the wall. The music box in her grasp, its melody faltering.

He was there.

Not memory, not illusion.

The man she should have hated, the man she could not forget.

“What are you doing?” Mina’s voice was a frayed thread of sound as she pressed herself behind the carved armchair, its bulk a flimsy fortress against the vision before her. Her heart was a wild bird beating against the cage of her ribs. “Do not take another step—or I shall scream.” The threat felt childish, a weapon of the mundane against the profoundly supernatural.

“Mina,” Her name on his lips was not a sound, but a caress, a low, sorrowful murmur that seemed to vibrate in the very air, “do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.”The words were gentle, but his presence was an avalanche, threatening to bury all her resolve.

A sudden, sharp rap upon the door shattered the delicate, terrifying spell.

“Yes?” Mina answered quickly, her gaze darting toward the sound, a flush of shame heating her cheeks.

“Miss, I believe I was perfectly clear about the rules of this house,” came the landlady’s sharp, nasal voice from the corridor. “No music after eight o’clock.”

“Please forgive me,” Mina managed, breathless, “I had not noticed the hour.”

A pause—then, a grudging, “Good,” and the footsteps receded down the hall.

The silence they returned to was heavier, more intimate. She turned back. He was still there, standing by the window, bathed in the faint, trembling light of the streetlamps beyond the glass. He looked as composed, as unearthly serene, as he had hours before at the carnival, a king in exile surveying a common world.

“Now, sir,” she whispered, the command losing its force, barely daring to raise her voice above the frantic rhythm of her own pulse, “if you are indeed the gentleman you claim to be, you will leave this room at once.”

Vlad inclined his head, the gesture slow, courtly. “As you wish,” he said, lowering his gaze in a show of submission that felt like another, more subtle form of dominance. He took a single, silent step toward the door. “My regards.”

“No! Not that way!” she cried, rushing forward before he could touch the handle. The most common sense would tell her to let him go, that the person who hurt Jonathan would be found by those who were hunting him, but deep down, she couldn't allow it. Mina didn't want him to get hurt. “Go the way you came.”

For a heartbeat he only regarded her, his eyes dark as ink, reading the fear and the unspoken fascination warring within her. Then, without a word, he turned toward the window.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, panic, cold and sharp, creeping back into her tone.

He unlatched the panes and drew them open. The hinges groaned a protest, and a gust of the night, cold and smelling of damp stone, flooded the room, snatching her breath. He stepped onto the balcony, the hem of his coat whispering secrets against the floor.

“Wait! What are you doing? You cannot jump—it’s too high!” The concern in her voice was a betrayal, and she hated herself for it.

“Mina,” he said softly, without turning, his profile etched against the bruised sky, “I have waited almost four hundred years merely to see you again. If you wish me gone, I shall go.” The statement was so absurd, so terrifyingly sincere, it stripped her of all coherent thought.

“Yes!” she blurted, too quickly, too harshly, a desperate attempt to claw back control. “Now leave!”

He placed one foot upon the stone ledge again, a man preparing to step off the edge of the world.

“No! I forbid you to kill yourself out of my window!”

He turned his head slightly, the faintest ghost of a smile touching his lips, a flicker of dark amusement in the abyss of his sorrow. “Would you rather I die elsewhere?”

“Yes—no—yes!” The words tangled helplessly upon her tongue, a perfect mirror of the chaos within her soul.

He stepped down from the ledge, calm as ever, and crossed the room toward her. His every movement was deliberate, graceful, inevitable. Mina retreated until the wall pressed its cold truth against her spine, trembling, pointing at him with a quivering indignation that was rapidly crumbling to dust.

“You lied to me,” she whispered.

“Not even once,” he answered, his voice low and certain, a stone dropped into the well of her doubt.

“You sought to seduce me, as you have done with all your victims!” She flung the words at him, wanting them to wound, to prove his monstrosity.

“You are right,” he admitted simply, disarming her completely. From his pocket, he drew a small crystal vial, catching the lamplight. “This is the perfume. But I never used it with you.” And with that, he cast it into the hearth. It shattered, scattering a thousand glittering fragments across the stone like fallen stars. The room filled with a faint, dying sweetness—a cloying, floral ghost—then only the honest scent of smoke remained. He did not flinch.

“I've been told,” she said, voice breaking, “you drink the blood of your victims.” She forced herself to say it, to name the horror.

“It is true,” he murmured, stepping closer, the space between them now charged with a terrifying intimacy, “but you are not my victim.”

Another step. And another. She stood against the wall now, breath ragged, her eyes wide and glistening, a butterfly pinned by the intensity of his gaze.

“You are my beloved.”

“What?” The word fell from her lips as a prayer and a denial all at once, a sound of pure, uncomprehending shock.

“My one and only,” he said, his voice a quiet ruin of longing, stripped bare of all artifice. “My true love.”

“Who are you to speak to me so?” she demanded, a final, feeble spark of defiance.

“My damned Mina,” he replied, the words soft, an endearment and an epitaph. “I am a dead man—condemned by God’s will to live.”

A tremor passed through her; her chest rose in shallow gasps. “Why would God do such a thing?”

“Because He took you from me.” His eyes were endless darkness, holding universes of pain. “So I cursed Him and abandoned him. And contrary to what they believe, I do not crave blood.”

Her knees threatened to give way. He reached up, his touch unbearably tender, and with the pad of his thumb, wiped a single, perfect streak of red from beneath her nose—a trace of blood she had not known was there. He brought it to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers, a gesture of such intimate sacrilege that it stole the air from her lungs.

“Even if yours,” he whispered, the words a dark, sensual

Mina flinched, her hand rising instinctively to her face.

“Without it,” he said quietly, “it, I would be a repulsive old man, which you would hardly dare to look at.”

“These are just words,” she breathed. “Charming words… meant to deceive me.”

“You are right. Words can deceive.” His smile—small, sorrowful, sincere—barely touched his mouth. “But hands never lie.”

Before she could draw back, he took her hand in his.

A jolt, sharp and blinding, coursed through her body—a surge of warmth, of recognition, of unbearable clarity. The world spun; a gasp escaped her lips.

“I will tell you the truth,” he said softly, his thumb stroking her palm, a touch that felt more familiar than her own heartbeat, “about myself—and about you.”

Her vision blurred. Those hands, that voice, that gaze—she knew them. Knew them beyond memory, beyond reason, in the silent, ancient places of her soul.

“About who we truly are.”

Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over without permission. The storm she had denied all her life, the profound loneliness that had been her constant companion, finally broke within her.

“They will tell you,” he continued, his voice a lament weaving through the tapestry of her shattered past, “how they loved…”

Her breath shuddered. He drew closer, his words a low, unrelenting rhythm against her skin, each one a key turning in a lock she never knew she possessed.

“…to caress your face, your neck, your hips…”

Her heart pounded in answer, a drumbeat to a dance she had forgotten. Every word awakened a vision—a touch in a sun-drenched garden, a whisper in a moonlit chamber, a life that had once been hers, pulsating with a joy so acute it was a kind of pain.

“Do you remember,” he asked, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath cool against her heated skin, “the last thing you said to me?”

A tear slid down her cheek, a saline pathway to the past.

“You said: take care of yourself, my prince… my king.”

A light bloomed behind her eyes—blinding, merciful, annihilating. The truth did not approach her; it unfolded within her, like dawn breaking after centuries of night, illuminating the ruins of a palace she had never stopped inhabiting.

“My love,” she breathed, her voice trembling. “Because I cannot survive without you.”

And she knew. At last, she knew. The faces, the laughter, the pain—all of it returned, not as fragments, but as a flood. She saw him as he had been, vibrant and mortal, and as he was now, the eternal echo of her greatest joy and deepest sorrow.

“Oh, my love…” she whispered, closing the infinitesimal distance between them. Her hands rose to his neck, drawing him down, and she kissed him—fiercely, desperately, a kiss of reclamation and absolution—pouring into that single, searing touch all the lifetimes of love and loss that bound them, a chain of souls across the centuries.

A single, crystalline tear slipped from his eye and fell upon her cheek, warm against her skin, indistinguishable from her own. It was the first drop of rain after an eternal drought.

The kiss began as hers—a desperate, furious act of reclamation, a dam breaking after a lifetime of unknowing solitude. It was all the confusion, the betrayal, the aching pull she could no longer deny, given form and fire. She poured everything into that kiss, her fingers tangling in the hair at his nape, anchoring herself to the storm.

But for him, the moment her lips met his, the world ceased its turning.

Four centuries of silence shattered. Four hundred years of a hollowed-out existence, of wandering a world painted in shades of ash, of hearing only the echo of his own damned footsteps. The memory of her voice had been a torment, a beautiful ghost that haunted his every waking moment. To have her now, not as a memory or a phantom conjured by a music box, but as warm, breathing, vital flesh in his arms… it was an absolution so profound it was agony.

His response was not one of gentle reciprocation, but of raw, unvarnished need. A sound, low and guttural, tore from the depths of his being—the sound of a soul finally, after an eternity of starvation, being fed. If her kiss was a question, his was the answer, centuries in the making.

He did not merely kiss her back; he drank her in, as a man dying of thirst falls upon a desert spring. His arms, which had held her with a ghost’s restraint moments before, now locked around her, crushing her to his chest. He could feel the frantic, living beat of her heart against the stillness of his own, a rhythm more sacred than any prayer. This was no phantom. This was real.

He kissed her as he had never dared, even in the height of their first life. Then, he had been a prince, bound by courtly love and mortal decorum. Now, he was a force of nature, a creature of timeless longing unleashed. There was no art, no practiced seduction in this kiss—only a frantic, soul-deep verification. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again, his hands moving from her back to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking her jawline as if to memorize its contour, to feel the truth of her bones beneath her skin.

He broke the kiss only to breathe her in, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes screwed shut as if in prayer. "Elisabeta," he whispered, the name a broken relic of a past life. Then, "Mina," he breathed, a testament to the woman she was now. The two names, two souls, one love, intertwined forever in his heart.

He pulled her back into the fortress of his embrace, burying his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the scent of her—a fragrance of lavender, night air, and the singular, intoxicating essence of her. It was the scent of home, a home he had been exiled from for longer than nations had stood.

"Inima Mea," he murmured against her skin, the old, beloved words—My Heart—rising from a past even more distant. "My wife. My love." The words were not spoken, but wept, each one a stone lifted from the tomb of his heart.

He held her so tightly it bordered on pain, as if he could fuse their beings together through sheer force of will, ensuring no God, no curse, no turn of fate could ever prise her from him again. The four centuries of anguish, the weight of his damnation, the countless sunrises he had cursed—it all dissolved in the warmth of her breath on his neck, in the solid, miraculous reality of her in his arms. It had not been a punishment. It had been a long, dark road, and it had led him here, back to her.

His lips slotted over hers with a finality that stole the air from her lungs. For a terrifying, exhilarating second, the courteous gentleman from the carnival was utterly gone, replaced by the raw, untamed essence of the man who had waged wars and cursed God. There was nothing of the careful suitor in the way he moved now. He took as if she were his divine right, voracious as a starved man at a feast. His tongue, his teeth, the desperate sound in his throat—it was all a concerted assault to collapse the last of her walls, to scour away four centuries of separation in a single, searing touch.

And she, Mina Murray, the picture of English propriety, crumbled headfirst into the abyss with him.

But he was still her Vlad, the echo that had haunted her soul long before she knew his name, so she held on, her fingers twisting into the dark silk of his hair.

A ragged groan, a sound of pure, undiluted agony and ecstasy, was torn from his chest when he felt her surrender. The touch lit a path through the frozen desolation of his being, a bright, screaming finally that resonated in the very core of his damned soul. His hand slid to the back of her neck, the other gripping the curve of her waist: both acts of possession, strong as iron shackles, yet to her, they felt like a homecoming.

“I missed you so much,” she mouthed against his lips, her voice a ruin of need.

His answer was not in words, but in the desperate crush of his embrace, a silent scream of agreement that resonated in the very air around them.

“I want to be with you forever,” she breathed, the statement a vow that felt more true than any she had ever spoken in a church.

Her hands framed his face, her eyes, dark pools of frantic devotion, beseeching him. “Take me,” she pleaded, rising on her toes to reclaim his mouth, her kisses now a desperate litany against his lips, his jaw, the cool, pale column of his throat. She was offering herself, not as a sacrifice, but as a sovereign reclaiming her throne. “I want you to take me… Now!”

A tremor of exquisite agony wracked his frame. “You have your whole life ahead of you,” he managed, his voice a ragged thing, the argument a feeble shield against the tsunami of her will. His thumb stroked her cheekbone with a tenderness that threatened to unmake her completely, a gesture so at odds with the ferocity of his desire.

But she was relentless in her surrender. She captured that stroking thumb, pressing a fervent kiss to its tip, her gaze never wavering from the storm in his eyes. It was a silent promise, a ratification of every unspoken vow.

“I want to be your flesh, in your blood…” A pause, heavy with the weight of the choice, of the death and rebirth it signified. “Please.” The word was a final key turning in the lock of his resistance. With a shuddering sigh of utter abandon, Mina offered him her throat, her head falling back in a gesture of supreme trust, baring the fragile, pulsing vessel of her life to him. The lamplight caressed the pale, vulnerable line of her neck, an altar awaiting its sacrament. “Please, my husband.”

The term, my husband, spoken not as a question but as a truth, shattered the last of his resolve. A low, guttural sound, part pain, part prayer, escaped him. His fingers, trembling with a restraint, moved to sweep the dark silk of her hair aside, his gaze devouring the sight of her offered throat. The scent of her—of life, of lavender, of her—rose to meet him, an intoxicating perfume that clouded all reason.

His body was a battlefield, every instinct screaming to claim what was so freely, so passionately offered, while the ghost of his love for her screamed to protect her from the darkness he embodied.

“My love…” she murmured, a siren’s call that pulled him inexorably closer.

He was lost. He was found.

He bent his head, his cool breath a ghost against the fevered skin of her neck. “My love” she whispered again, the words a final benediction.

Then, his lips parted. The sharp, piercing pain was instantaneous, a bright, white-hot spark that quickly melted into a torrent of unimaginable sensation. It was not an invasion, but a consummation. A wave of piercing pleasure, so profound it bordered on agony, radiated from the point of contact, flooding every nerve, every fiber of her being. It was a feeling of being utterly claimed, irrevocably bound, and terrifyingly, gloriously alive.

A series of ragged, breathy gasps fell from her lips, her fists clenching in the fabric of his coat, not to push him away, but to anchor herself against the dizzying vortex of feeling. She did not fight it; she welcomed it, her body arching against his as a flower seeks the sun. It was an ecstasy that tasted of pain, a liberation that felt like a chains, a dance of shadow and light that promised forever in its terrifying, beautiful embrace. She was not being drained; she was being remade. Fused. Completed.

[velieditss]

Babies, I know this isn't a chapter or a one-shot, but they lost my suitcase at the airport. I'm literally panicking

[velieditss]

I am working on getting both part 3 and the requests you have been sending me ready! I really hope to have them ready because, unfortunately, my daily work means I am almost always rushing around! I promise to have them ready this week, just bear with me a little longer

[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

Chapter 2

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, reader has a surname, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, mention of murder and violence, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

Wc: 5.1K

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

The silence that gripped the high table was a living entity, fed by Ladislaus’s impotent rage and the Prince’s chilling candor. It was a void that threatened to swallow the pretense of celebration whole. Then, the young king moved, a subtle shift of his shoulders as if casting off an invisible weight. Matthias’s smile returned, not the bright, celebratory one from before, but something wiser, more measured. It was the smile of a boy who had been forced to become a man too quickly, and who now understood that some storms could not be commanded, only navigated.

“A ruler must indeed understand the nature of his tools,” Matthias said, his voice calm, reclaiming the space the Prince’s words had dominated. He looked not at Ladislaus, nor directly at Vlad, but at the space between them, a diplomat addressing the tension itself. “And he must also understand that each tool has its purpose and its place. The hammer to break the rock, the scalpel to cut the rot, and the pen to write the treaty that ensures neither is needed too soon again.” He lifted his goblet, a gesture that included both the shamed Ladislaus and the formidable Prince. “We are all, in our own ways, tools for the preservation of Christendom. It is the hand that wields us, guided by God and reason, that determines the outcome. Your perspectives, Voivode, are… invaluable. They remind us of the stakes. And for that, Hungary thanks you.”

It was a masterful response. He had given Vlad reason without bowing to him, and in doing so, had gently reasserted the primacy of his own throne. The air, thick with the threat of violence, began to slowly, cautiously, thin.

You could hear your father's words in him. And you were impressed by how much Matthias had changed since the crown was placed on his head. You prayed that this maturity would make him realise the many mistakes that surrounded him. The air, thick with the threat of violence, began to slowly, cautiously, thin.

Seizing the moment, Matthias rose to his full height, his voice projecting once more to the wider hall. “But tonight is a celebration! And no celebration in Hungary is complete without a dance to remind our hearts what we defend with our steel.” His gaze swept over the guests before settling, with deliberate kindness, upon his wife. Catherine offered a wan but genuine smile.

Then, his eyes found yours. They were warm, cousinly, and utterly inescapable. “Dear cousin,” he said, his voice imbued with a public affection that felt like a new, gilded chain. “Our queen must conserve her strength for the heir she carries. Would you do me the great honor of leading the dance with your king? Let us show our court, and our guests, the grace and unity of our house.”

Forcing a grace you did not feel, you lowered your eyes in a show of demure acceptance. “The honor is mine, Your Grace,” you said, your voice a clear, steady note that belied the frantic beating of your heart.

You placed your hand in his, the young king’s grasp firm and assured. As he led you from the high table toward the center of the hall, the musicians, who had been waiting for their cue, struck up a stately branle. The courtiers parted before you, a sea of smiling, curious faces. To them, it was a beautiful picture: the young king and his beloved cousin, a symbol of familial loyalty and courtly grace.

The music swelled, a lively, intricate melody that demanded precise, formal steps. You moved with Matthias in the center of the grand hall, your crimson gown a stark bloom against the sea of onlookers. Your hand was light in his, your steps measured, but your heart was a wild, trapped thing. The public smile never left your face, a mask of courtly grace, but your eyes, as you turned in a slow, prescribed circle, held his.

“You promised me time,” you said, the words escaping on a breath meant to be part of the dance’s rhythm, so low that only he could hear them. “You said this night was for the foreign guests. For taking their measure. You gave me your word, Matthias.”

He guided you through a turn, his grip on your hand firm, his own smile never faltering. “Do you think I do not know what you’re doing?”

he asked, his voice equally quiet, a counterpoint to the cheerful music.

The question, so calmly delivered, sent a chill through you that had nothing to do with the cool hall air. You completed the step, your bodies coming close again before parting in the pattern of the dance. “What do you mean?” you whispered, the mask of your smile slipping for a fraction of a second.

He drew you into a promenade, arm-in-arm, and it was then he looked at you, his gaze sharp and knowing. “It was not difficult to deduce,” he murmured, his tone almost conversational. “The tension in my wife’s chambers whenever your mother entered, hearing complains about your betrothed. The way your eyes would harden to flint whenever Pongrác’s name was mentioned in your presence. You are many things, cousin, but you are not a subtle actress when it comes to your repulsion.” He gave a soft, mirthless chuckle. “You wear your disdain like a scent. A king learns to notice such things.”

The steps of the dance carried you apart, giving you a moment to school your features, to force the blood back from your pallid cheeks. When you came together again, his next words landed with the finality of a headsman’s axe.

“It was the whispers between you and your mother during the reception. The way you scanned the crowd. You were looking for another option, were you not? It's exactly what your father would tell you to do if he hadn't been the one to close the deal.”

He had seen it all. He had watched you scheme and, finding your efforts both transparent and dangerous to his own plans.

“So you moved first,” you breathed, the words tasting of ash. The dance felt like a funeral march. “You announced it to the entire court to box me in, to make it irrevocable.”

His smile was a sad, understanding thing, all the more devastating for its gentleness. “To protect you from a futile endeavor, and to secure what Hungary needs,” he corrected softly, his hand squeezing yours in a mockery of comfort as the music began its final, soaring refrain. “This is the way it must be. For all of us.”

The final notes of the branle hung in the air, but the true performance was just beginning. As the court applauded, Matthias kept your hand in his, his gaze holding yours, a silent demand for the conversation to continue. The musicians transitioned into a slower, more intimate pavane, and the other couples began to join the floor, granting you a semblance of privacy within the crowd.

“He is a rabid dog, Matthias,” you whispered urgently as you came together, your steps slow and measured. “Giving him a Szilágyi bride will not tame him; it will only make him believe he has the right to bite the hand that feeds him. You are giving him legitimacy, a connection to the throne he can exploit. He will not see me as a wife, but as a title deed, and with that deed, he will demand more power, more influence. He will become unmanageable.”

Matthias’s expression remained placid, but a flicker of doubt entered his eyes. You pressed on, your voice a desperate, fervent whisper. “I know my father wants his lands, his resources. I understand the pragmatism. But as king, you must look beyond the ledger. Think, Matthias. Why did your father, the great John Hunyadi, never treat with Ladislaus while he lived? Why did he keep that viper at arm's length? He saw the rot in him, the same rot the Voivode so plainly named.”

The dance forced you apart, a slow, circling retreat that felt like an eternity. You used the moment to gather your courage, to let the raw truth of your fear shine in your eyes when you returned to him. “I have been in his company. I have endured his presence and seen the cruel avarice in his soul. To live under his roof would not be a life; it would be a slow descent into a hell from which death would be a gentler release. I am begging you, not as your subject, but as your blood. Let me choose. Grant me this one mercy. I would never act against our family. I would never act against Hungary. I am a Szilágyi. My loyalty is my name. But let my loyalty be given, not sold to the highest bidder.”

You moved through the steps, your heart pounding against your ribs like a trapped bird. The music swelled, and as you came together once more, his hand on your back, he looked down at you, his youthful face a mask of conflicted sovereignty.

“Who?” he asked, the single word cutting through the melody. His voice was low, intense. “If I were to grant you this… this incredible leniency, who do you have in mind? You have scanned the entire court. Give me a name.”

The command hung between you, as terrifying as it was liberating. Your mind, so full of desperate plans, suddenly went blank, then raced. A name. He demanded a name. It could not be just any lord; it had to be a man of power, a man who could offer Hungary something equal to or greater than Ladislaus’s lands. A man who could be a shield, not just for you, but for the crown itself.

Your eyes, almost of their own volition, strayed from the king’s face, sweeping across the glittering assembly. They passed over the preening dukes, the simpering barons, and landed, as if drawn by a lodestone, on the one man who commanded the room without uttering a word. The man whose very presence was a challenge, whose honesty was a weapon, and whose understanding smile had felt like your only moment of salvation in this long, dreadful night.

He stood apart, as always, a silhouette of black against the golden glow of the hall, his dark eyes already watching the dance, watching you.

Your breath caught. It was madness. It was treason to your family’s history. It was the most dangerous choice imaginable.

And it was the only one that made sense.

You turned your gaze back to Matthias, your chin lifting with a defiance that was both terrifying and exhilarating. The name was on your lips, a forbidden prayer, a gamble with your very soul.

“Him,” you whispered, your voice barely audible, yet carrying the weight of your future. You did not need to say his name. The direction of your gaze, the shift in your expression, said it all. The Prince of Wallachia.

Matthias’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated shock. The carefully constructed mask of the sovereign crumbled, revealing the young man beneath, utterly floored by your audacity.

A low, incredulous laugh escaped him. “Him?” he repeated, the word a sharp exhalation. “You wish to trade a life in hell for a pact with the Devil himself? You just finished telling me that living with Pongrác would be a fate worse than death, and now you point to the one man in this hall my father taught me to fear above the Sultan? Explain this madness to me, cousin. How is one monster preferable to the other?”

“Ladislaus is a snake who hides in the grass,” you whispered, your voice fierce and low. “He smiles while he plots. The Prince does not hide what he is. He is sincere in his ruthlessness. He has a code, however brutal, and he adheres to it without apology. That alone makes him infinitely more predictable, and therefore more trustworthy, than a man whose loyalty shifts with the wind.”

“Trustworthy?” Matthias hissed, guiding you through a turn. “He is a known traitor!”

“So is Ladislaus!” you shot back, your eyes flashing. “it is known he nearly swore fealty to your predecessor’s sister. The only difference is that the Prince admits his capacity for faithlessness. He owns it. Ladislaus cloaks his in false smiles, and that makes him the greater fool, and the greater danger to you.”

Matthias was silent for a few steps, the logic, however perverse, striking its mark. “Pongrác offers land, resources,” he argued, his voice tight. “What does the Voivode offer? He holds his own throne by his fingernails.”

“He offers an army,” you countered immediately. “Not just men, but a hardened force that knows how to fight the Turk on their own terms. He offers a buffer. An alliance with him secures a flank, it protects a stretch of border. It means the Ottoman armies cannot simply sweep through Wallachia and into Hungary unimpeded. That is worth more than all the grain in Ladislaus’s storehouses. It is the difference between a fortified wall and a bag of gold left in an open field.”

Matthias could not refute the military strategy. It was sound. It was, you realized, perhaps the very reason the Prince had been invited at all. His jaw tightened, and he played his final, most personal card. “You forget the history. Our family and his… there is blood between us. A river of it. He may not hate you personally, but you are a Szilágyi. You are my cousin. He could take you simply to have a piece of us, to wield you as a weapon against me, to torture my father’s memory through you. A marriage to him would not be a shield; it would be walking into your own execution.”

The fear in his voice was real, and it sent a fresh chill down your spine. But you had come too far to retreat. “Then tell me,” you implored, your voice softening, pleading for the truth that had been kept from you. “What happened? What did my uncle do that was so terrible it would warrant such a vengeance?”

The dance carried you apart, the space between you filled with the swell of music and the rustle of silk. When you came together again, his face was grim, the weight of a dark legacy settling upon his young shoulders.

“When Vlad was a boy,” Matthias began, his voice barely a whisper, a secret confession in the midst of the celebration, “his father, Vlad Dracul, gave him and his younger brother as hostages to the Sultan. A guarantee of his loyalty. For six years, he was a prisoner of the Ottomans. Any betrayal by his father meant his death.”

You listened, your heart thudding dully in your chest.

“And yet,” Matthias continued, his gaze distant, “his father, alongside my father, fought to push the Ottomans back from our borders. He allied with us. To everyone’s astonishment, the Sultan did not kill the sons. He released Vlad, not to his family, but to his own side, to be groomed. His father and elder brother did nothing to reclaim him. Humiliated, Dracul was forced to pay an annual tribute to the Porte.”

He paused, the next words heavy with shame. “My father, who was then Regent of Hungary, saw this not as a father’s desperate choice to save his son’s life, but as the deepest treason. He invaded Wallachia. In the process, his armies killed Vlad Dracul and his elder brother, Mircea. They carved out their eyes with hot iron pokers before burying them alive. Then, my father placed a cousin of theirs on the throne that was rightfully Vlad’s.”

The horror of it stole your breath. The music, the laughter, it all faded into a dull roar. You were no longer dancing; you were standing at the edge of a chasm of betrayal and brutality. It was not just a political rivalry. It was a blood feud. Your uncle had not only robbed Vlad of his family and his birthright; he had subjected them to a death of unimaginable cruelty.

You finally understood the cold fire in the Prince’s eyes, the weight of the history that made your mother pale. You were not considering a man. You were considering a storm of vengeance, and you had just asked your king to give you to it.

“So I ask you once again, dear cousin. Are you sure you want it to be him?”

The question Matthias had asked you hung more persistent than any hymn.

Now, knowing the full, horrific truth The story Matthias had whispered during the dance played behind your eyes like a grim tapestry: a boy given as a pawn, years of Ottoman captivity, a father’s impossible choice met not with understanding but with brutal betrayal. Your uncle, the legendary John Hunyadi, was not just a political opponent to Vlad; he was the architect of his deepest trauma, the man who had not only slaughtered his father and brother but had desecrated their bodies in the most horrific way before stealing the throne that was his birthright.

You understood, with a clarity that chilled you to the bone, why Vlad Țepeș would hate your family with a fire that could never be extinguished. You understood why he might seek vengeance, a life for a life, an eye for an eye—or in his case, two eyes, brutally taken, for a kingdom stolen.

And you, in your desperation, had pointed to him. You had seen a shield, a powerful, honest monster to protect you from a petty, smiling one. But now you saw the man behind the legend, a man forged in betrayal and unimaginable loss. How could you have been so naive? To think that such a man could separate you from the name you carried, from the blood that ran in your veins—the very same blood that had ordered the murder of his family—was the height of foolishness.

He would never see you as anything other than a Szilágyi, a living symbol of the house that had destroyed his. Any hope that he might set aside his vengeance for your sake was the desperate fantasy of a drowning woman.

You bowed your head, the weight of it all pressing down on you. The hopeful, defiant spark you had felt on the dance floor now felt like a dying ember in a sea of ash. To choose Vlad was to willingly walk into a gilded cage where the keeper’s kindness would be a lie and his cruelty a certainty born of a pain you could comprehend. Yet, the alternative—Ladislaus—remained a fate of a different, more vulgar hell.

You had no such serenity. You had only a choice between two damnations, and the haunting, unanswerable question: which hell was truly worse?

Sleep was a traitor that would not come. The fire had burned low in your chamber grate, and the moon was a cold, judgmental eye through the window glass. The weight of your thoughts was a physical pressure on your chest, making the very air feel thin and useless. The four walls of your room, usually a sanctuary, had become the confines of a prison, each one pressing in with the specter of a different damnation.

Driven by a restlessness that gnawed at her bones, you slipped from your bed. You did not bother with a cloak, pulling only a heavy shawl over your nightgown before stepping out into the stone-flagged corridor. The castle was deep in its nocturnal slumber, silent but for the distant, rhythmic tread of a guard on his rounds. Your feet, bare in their soft leather slippers, made no sound as you moved through the familiar labyrinth, drawn by an instinct older than reason.

You sought the chapel. Not for a miracle, perhaps, but for a different quality of silence—one not filled with the echo of your own frantic heart, but with the quiet patience of centuries. At this hour, long after Compline and long before Matins, you expected to find it empty. Your father, a man of habit, took his private prayers at dawn. Catherine, in her condition, was accompanied there for a brief morning devotion. But now, in the deep watch of the night, you hoped to find it a void, a place where you could pour your own turmoil into a greater, more absorbing stillness, where the silence of God might swallow the screaming in your soul.

You pushed the heavy oak door, its iron hinges groaning softly, a sound that seemed to confess your own weariness. The air inside was frigid, smelling of stone and extinguished candles. The red glow of the sanctuary lamp, a single vigilant eye in the darkness, cast long, dancing shadows that made the saints in their niches seem to shift and breathe.

You moved down the short nave, your shawl pulled tight against the chill, your steps slow and deliberate on the cold floor. Your eyes, adjusted to the gloom, scanned the pews, expecting only the emptiness you had craved.

But you were not alone.

A figure was kneeling at the very front, before the simple altar, his head bowed not in prayer, but in a posture of profound, weary stillness. He was dressed not in nightclothes, but in dark, travel-worn attire, as if he had only just arrived or could not bear the pretense of rest. The flickering light from the lamp caught the sharp line of his shoulder, the pale nape of his neck, and the severe, unyielding profile you had seared into your memory.

A sight difficult to forget.

The prince.

He was the last person you expected to find, and yet, in the strange logic of this cursed night, it felt inevitable.

He had not heard you enter, his stillness so absolute he seemed a part of the chapel itself, a monument to some private, relentless agony. And you, frozen in the aisle, were faced with the very source of your torment, praying in the darkness.

For a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, you were paralyzed. Every instinct screamed for retreat, to melt back into the shadows from whence you came and leave this man to his private torment. It felt like a sacrilege to witness him in such a state of unguarded stillness, this prince of sharp edges and brutal truths brought low before a silent altar. To stay was to intrude upon a pain you now understood was fathomless.

Yet, your feet were rooted to the cold stone. You were drawn, not by the monster of legend, but by the stark humanity of his silhouette—a lonely sovereign bearing the weight of a crown forged in betrayal.

It was then that he moved. Without a sound, without a startle, he slowly rose from his knees. It was not the swift, predatory grace he exhibited in court, but a movement weighted with a profound weariness, as if the very air had substance and resistance. He did not turn abruptly, but rather unfolded himself towards you, a dark pillar turning to face the night that had crept up behind him.

His eyes found yours in the dim, sanguine glow of the sanctuary lamp. There was no surprise in them, only a deep, unsettling recognition, as if he had sensed your presence all along, a second shadow entering his orbit.

The silence between you was thicker than the castle walls, charged with all the unspoken history that bound your families.

You found your voice, though it was little more than a breath. “I… I apologize. I did not mean to disturb you. I thought the chapel would be empty.” The words felt foolish, inadequate. You had come to escape your thoughts of him, only to find their source standing before you.

A ghost of a smile, bleak and knowing, touched his lips. “This is your home. You have nothing to apologise for..” His dark eyes swept over you, taking in your disheveled state, the shawl clutched tightly at your throat, the bare feet in their slippers.

A faint, self-conscious heat rose to your cheeks as his gaze lingered on your state of undress. “I… I found sleep elusive,” you murmured, the explanation feeling as thin as your nightgown.

“A malady that seems to plague this castle tonight,” he replied, his voice a low rumble that seemed to absorb the chill from the air. “We are in the same situation, it seems.”

Emboldened by his lack of judgment, you gave him a small, tentative smile and began to walk slowly down the aisle. The cold stone seeped through your slippers, a grounding sensation. You paused before the great crucifix, making the sign of the cross, the familiar motion a small anchor in the storm of your emotions. Then you moved to the side altar, where a box of thin, unused tapers lay. You took one, the wax cool and smooth against your skin, and leaned forward, lighting its wick from the eternal flame of the sanctuary lamp. The small, new fire sprang to life, a tiny, brave star in the overwhelming darkness.

“Does your wakefulness stem from thoughts of someone?” His question came from behind you, not intrusive, but contemplative, as if he were asking the shadows the same thing.

Your hand stilled, the taper poised. You watched the flame dance, a living, breathing thing that held your entire focus. You, she thought. It is the thought of you that keeps me awake. But the truth was too vast, too dangerous to speak aloud.

“Yes,” you whispered to the flame, the admission a sacred secret offered to the quiet.

“Someone you have lost,” he stated, the words not a question but a quiet conclusion drawn from the universal language of grief.

You turned then, the candle casting a warm, flickering light upon your face as you looked at him. He had not moved, a statue of shadows and sorrow, yet his attention was entirely, unnervingly fixed on you.

“Something like that,” you said, your voice gaining a strange steadiness. “I was praying for souls I never knew. But whose… loss… caused a deep pain to others.” You turned back and carefully placed your candle among the others on the wrought-iron rack, its light joining the chorus of silent prayers. “I have faith that God receives all souls, regardless of the hands that shaped their fate. I was asking Him to be benevolent. To forgive the sins that stained their journey, and grant them peace.”

The words hung in the air, a clear, unmistakable plea for the souls of Vlad Dracul and Mircea. You did not look at him as you said it, your focus on the small, brave flame you had just offered in his family’s memory.

“It is a benevolent thing,” he said at last, his voice closer than you expected, “to pray for the souls of those you never owed a kindness.”

You shook your head slowly, still not looking at him. “It is not benevolence. It is… a need to quiet my own mind. I feel the weight of those lives. Here.” You pressed a hand to your own chest, over the velvet pouch that still lay against your skin. “As if their story is a stone I carry, though I did not cast it.”

You felt him take another step closer, the air shifting around him. “Was it your hand that held the blade?” he asked, his voice low and intent. “Was it your command that ended them?”

The question was direct, stripping away all pretense. You finally turned to face him. He was only a few feet away now, close enough that you could see the faint lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the subtle tension in his jaw.

“No,” you whispered, the word firm. “It was not my hand. But I am of the blood that gave the order, and I—”

“Do not,” he interrupted, his voice sharp, yet not unkind. It was a command, but one meant to protect. “Do not take upon your shoulders a burden that is not yours to carry. The guilt of kings and the sins of fathers are a poison. To drink it willingly is a slower, more insidious death than any blade can deliver.”

His words felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside you, freeing a breath you didn't realize you were holding. The simple, stark truth of them was more absolution than any priest could offer. You looked at him, truly looked at him, not as the Prince of Wallachia, but as the man who had just offered you a strange and unexpected mercy.

The words that came next felt necessary, a final stone to be cleared from between you. “Then let me offer a burden that is rightfully mine to lift,” you said, your voice gaining strength. “I… I wish to apologize. For my family. And for…” the word stuck in your throat, thick and unpleasant, “…for my betrothed.” You forced it out. “The provocation at the banquet was uncalled for. To question your honor in such a way was an aggression I do not condone.”

He observed you for a long moment, the candlelight dancing in his dark eyes. Then, that same ghost of a smile you had seen in the hall returned, but this time, it was different. A faint, genuine curve of his lips that transformed the severity of his features.

“Your apology is accepted,” he said, his tone gracious.

he stood before the altar beside you, his gaze shifting from your face to the candle he still held. “But I do not regret the words I spoke. I believe every one of them.” He looked back at you, and the intensity in his eyes was like a physical force. “For a man like me, that is the only currency that holds any value: the truth, however brutal. And in that hall, for that moment, it was enough.”

It was enough. The words settled over you. He was not a man who needed or wanted pretty lies. He valued honesty above comfort, and in offering him your raw, unvarnished truth—your apology, your misplaced guilt, your prayer for his family—you had, without realizing it, offered him the one thing he could respect.

He stood beside you, a solid, silent presence in the flickering dark, both of you gazing at the small, defiant flames. The chapel was no longer a place of lonely torment, but a sanctuary for two wounded souls, and the silence between you was no longer heavy, but filled with a profound and unexpected understanding.

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[velieditss]

Hello Sweethearts!!!

I want to thank every single one of you who takes the time to read my words and gets just as obsessed with these characters as I do. You are living proof of my dream, to write for the things I love, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

Seeing your messages about how much you enjoy my stories truly warms my heart.

Please know that I will always write from a place of passion and love. Everything else is just a wonderful bonus.

That's why, although I've opened a Ko-fi, it is never a requirement donate to read my fics or request stories and characters. I will always write from the heart, first and foremost. But if you ever decide to leave a little tip, please know it will be appreciated more than words can say.

Thank you for being here and for joining me in this wonderful, shared madness.

~Veli

Ko-fi

[lokis-army-77]

Could you do a imagine with Vlad where reader is kidnapped and he comes to save her? Lots of fluff and angst. Thank you!!

You Found Me

Dracula x Wife!reader

Word Count: 1.2k

You have been taken for ransom; it's only a matter of time before your husband shows up to rescue you

Warning: death (not a major character), blood, fighting

A/N: I'm a little rusty in the writing department, so I hope this is good even if it is short. Thank you, anon, for the Request, and thank you to @littlesubbyflower @take-everything-you-can , and @xxladymjxx for reading over this

It was dark and damp, and you had no idea where you were. The last thing you remembered was taking a stroll in the garden before something knocked you over the head.

From somewhere close, there were deep, hushed voices conversing, but you couldn't make out what they were saying. Five, maybe six men? What was going on?

Standing up from the floor, you held your hands out to feel what was around you. First, the coolness of stone met your fingertips, and then the harshness of rusted metal bars. A cell. Feeling around more, you found the door and tugged experimentally, but it barely moved. Then you tried once more with as much strength as you could muster. Nothing but the rattle of metal on metal.

With the commotion you had caused with the door, you hadn't noticed that the voices had stopped. The sound of footsteps met your ears before a large, heavy, wooden door was pushed open, and warm light was let in. A tall, gruff-looking man entered; the furs covering his body made him look large, intimidating.

"Princess," he started, accent thick and unfamiliar to you. "Do not try to escape, it is impossible. The only way you are getting out of here is if your King pays our ransom or we kill you."

You should have been terrified, yet you were calm. Heart beat steady, mind at ease. "He will come for me, you know."

"Yes, we are hoping for that," the man laughed.

"I don't believe you understand, sir. Whatever you think is going to happen, it won't. You will receive no money, but you are right about one thing… I will leave here because of death, although it won't be my own."

"Ha- you think your husband is capable of defeating my men and me? We outnumber him greatly."

With a roll of your eyes, you scoff, "You are sorely underestimating him. He will kill you, and I can't wait to hear you begging for mercy."

The man stood straight, face contorting into rage. He stalked toward the cell door, unlocking it—you backed further into your cage, heart skipping a sudden beat. Your captor raised his right arm and backhanded you across your face. Your own hand flew up to hold the offended cheek. Heat arose as it started to throb.

"How dare you?" you spat.

He narrowed his eyes. "I will break your will, Princess. No one likes an outspoken woman." He raised his hand once again, yet before he could strike, a scream rebounded through the stone walls of the dungeon.

More screams and shouts followed as chaos erupted from far away, and then you heard the bellow of your name.

"I told you he would come, and by the sound of your men… I was right about that, too."

"Men, go see what's happening." He called out, and you heard whoever was outside the dungeon door sprint away.

You watched him closely, looking for an opening, a way out. He had left the cell wide open, and when there was a sudden crash and a resounding, rage-filled battle cry from your husband, he twisted his head around to look. You took the brief distraction as your opening.

Your protection was always on your husband's mind, and as a result of his worrying, you had been taught how to defend yourself.

With one swift movement, you reached over the man's head and pulled the fur coat over his head. Disoriented, it was easy for you to kick at his leg, making him fall. Once he was down, you took your chance to run.

It was hard to run in a thick, woolen winter dress. You were carrying an extra twenty pounds of fabric, all in the form of flowing skirts and slightly restraining stays.

"Vlad!" You called out for your husband as you barreled down the corridor. "Vlad, where are you!"

There was no answer, but you knew he was close; you could feel it, him.

In a flurry of fabric, you rounded the corner fast, only to stumble into a hard mass.

You husband.

"My beloved." He sighed, head dipping for a kiss.

You clung to him, relieved, kissing him sweetly.

"Let me look at you." He pulled away, eyes narrowed in assessment. His bloodied fingers slightly caressed your slowly bruising cheek. "This… who did this?"

You opened your mouth to reply only to be interrupted by fast-approaching footsteps.

The man who had captured you appeared from around the corner, only to stop short once he realized who was in front of him.

Vlad's eyes cut from you. It was amazing how they could go from soft and loving to whatever vicious rage burned in them as he looked at the man.

"You hit my wife." His words seethed out. In a swift motion, he pulled his sword from its sheath.

The man scoffed. "The bitch deserved it."

"Be careful how you speak."

"I'll kill you."

Vlad only laughed. "You are very funny if you think that." Slowly. He began stalking forward, letting your hands fall away from him.

Whether it was bravery or stupidity, the man stood his ground, sword glinting in the torchlight as he drew it.

Vlad's steps were confident, easy as he approached. Those were the steps of a man who had gon into battle hundreds of times, who had killed without mercy, and this time would be no different, especially with you involved.

When your husband came into range of your captor, the other man lunged, biting at the bit. His movements were sloppy, and Vlad dodged him effortlessly, parrying the action and swiping the man's sword to the side

The fight was almost amusing to you, as your husband looked like a cat playing with its food. He was fast, outperforming his opponent in every instant; no wonder his men called him The Dragon.

It was fast, a blink, and you might have missed it. Vlad reached out and grabbed the man's wrist, restraining him and his sword before plunging his own into the soft flesh of his stomach,

You watched as the man doubled over, sword clattering to the stone floor, hands clutching the wound. Vlad followed him to his knees and, as he pulled his weapon from its human sheath, whispered into his ear.

Standing, Vlad rushed to you, the rage in his eyes faded into worry.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" He asked, bloodied hands reaching for your face, turning it this way and that, examining you for more marks.

The blood on his hands felt sticky, but it didn't bother you; all you could think of was him, how he had come for you, how he had killed for you, how he had saved you.

"I- Vlad-"

"It is all alright, my dear, I am here." He spoke in a hushed tone, lips so close to your own.

His breath was hot as it drifted across your skin, lulling you into a safety you only felt when he was near. It didn't help the urge to drag him to your lips. You swear he could read your thoughts when he slowly flickered his focus between your eyes and mouth before pressing his against yours.

Like every time he kissed you, sparks flew, and your stomach flipped. The world fell away as his fingers traced shapes into your skin and tugged lightly on your hair. Your own dug into his shoulders, pulling him further into you.

"I love you," you gasped, pulling away for air.

Vlad pressed his lips gently to your forehead. "I love you as well, my Beloved." His thumbs caressed your face, "I thought I had lost you."

Hugging him close, you assured him, "You found me, I am safe."

[velieditss]

Is so cuuuute!! Love it 😭💖

[velieditss]

In love and thorns, You should have Vlad have a Duel for the readers hand out of her fiancés foolishness!! It would give the reader a way to get away from her nasty fiancé and Vlad to get with her for political reasons!

I thought about this a lot, and if it weren't that my idea for the story is going in a different direction, I would have included it. Even so, I wrote a kind of 'what if', haha (I love experimenting even with my own story)

This "what if" is between chapters 1 and 2

The air, once thick with ambition, is now poisoned with the aftermath of Vlad’s chilling confession and Ladislaus’s humiliated silence. You feel the shift like a change pressure before a storm. The court is divided, eyes flicking between the Wallachian prince, a statue of unassailable darkness, and your betrothed, who simmers in his seat like a pot about to boil over.

Ladislaus is drinking heavily, the fine wine gulped like common ale. Each draught deepens the scowl on his face, fuels the impotent rage in his eyes. The Voivode’s words have stripped him bare, not just as a treacherous prospect, but as a fool who dared challenge a wolf and was publicly devoured. He cannot touch Vlad, not directly. But the need to reassert his dominance, to salvage his wounded pride, is a palpable heat radiating from him. And you, the silent, promised prize, are the closest and safest target for his venom.

The musicians strike up a branle, a lively dance that sends couples swirling onto the floor. The movement is a relief, a distraction from the tension at the high table. But it only seems to agitate Ladislaus further. He leans toward you, his breath a foul cloud of wine.

“See how they preen,” he slurs, gesturing with his goblet toward the dancers. “Flocking to the music like mindless sparrows. It is a fitting diversion for a court that celebrates a known Ottoman puppet.” His voice is low, meant only for you, but it carries the sharp edge of a blade. “Your father and your king would hand you, a flower of Hungary, to a man who has knelt to the Sultan. If they weren't so desperate for my resources, they would make a treaty with the Devil’s own accountant to secure them.”

You stiffen, your fingers curling around the stem of your own glass. “Careful with your words, my lord. You speak about treason, and nonsense,” you whisper, the words icy.

“I speak the truth they are too cowardly to utter!” he snaps, his hand closing around your wrist under the table. The grip is not passionate; it is possessive, brutal. “But you. You will learn where your loyalties lie. You will be my wife, and you will forget the dangerous allure of foreign monsters. You smiled when he spoke. I saw you.”

Your blood runs cold. He had noticed. In his drunken, self-absorbed state, he had seen the flicker of understanding that passed between you and Vlad.

He leans closer, his lips nearly brushing your ear, his whisper a serpent’s hiss. “Do not think his kind offers you anything but ruin. He is a creature of passing fancies. I’ve heard the tales from his own court. There was a wedding witnessed by no lord nor court official, that his new wife has not even told her family, that she wears her ring in her pocket; and they will both agree it can be ignored as if it had never happened. As he has done before, so he will do again, as long as there are foolish women in the kingdom—and that is to say forever.”

The cruelty of it, the specific, venomous detail, is meant to shatter you. To reduce the electric connection you felt to a sordid, common tale. For a moment, the pain is so acute it must show on your face, for he stops, a smug, triumphant look in his bloodshot eyes.

But the pain does not shatter you. It forges you. It ignites a fury so pure and cold it feels like a new kind of magic. You turn to him, and the look on your face makes his taunting smile falter.

“I don’t care if he doesn’t acknowledge me, you fool,” you flare out, your voice low but vibrating with a intensity that cuts through the music. “It’s not a question of wanting to be a voivode’s wife; it’s not even a question of wanting honorable love anymore.” You lean in, your eyes locking with his, pouring all your desperation and defiance into your gaze. “I would take one moment of his truth over a lifetime of your greedy pretense. I would go to him if I had to walk barefoot through hell. Tell me I am one of many. I don’t care! I don’t care for my name or for my pride anymore. As long as I can be free of you, that’s all I want. Just to be beyond your touch.”

Ladislaus recoils as if slapped. The raw, unladylike passion of your words, the utter rejection, is a weapon he has no defense against. His face purples with a rage so profound it steals his breath. He shoves back his chair, the screech of wood on stone slicing through the music. The dancers falter. The hall begins to fall silent.

“You treacherous little witch!” he roars, his voice echoing in the sudden hush. He points a shaking finger, not at you, but across the table, at the still, dark figure of Vlad Țepeș. “You see! You see how your poison has infected her? You come here, you speak your filth, and you turn the mind of my betrothed with your… your serpent’s charm!”

Vlad has been watching the entire exchange, his expression one of detached, almost bored, observation. Now, as all eyes turn to him, he slowly sets his goblet down. The simple, deliberate action is louder than Ladislaus’s shout.

“The lady’s mind is her own,” Vlad says, his voice a low thrum of menace. “It is not I who has treated her like chattel to be bartered, nor gripped her wrist like a slaver. Your grievance, Pongrác, is with your own lack of worth.”

Ladislaus lets out a sound of pure fury. He is beyond reason, a bull seeing only red. He draws the ceremonial dagger from his belt—a foolish, drunken act, but one that gasps through the hall.

“You insult my honor!” he bellows. “I demand satisfaction! Here and now, you Wallachian dog!”

A deadly silence descends. This is no longer an argument; it is a challenge. A direct, public, and utterly foolish challenge to a man known as one of the finest warriors in Christendom.

Vlad’s lips curve into that same terrifying, bloodless smile. He rises, and his movement is like a shadow uncoiling, fluid and lethal. He does not look at Ladislaus. His dark eyes find yours, and in them, you see not anger, but a question. A silent seeking of permission.

You give the slightest, almost imperceptible nod. Yes.

He turns his gaze to Ladislaus, and the temperature in the hall seems to drop. “You have it,” Vlad says, his voice flat and final. “But I do not fight for the honor of fools. I fight for a prize.”

He gestures toward you, a single, elegant sweep of his hand that encompasses all you are. “If my steel finds your heart, the lady’s betrothal to you is null and void. She and her dowry, by the law of combat and the witness of this court, pass to the victor. To me.”

Your father is on his feet, his face ashen. “Voivode, this is not—!”

“I accept!” Ladislaus screams, too enraged and too drunk to see the abyss he is leaping into. He believes his own bluster, believes the stories of his own prowess. He sees only a chance to kill the man who humiliated him and reclaim his dominance in the most brutal way possible.

Matthias stands. He looks from your father’s panic to Vlad’s implacable resolve. He knows he cannot stop this without appearing weak. The law of the challenge is ancient, and it has been publicly issued and accepted.

“Enough.”

The single word cracks through the tension like a whip. All eyes, including Vlad’s burning gaze and Ladislaus’s feverish glare, swing to the king.

“I am the King of Hungary,” Matthias states, his voice low but carrying to the farthest corner, “and I will not have blood spilled on this floor. Not the blood of a guest, and not the blood of a subject, no matter how… provoked.” His eyes rest on Ladislaus with a weight that makes the man flinch. “The insult given by lord Pongrác, however, stands. It was given not only to a prince and ally, but to my own cousin, a lady of this court, whose person was threatened and whose honor was sullied by his drunken grasp. For that, there must be answer.”

He turns to Vlad, a king treating with a power that is both foreign and ancient. “Voivode Țepeș, your grievance is just. But I cannot and will not hand my cousin as a ‘prize’ in a duel, as if she were a trophy stag. Her worth is not measured in steel.”

A flicker of something—annoyance, perhaps respect—passes through Vlad’s dark eyes. He gives a slow, conceding nod. “Then name your terms, Your Grace. The insult remains. It demands recompense.”

Matthias’s gaze is sharp, strategic. “The duel will proceed. But not here, not tonight. At dawn, in the lower courtyard. And the terms are these: If Voivode Vlad is victorious, Lord Pongrác will publicly and voluntarily renounce his claim to my cousin’s hand. He will declare, by his own honor and before God, that he is unworthy of it. The betrothal will be broken by his own word, not by force of arms alone.”

The shift is masterful. It removes the taint of a barbaric transaction and replaces it with a shaming so profound it is arguably a worse punishment for a man like Ladislaus. To have to kneel and confess his own unworthiness? It is a poison more bitter than death.

Ladislaus pales, the drunken rage in his eyes clearing for a moment, replaced by the cold dread of understanding. He is being maneuvered into a trap of his own making.

“And if I win?” Ladislaus croaks, a desperate attempt to seize back some control.

Vlad’s lip curls. “You will not.”

“But if I do!” Ladislaus insists, his mind scrambling. He looks at Vlad, at the unassailable pride in his posture, and a vicious, petty idea sparks in his wine-addled mind. He remembers his own sordid tale, the story meant to wound you. He would see that pride shattered. “If I win… you will do what you do best, Voivode. You will kneel. You will kneel before me, here in this hall. You, the Prince of Wallachia, will pledge yourself to a Hungarian ‘landholder’.”

A wave of horrified whispers ripples through the court. It is a condition of sublime, foolish cruelty. To force a prince, a man whose very identity is built on sovereign power, to abase himself in such a way—it was a fate worse than any physical wound. It would destroy Vlad’s power, his reputation, his very sense of self.

All look to Vlad. He does not rage. He does not refuse. He simply looks at Ladislaus as a naturalist might look at a peculiarly venomous insect.

“So be it,” Vlad says, his voice dangerously soft. “At dawn. Daggers. To the yield, or to the death.” His eyes meet yours for a fleeting, searing moment. Do you trust me? they seem to ask. Do you trust the storm?

And in that look, you find your answer. The stone in your pouch is no longer just warm; it is a live coal, resonating with the raw, untamed power of the man before you. You are no longer a pawn, or a prize, or a key. You are the reason the storm is being unleashed.

You hold his gaze, and in the depths of your own, you let him see the truth you confessed to Ladislaus, purified now of its desperate edge, transformed into a fierce, unwavering certainty.

I would go to him if I had to walk barefoot through hell.

The duel is set. The stakes are eternal. And as the court erupts in a frenzy of whispered speculation, you know, with a certainty that stills your frantic heart, that dawn will not bring the sun. It will bring the judgment of the Dragon.

Dawn did not break so much as it seeped into the world, a slow, grey stain leaching the darkness from the sky. The lower courtyard was a bowl of shadows, the air sharp and cold, tasting of damp stone and the impending promise of violence. You arrived, your cloak pulled tight against the chill, your breath pluming in the wan light.

They were already there. Matthias, a somber figure in deep blue. Your father, standing slightly apart, his arms crossed, a statue of grim pragmatism. And Ladislaus, pacing like a caged boar, his face puffy from drink and sleeplessness, his eyes burning with a toxic mix of fear and bravado.

Your father turned as you approached, his brow furrowed. "You should not be here," he said, his voice low and strained. "This is no place for you. It is a butchery, not a tournament."

You met his gaze, the memory of his complicity in your betrothal a fresh wound between you. "If I am not here, Father," you replied, your voice steady despite the frantic beating of your heart, "my conscience would know no peace. I am the cause of this. My future is the stake. Should I hide in my chambers and simply wait to be told my fate?"

He had no answer, only a weary sigh that seemed to concede the point. Your eyes scanned the courtyard, and then you saw him.

Vlad stood near the far wall, a figure carved from the twilight itself. He was not pacing. He was not fidgeting. He was still, his hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the mist-shrouded battlements as if contemplating the landscape, not the man he was about to face. He wore a simple, dark tunic and leather breeches, functional, devoid of ornament. He was a weapon, stripped of its scabbard.

A surge of certainty filled you. You did not fear for his life. You knew his reputation, the stories that were not just tavern tales but histories written in the blood of his enemies. He was a warrior, a commander, a survivor. Ladislaus was a bloated landholder who bullied peasants. This was not a duel; it was an execution.

But you had to speak to him. You had to bridge the distance between the silent understanding in the gallery and the brutal reality of this grey dawn.

Ignoring your father's muttered protest, you gathered your skirts and walked across the cobblestones, your footsteps echoing in the tense silence. Ladislaus stopped his pacing to glare at you, but you paid him no mind. Your world had narrowed to the dark, still figure ahead.

Vlad turned as you approached, as if he had felt your presence as a physical pull. His face was pale and severe in the morning light, his eyes like deep ocean eyes.

You stopped before him, your words catching in your throat. All the practiced phrases fled, leaving only raw, unfiltered truth.

"No matter the outcome," you began, your voice a whisper that seemed too loud in the hushed courtyard, "I will always be grateful. For what you said in the hall. For seeing the rot. For this." You gestured vaguely at the space between him and Ladislaus. "You are risking everything."

You reached out, your fingers briefly, impulsively, brushing the back of his clenched hand. It was cold as marble, but a shock of warmth shot up your arm at the contact. "Please," you whispered, your eyes pleading with his. "Be careful."

The severe line of his mouth softened into a genuine, albeit faint, smile. It transformed his entire countenance, revealing a glimpse of the man beneath the prince, the warrior beneath the legend.

He leaned forward, his voice for your ears alone, a low, intimate murmur that felt like a secret vow.

"Gratitude is a cold bed, contesă," he whispered, his breath a ghost of warmth against your cheek. "Do not waste your fire on it. Save it for the victory."

The words were not a dismissal, but a promise. A redirection of your emotion from thankfulness to something far more potent, far more dangerous. Save it for the victory. For our victory.

"Let us begin!" Matthias's voice cut through the moment, firm and commanding.

Vlad’s eyes held yours for a heartbeat longer, the ghost of his smile still playing on his lips. Then he gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, turned, and walked toward the center of the courtyard, every line of his body radiating lethal purpose.

You stepped back, your hand tingling where you had touched him, his words burning in your heart. Save it for the victory. As you took your place beside your stony-faced father, you knew you were no longer a passive stake to be won.

The duel began not with a clash, but with a sigh. Vlad did not attack; he simply began to move, a dark tide circling a clumsy, beached vessel. Ladislaus, his movements sluggish and heavy from wine and fear, lunged first. It was a desperate, wide-arced swing meant to decapitate, born of brute force and panic. Vlad did not parry. He flowed backward, the dagger missing his throat by a breath, the wind of its passage stirring the dark strands of his hair.

It was not a fight. It was a dissection.

Vlad was a maestro of motion, his every step a lesson in economy and grace. He was not utilizing his full capacity; he was demonstrating the chasm that lay between them. His dagger, an extension of his will, became a tool of exquisite humiliation. It flicked out, not to maim, but to mock. It sliced the fine leather of Ladislaus’s glove, nicked the lobe of his ear, parted the laces of his doublet. Each touch was a whisper of what could have been a killing blow, a constant, terrifying reminder of his own impotence.

Ladislaus grunted and sweated, his breath coming in ragged, alcohol-soured gasps. He was a bull being tormented by a matador who refused the final thrust. His attacks grew wilder, more frantic, his feet stumbling on the damp cobblestones. He was not fighting a man; he was fighting a shadow, a rumour, a legend made flesh.

You watched, your hand pressed to your mouth, not in fear for Vlad, but in awe of the controlled, terrifying spectacle. This was not the chaotic brawl of soldiers; it was a brutal dance, and Vlad was its sole choreographer.

The end, when it came, was as inevitable as the dawn. Ladislaus, in a final, roaring charge, overextended himself. Vlad sidestepped with pantherish grace, his foot hooking behind Ladislaus’s ankle. The lord crashed to the stones with a cry of pain and shock. Before he could rise, Vlad was upon him, a knee planted in the small of his back. The cold, sharp point of his dagger pressed against the pulsing vein in Ladislaus’s neck, drawing a single, perfect bead of crimson.

The courtyard was utterly silent, save for Ladislaus’s choked sobs of exertion and humiliation.

“Are you ready to yield?” Vlad’s voice was calm, conversational, as if asking about the weather.

“Go to hell!” Ladislaus spat, his face mashed against the cold stone. “Kill me! Finish it, you devil! I will not give you the satisfaction!”

It was then that your father stepped forward, his face a mask of strained diplomacy. “Do not be a greater fool than you have already been, Ladislaus,” he said, his voice cutting through the man’s hysterics. “To die here, on your knees, for nothing? That is not a death. It is a punchline. Accept your defeat. Live to manage what is left of your honour.”

Matthias stepped forward, his kingly authority restoring order to the scene. “The duel is concluded. The Voivode is victorious.” He looked down at the prostrate, defeated man. “You will return to your lands, Ladislaus. You have no further business at this court.”

Vlad removed his knee and stood, stepping back as your father helped a shaking, ashen Ladislaus to his feet. The lord would not meet anyone’s eyes, the weight of his public shaming a heavier burden than any physical injury.

As the defeated man was half-led, half-dragged away, you found your feet carrying you forward once more, drawn to the epicenter of the storm. Vlad was cleaning his blade on a square of linen, his movements methodical, his expression unreadable.

You approached, a smile touching your lips despite the morning’s brutality, your cheeks flushed with a heat that had nothing to do with the cold. He looked up as you neared, and gave a single, slow nod.

“Was the spectacle to your liking?” he asked, his tone laced with a dark amusement.

“I take no pleasure in watching men try to kill one another,” you said, your voice soft but firm. You paused, a faint, graceful smile gracing your lips as you admitted a deeper, more private truth. “But seeing Ladislaus Pongrác humbled… that, I confess, held a certain satisfaction.”

You stepped closer, the world narrowing to the space between you. The gratitude you felt was a living thing in your chest, too vast for words, yet you had to try. “Thank you,” you whispered, your voice delicate as a secret. “I know it may sound like a foolish, romantic notion from some minstrel’s tale, but to me… you are my hero.”

Before courage could fail you, your hands went to your hair, where a deep crimson silk ribbon held a section of your tresses in place. You untied it, the silk whispering through your fingers. With a reverence that felt both ancient and new, you reached for the hilt of his dagger. His hand still held it, and for a moment, your fingers brushed against his as you carefully, deliberately, tied the ribbon around the weapon’s grip. The splash of crimson against the dark, worn leather was a startling declaration, a silent vow tying your fate to his blade.

You finished, letting your hand linger for a heartbeat before pulling away. The chapter of your life as a bargaining chip was closed, its final sentence written in silk and steel.

His dark, fathomless eyes held yours.

“Please accept this as an expression of my gratitude.”

The world fell away, the mist, the castle, the watching king and your pragmatic father—all of it dissolved into the profound, unspoken understanding that passed between your gaze and his, a new story beginning in the quiet of the dawn.

Me every time I have to write something about Ladislaus:

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

Chapter 2

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, reader has a surname, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, mention of murder and violence, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

Wc: 5.1K

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

The silence that gripped the high table was a living entity, fed by Ladislaus’s impotent rage and the Prince’s chilling candor. It was a void that threatened to swallow the pretense of celebration whole. Then, the young king moved, a subtle shift of his shoulders as if casting off an invisible weight. Matthias’s smile returned, not the bright, celebratory one from before, but something wiser, more measured. It was the smile of a boy who had been forced to become a man too quickly, and who now understood that some storms could not be commanded, only navigated.

“A ruler must indeed understand the nature of his tools,” Matthias said, his voice calm, reclaiming the space the Prince’s words had dominated. He looked not at Ladislaus, nor directly at Vlad, but at the space between them, a diplomat addressing the tension itself. “And he must also understand that each tool has its purpose and its place. The hammer to break the rock, the scalpel to cut the rot, and the pen to write the treaty that ensures neither is needed too soon again.” He lifted his goblet, a gesture that included both the shamed Ladislaus and the formidable Prince. “We are all, in our own ways, tools for the preservation of Christendom. It is the hand that wields us, guided by God and reason, that determines the outcome. Your perspectives, Voivode, are… invaluable. They remind us of the stakes. And for that, Hungary thanks you.”

It was a masterful response. He had given Vlad reason without bowing to him, and in doing so, had gently reasserted the primacy of his own throne. The air, thick with the threat of violence, began to slowly, cautiously, thin.

You could hear your father's words in him. And you were impressed by how much Matthias had changed since the crown was placed on his head. You prayed that this maturity would make him realise the many mistakes that surrounded him. The air, thick with the threat of violence, began to slowly, cautiously, thin.

Seizing the moment, Matthias rose to his full height, his voice projecting once more to the wider hall. “But tonight is a celebration! And no celebration in Hungary is complete without a dance to remind our hearts what we defend with our steel.” His gaze swept over the guests before settling, with deliberate kindness, upon his wife. Catherine offered a wan but genuine smile.

Then, his eyes found yours. They were warm, cousinly, and utterly inescapable. “Dear cousin,” he said, his voice imbued with a public affection that felt like a new, gilded chain. “Our queen must conserve her strength for the heir she carries. Would you do me the great honor of leading the dance with your king? Let us show our court, and our guests, the grace and unity of our house.”

Forcing a grace you did not feel, you lowered your eyes in a show of demure acceptance. “The honor is mine, Your Grace,” you said, your voice a clear, steady note that belied the frantic beating of your heart.

You placed your hand in his, the young king’s grasp firm and assured. As he led you from the high table toward the center of the hall, the musicians, who had been waiting for their cue, struck up a stately branle. The courtiers parted before you, a sea of smiling, curious faces. To them, it was a beautiful picture: the young king and his beloved cousin, a symbol of familial loyalty and courtly grace.

The music swelled, a lively, intricate melody that demanded precise, formal steps. You moved with Matthias in the center of the grand hall, your crimson gown a stark bloom against the sea of onlookers. Your hand was light in his, your steps measured, but your heart was a wild, trapped thing. The public smile never left your face, a mask of courtly grace, but your eyes, as you turned in a slow, prescribed circle, held his.

“You promised me time,” you said, the words escaping on a breath meant to be part of the dance’s rhythm, so low that only he could hear them. “You said this night was for the foreign guests. For taking their measure. You gave me your word, Matthias.”

He guided you through a turn, his grip on your hand firm, his own smile never faltering. “Do you think I do not know what you’re doing?”

he asked, his voice equally quiet, a counterpoint to the cheerful music.

The question, so calmly delivered, sent a chill through you that had nothing to do with the cool hall air. You completed the step, your bodies coming close again before parting in the pattern of the dance. “What do you mean?” you whispered, the mask of your smile slipping for a fraction of a second.

He drew you into a promenade, arm-in-arm, and it was then he looked at you, his gaze sharp and knowing. “It was not difficult to deduce,” he murmured, his tone almost conversational. “The tension in my wife’s chambers whenever your mother entered, hearing complains about your betrothed. The way your eyes would harden to flint whenever Pongrác’s name was mentioned in your presence. You are many things, cousin, but you are not a subtle actress when it comes to your repulsion.” He gave a soft, mirthless chuckle. “You wear your disdain like a scent. A king learns to notice such things.”

The steps of the dance carried you apart, giving you a moment to school your features, to force the blood back from your pallid cheeks. When you came together again, his next words landed with the finality of a headsman’s axe.

“It was the whispers between you and your mother during the reception. The way you scanned the crowd. You were looking for another option, were you not? It's exactly what your father would tell you to do if he hadn't been the one to close the deal.”

He had seen it all. He had watched you scheme and, finding your efforts both transparent and dangerous to his own plans.

“So you moved first,” you breathed, the words tasting of ash. The dance felt like a funeral march. “You announced it to the entire court to box me in, to make it irrevocable.”

His smile was a sad, understanding thing, all the more devastating for its gentleness. “To protect you from a futile endeavor, and to secure what Hungary needs,” he corrected softly, his hand squeezing yours in a mockery of comfort as the music began its final, soaring refrain. “This is the way it must be. For all of us.”

The final notes of the branle hung in the air, but the true performance was just beginning. As the court applauded, Matthias kept your hand in his, his gaze holding yours, a silent demand for the conversation to continue. The musicians transitioned into a slower, more intimate pavane, and the other couples began to join the floor, granting you a semblance of privacy within the crowd.

“He is a rabid dog, Matthias,” you whispered urgently as you came together, your steps slow and measured. “Giving him a Szilágyi bride will not tame him; it will only make him believe he has the right to bite the hand that feeds him. You are giving him legitimacy, a connection to the throne he can exploit. He will not see me as a wife, but as a title deed, and with that deed, he will demand more power, more influence. He will become unmanageable.”

Matthias’s expression remained placid, but a flicker of doubt entered his eyes. You pressed on, your voice a desperate, fervent whisper. “I know my father wants his lands, his resources. I understand the pragmatism. But as king, you must look beyond the ledger. Think, Matthias. Why did your father, the great John Hunyadi, never treat with Ladislaus while he lived? Why did he keep that viper at arm's length? He saw the rot in him, the same rot the Voivode so plainly named.”

The dance forced you apart, a slow, circling retreat that felt like an eternity. You used the moment to gather your courage, to let the raw truth of your fear shine in your eyes when you returned to him. “I have been in his company. I have endured his presence and seen the cruel avarice in his soul. To live under his roof would not be a life; it would be a slow descent into a hell from which death would be a gentler release. I am begging you, not as your subject, but as your blood. Let me choose. Grant me this one mercy. I would never act against our family. I would never act against Hungary. I am a Szilágyi. My loyalty is my name. But let my loyalty be given, not sold to the highest bidder.”

You moved through the steps, your heart pounding against your ribs like a trapped bird. The music swelled, and as you came together once more, his hand on your back, he looked down at you, his youthful face a mask of conflicted sovereignty.

“Who?” he asked, the single word cutting through the melody. His voice was low, intense. “If I were to grant you this… this incredible leniency, who do you have in mind? You have scanned the entire court. Give me a name.”

The command hung between you, as terrifying as it was liberating. Your mind, so full of desperate plans, suddenly went blank, then raced. A name. He demanded a name. It could not be just any lord; it had to be a man of power, a man who could offer Hungary something equal to or greater than Ladislaus’s lands. A man who could be a shield, not just for you, but for the crown itself.

Your eyes, almost of their own volition, strayed from the king’s face, sweeping across the glittering assembly. They passed over the preening dukes, the simpering barons, and landed, as if drawn by a lodestone, on the one man who commanded the room without uttering a word. The man whose very presence was a challenge, whose honesty was a weapon, and whose understanding smile had felt like your only moment of salvation in this long, dreadful night.

He stood apart, as always, a silhouette of black against the golden glow of the hall, his dark eyes already watching the dance, watching you.

Your breath caught. It was madness. It was treason to your family’s history. It was the most dangerous choice imaginable.

And it was the only one that made sense.

You turned your gaze back to Matthias, your chin lifting with a defiance that was both terrifying and exhilarating. The name was on your lips, a forbidden prayer, a gamble with your very soul.

“Him,” you whispered, your voice barely audible, yet carrying the weight of your future. You did not need to say his name. The direction of your gaze, the shift in your expression, said it all. The Prince of Wallachia.

Matthias’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated shock. The carefully constructed mask of the sovereign crumbled, revealing the young man beneath, utterly floored by your audacity.

A low, incredulous laugh escaped him. “Him?” he repeated, the word a sharp exhalation. “You wish to trade a life in hell for a pact with the Devil himself? You just finished telling me that living with Pongrác would be a fate worse than death, and now you point to the one man in this hall my father taught me to fear above the Sultan? Explain this madness to me, cousin. How is one monster preferable to the other?”

“Ladislaus is a snake who hides in the grass,” you whispered, your voice fierce and low. “He smiles while he plots. The Prince does not hide what he is. He is sincere in his ruthlessness. He has a code, however brutal, and he adheres to it without apology. That alone makes him infinitely more predictable, and therefore more trustworthy, than a man whose loyalty shifts with the wind.”

“Trustworthy?” Matthias hissed, guiding you through a turn. “He is a known traitor!”

“So is Ladislaus!” you shot back, your eyes flashing. “it is known he nearly swore fealty to your predecessor’s sister. The only difference is that the Prince admits his capacity for faithlessness. He owns it. Ladislaus cloaks his in false smiles, and that makes him the greater fool, and the greater danger to you.”

Matthias was silent for a few steps, the logic, however perverse, striking its mark. “Pongrác offers land, resources,” he argued, his voice tight. “What does the Voivode offer? He holds his own throne by his fingernails.”

“He offers an army,” you countered immediately. “Not just men, but a hardened force that knows how to fight the Turk on their own terms. He offers a buffer. An alliance with him secures a flank, it protects a stretch of border. It means the Ottoman armies cannot simply sweep through Wallachia and into Hungary unimpeded. That is worth more than all the grain in Ladislaus’s storehouses. It is the difference between a fortified wall and a bag of gold left in an open field.”

Matthias could not refute the military strategy. It was sound. It was, you realized, perhaps the very reason the Prince had been invited at all. His jaw tightened, and he played his final, most personal card. “You forget the history. Our family and his… there is blood between us. A river of it. He may not hate you personally, but you are a Szilágyi. You are my cousin. He could take you simply to have a piece of us, to wield you as a weapon against me, to torture my father’s memory through you. A marriage to him would not be a shield; it would be walking into your own execution.”

The fear in his voice was real, and it sent a fresh chill down your spine. But you had come too far to retreat. “Then tell me,” you implored, your voice softening, pleading for the truth that had been kept from you. “What happened? What did my uncle do that was so terrible it would warrant such a vengeance?”

The dance carried you apart, the space between you filled with the swell of music and the rustle of silk. When you came together again, his face was grim, the weight of a dark legacy settling upon his young shoulders.

“When Vlad was a boy,” Matthias began, his voice barely a whisper, a secret confession in the midst of the celebration, “his father, Vlad Dracul, gave him and his younger brother as hostages to the Sultan. A guarantee of his loyalty. For six years, he was a prisoner of the Ottomans. Any betrayal by his father meant his death.”

You listened, your heart thudding dully in your chest.

“And yet,” Matthias continued, his gaze distant, “his father, alongside my father, fought to push the Ottomans back from our borders. He allied with us. To everyone’s astonishment, the Sultan did not kill the sons. He released Vlad, not to his family, but to his own side, to be groomed. His father and elder brother did nothing to reclaim him. Humiliated, Dracul was forced to pay an annual tribute to the Porte.”

He paused, the next words heavy with shame. “My father, who was then Regent of Hungary, saw this not as a father’s desperate choice to save his son’s life, but as the deepest treason. He invaded Wallachia. In the process, his armies killed Vlad Dracul and his elder brother, Mircea. They carved out their eyes with hot iron pokers before burying them alive. Then, my father placed a cousin of theirs on the throne that was rightfully Vlad’s.”

The horror of it stole your breath. The music, the laughter, it all faded into a dull roar. You were no longer dancing; you were standing at the edge of a chasm of betrayal and brutality. It was not just a political rivalry. It was a blood feud. Your uncle had not only robbed Vlad of his family and his birthright; he had subjected them to a death of unimaginable cruelty.

You finally understood the cold fire in the Prince’s eyes, the weight of the history that made your mother pale. You were not considering a man. You were considering a storm of vengeance, and you had just asked your king to give you to it.

“So I ask you once again, dear cousin. Are you sure you want it to be him?”

The question Matthias had asked you hung more persistent than any hymn.

Now, knowing the full, horrific truth The story Matthias had whispered during the dance played behind your eyes like a grim tapestry: a boy given as a pawn, years of Ottoman captivity, a father’s impossible choice met not with understanding but with brutal betrayal. Your uncle, the legendary John Hunyadi, was not just a political opponent to Vlad; he was the architect of his deepest trauma, the man who had not only slaughtered his father and brother but had desecrated their bodies in the most horrific way before stealing the throne that was his birthright.

You understood, with a clarity that chilled you to the bone, why Vlad Țepeș would hate your family with a fire that could never be extinguished. You understood why he might seek vengeance, a life for a life, an eye for an eye—or in his case, two eyes, brutally taken, for a kingdom stolen.

And you, in your desperation, had pointed to him. You had seen a shield, a powerful, honest monster to protect you from a petty, smiling one. But now you saw the man behind the legend, a man forged in betrayal and unimaginable loss. How could you have been so naive? To think that such a man could separate you from the name you carried, from the blood that ran in your veins—the very same blood that had ordered the murder of his family—was the height of foolishness.

He would never see you as anything other than a Szilágyi, a living symbol of the house that had destroyed his. Any hope that he might set aside his vengeance for your sake was the desperate fantasy of a drowning woman.

You bowed your head, the weight of it all pressing down on you. The hopeful, defiant spark you had felt on the dance floor now felt like a dying ember in a sea of ash. To choose Vlad was to willingly walk into a gilded cage where the keeper’s kindness would be a lie and his cruelty a certainty born of a pain you could comprehend. Yet, the alternative—Ladislaus—remained a fate of a different, more vulgar hell.

You had no such serenity. You had only a choice between two damnations, and the haunting, unanswerable question: which hell was truly worse?

Sleep was a traitor that would not come. The fire had burned low in your chamber grate, and the moon was a cold, judgmental eye through the window glass. The weight of your thoughts was a physical pressure on your chest, making the very air feel thin and useless. The four walls of your room, usually a sanctuary, had become the confines of a prison, each one pressing in with the specter of a different damnation.

Driven by a restlessness that gnawed at her bones, you slipped from your bed. You did not bother with a cloak, pulling only a heavy shawl over your nightgown before stepping out into the stone-flagged corridor. The castle was deep in its nocturnal slumber, silent but for the distant, rhythmic tread of a guard on his rounds. Your feet, bare in their soft leather slippers, made no sound as you moved through the familiar labyrinth, drawn by an instinct older than reason.

You sought the chapel. Not for a miracle, perhaps, but for a different quality of silence—one not filled with the echo of your own frantic heart, but with the quiet patience of centuries. At this hour, long after Compline and long before Matins, you expected to find it empty. Your father, a man of habit, took his private prayers at dawn. Catherine, in her condition, was accompanied there for a brief morning devotion. But now, in the deep watch of the night, you hoped to find it a void, a place where you could pour your own turmoil into a greater, more absorbing stillness, where the silence of God might swallow the screaming in your soul.

You pushed the heavy oak door, its iron hinges groaning softly, a sound that seemed to confess your own weariness. The air inside was frigid, smelling of stone and extinguished candles. The red glow of the sanctuary lamp, a single vigilant eye in the darkness, cast long, dancing shadows that made the saints in their niches seem to shift and breathe.

You moved down the short nave, your shawl pulled tight against the chill, your steps slow and deliberate on the cold floor. Your eyes, adjusted to the gloom, scanned the pews, expecting only the emptiness you had craved.

But you were not alone.

A figure was kneeling at the very front, before the simple altar, his head bowed not in prayer, but in a posture of profound, weary stillness. He was dressed not in nightclothes, but in dark, travel-worn attire, as if he had only just arrived or could not bear the pretense of rest. The flickering light from the lamp caught the sharp line of his shoulder, the pale nape of his neck, and the severe, unyielding profile you had seared into your memory.

A sight difficult to forget.

The prince.

He was the last person you expected to find, and yet, in the strange logic of this cursed night, it felt inevitable.

He had not heard you enter, his stillness so absolute he seemed a part of the chapel itself, a monument to some private, relentless agony. And you, frozen in the aisle, were faced with the very source of your torment, praying in the darkness.

For a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, you were paralyzed. Every instinct screamed for retreat, to melt back into the shadows from whence you came and leave this man to his private torment. It felt like a sacrilege to witness him in such a state of unguarded stillness, this prince of sharp edges and brutal truths brought low before a silent altar. To stay was to intrude upon a pain you now understood was fathomless.

Yet, your feet were rooted to the cold stone. You were drawn, not by the monster of legend, but by the stark humanity of his silhouette—a lonely sovereign bearing the weight of a crown forged in betrayal.

It was then that he moved. Without a sound, without a startle, he slowly rose from his knees. It was not the swift, predatory grace he exhibited in court, but a movement weighted with a profound weariness, as if the very air had substance and resistance. He did not turn abruptly, but rather unfolded himself towards you, a dark pillar turning to face the night that had crept up behind him.

His eyes found yours in the dim, sanguine glow of the sanctuary lamp. There was no surprise in them, only a deep, unsettling recognition, as if he had sensed your presence all along, a second shadow entering his orbit.

The silence between you was thicker than the castle walls, charged with all the unspoken history that bound your families.

You found your voice, though it was little more than a breath. “I… I apologize. I did not mean to disturb you. I thought the chapel would be empty.” The words felt foolish, inadequate. You had come to escape your thoughts of him, only to find their source standing before you.

A ghost of a smile, bleak and knowing, touched his lips. “This is your home. You have nothing to apologise for..” His dark eyes swept over you, taking in your disheveled state, the shawl clutched tightly at your throat, the bare feet in their slippers.

A faint, self-conscious heat rose to your cheeks as his gaze lingered on your state of undress. “I… I found sleep elusive,” you murmured, the explanation feeling as thin as your nightgown.

“A malady that seems to plague this castle tonight,” he replied, his voice a low rumble that seemed to absorb the chill from the air. “We are in the same situation, it seems.”

Emboldened by his lack of judgment, you gave him a small, tentative smile and began to walk slowly down the aisle. The cold stone seeped through your slippers, a grounding sensation. You paused before the great crucifix, making the sign of the cross, the familiar motion a small anchor in the storm of your emotions. Then you moved to the side altar, where a box of thin, unused tapers lay. You took one, the wax cool and smooth against your skin, and leaned forward, lighting its wick from the eternal flame of the sanctuary lamp. The small, new fire sprang to life, a tiny, brave star in the overwhelming darkness.

“Does your wakefulness stem from thoughts of someone?” His question came from behind you, not intrusive, but contemplative, as if he were asking the shadows the same thing.

Your hand stilled, the taper poised. You watched the flame dance, a living, breathing thing that held your entire focus. You, she thought. It is the thought of you that keeps me awake. But the truth was too vast, too dangerous to speak aloud.

“Yes,” you whispered to the flame, the admission a sacred secret offered to the quiet.

“Someone you have lost,” he stated, the words not a question but a quiet conclusion drawn from the universal language of grief.

You turned then, the candle casting a warm, flickering light upon your face as you looked at him. He had not moved, a statue of shadows and sorrow, yet his attention was entirely, unnervingly fixed on you.

“Something like that,” you said, your voice gaining a strange steadiness. “I was praying for souls I never knew. But whose… loss… caused a deep pain to others.” You turned back and carefully placed your candle among the others on the wrought-iron rack, its light joining the chorus of silent prayers. “I have faith that God receives all souls, regardless of the hands that shaped their fate. I was asking Him to be benevolent. To forgive the sins that stained their journey, and grant them peace.”

The words hung in the air, a clear, unmistakable plea for the souls of Vlad Dracul and Mircea. You did not look at him as you said it, your focus on the small, brave flame you had just offered in his family’s memory.

“It is a benevolent thing,” he said at last, his voice closer than you expected, “to pray for the souls of those you never owed a kindness.”

You shook your head slowly, still not looking at him. “It is not benevolence. It is… a need to quiet my own mind. I feel the weight of those lives. Here.” You pressed a hand to your own chest, over the velvet pouch that still lay against your skin. “As if their story is a stone I carry, though I did not cast it.”

You felt him take another step closer, the air shifting around him. “Was it your hand that held the blade?” he asked, his voice low and intent. “Was it your command that ended them?”

The question was direct, stripping away all pretense. You finally turned to face him. He was only a few feet away now, close enough that you could see the faint lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the subtle tension in his jaw.

“No,” you whispered, the word firm. “It was not my hand. But I am of the blood that gave the order, and I—”

“Do not,” he interrupted, his voice sharp, yet not unkind. It was a command, but one meant to protect. “Do not take upon your shoulders a burden that is not yours to carry. The guilt of kings and the sins of fathers are a poison. To drink it willingly is a slower, more insidious death than any blade can deliver.”

His words felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside you, freeing a breath you didn't realize you were holding. The simple, stark truth of them was more absolution than any priest could offer. You looked at him, truly looked at him, not as the Prince of Wallachia, but as the man who had just offered you a strange and unexpected mercy.

The words that came next felt necessary, a final stone to be cleared from between you. “Then let me offer a burden that is rightfully mine to lift,” you said, your voice gaining strength. “I… I wish to apologize. For my family. And for…” the word stuck in your throat, thick and unpleasant, “…for my betrothed.” You forced it out. “The provocation at the banquet was uncalled for. To question your honor in such a way was an aggression I do not condone.”

He observed you for a long moment, the candlelight dancing in his dark eyes. Then, that same ghost of a smile you had seen in the hall returned, but this time, it was different. A faint, genuine curve of his lips that transformed the severity of his features.

“Your apology is accepted,” he said, his tone gracious.

he stood before the altar beside you, his gaze shifting from your face to the candle he still held. “But I do not regret the words I spoke. I believe every one of them.” He looked back at you, and the intensity in his eyes was like a physical force. “For a man like me, that is the only currency that holds any value: the truth, however brutal. And in that hall, for that moment, it was enough.”

It was enough. The words settled over you. He was not a man who needed or wanted pretty lies. He valued honesty above comfort, and in offering him your raw, unvarnished truth—your apology, your misplaced guilt, your prayer for his family—you had, without realizing it, offered him the one thing he could respect.

He stood beside you, a solid, silent presence in the flickering dark, both of you gazing at the small, defiant flames. The chapel was no longer a place of lonely torment, but a sanctuary for two wounded souls, and the silence between you was no longer heavy, but filled with a profound and unexpected understanding.

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[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

Chapter 1

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, reader has a surname, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

Wc: 6.1K

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

Your father is Sir Michael Szilágyi de Horogszeg, Count of Beszterce, a Hungarian nobleman, a landholder, and royal advisor to the true King of Hungary, the head of the Szilágyi–Hunyadi league. Your mother descends from the most powerful noble family: The Báthory of the Gutkeled clan, risen to formidable influence, holding high military, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions. And it is whispered, on breaths that the wind carries through the castle's stone corridors, that in her veins runs not only the blue blood of the magnates, but also the ancient, dark essence of a goodness. Or so they say, those who believe in such things.

With this twin parentage of yours—the iron loyalty of a Hungarian wolf and the dark inheritance of a lineage touched by the eternal—one could expect anything from you: an enchantress, or an ordinary girl. There are those who, after meeting your gaze, will whisper that you are both.

But tonight, as you gaze into the silvered mirror and let your fingers trace the crimson velvet of your gown, you would give all that you are, all your legacy of pride and power, to be, just this once, simply irresistible. For the sake of your surviving, you don’t have another choice but to excite the attention of another man who wasn’t Ladislaus Pongrác.

He may not even see you. He—whoever he is. You have no name, no face to fix your hopes upon, only the terrifying knowledge that among the new arrivals, the foreign guests with their strange accents and shadowed pasts, there must be one with power enough to defy a monster. You are a hunter sighting down an arrow into a crowd, with no clear target. You cannot beg. You must intrigue. You must ignite a spark of curiosity in some world-weary eye, inspire a flicker of protective instinct in a stranger for a plight he does not know exists, and etch yourself onto his memory so he cannot simply forget you when the night is over. You must find a man around whom the very air crackles with power, a prince or a Duke and before whom even a man like Pongrác must kneel.

And you are to use this unknown savior as your shield.

The very thought is a cold stone in your stomach. For the man you must escape. A man whose name is a whisper of greed, whose touch is a bruise. A man who had received the King’s own warnings to cease his horrible treatments of the people under his charge and who had been forgiven every time, every single time, simply because he held the lands and resources the Crown desperately needed. You knew, with a certainty that chilled your soul, that if you did nothing tonight, if you failed to secure the attention of some man infinitely more powerful than Pongrác, you would be ruined. You would be at his mercy, and God alone knew what would become of you under his roof, in his power.

The bitterest irony was that you held no allure for him. Ladislaus Pongrác did not desire you; he desired your name and the Transylvanian lands that were your dowry, which he would add to his own swollen holdings as if he were doing your family a favour. In the few unfortunate occasions you were forced to endure his presence, he had the gall to look through you, his eyes sliding away to flirt with other women in the very same room, all while being willing to marry you. You were a transaction. A deed to a property. A key to a door he wished to unlock.

And so you must make yourself a key for another door. You must make some unknown, powerful guest see the transaction. You must make him understand the value of the prize—not the land, but you—and the horror of the alternative. He is a stranger, perhaps an enemy, a son of a land that bred your deepest fears. But you are far beyond loyalty to ancient feuds or family pride. Your loyalty is now to your own survival.

And now you are left a pawn in a game of shifting loyalties, and what security and station you once called your own has been threatened by the ambitions of men, with the tacit approval of a boy-king whose crown is still fresh-forged and ill-fitting. The master of this fragile realm, the great strategist who is known as your own father, Michael Szilágyi, who helped make a king out of his nephew, now only seventeen, and will make a fortress of Hungary against those who still whisper for a true son of the previous line. There are rival nobles in every great house of the kingdom now, and every profitable alliance or title or favour is held in their jealous grasp.

Your cousin, the boy-king Matthias, is on the throne, and his precarious supporters form this new, glittering court. You, the daughter of his most powerful pillar, are both a jewel and a hostage in your own castle, your true king a memory, your regent father a pragmatic statesman plotting with old enemies to secure a future. You have to navigate the court of the victor, while praying that God does not desert him and your family’s fortunes are not swept away by the next tide of rebellion. In the meantime, like many a woman with a name too great and a future too uncertain, you have to stitch your safety together like a patchwork of whispers and glances. You have to secure your freedom somehow, though it seems that neither your father’s influence nor your mother’s name can shield you from this one, vile fate. You are known as a Szilágyi—a kingmaker’s daughter. You are respected but not safe. You are all but powerless in the one thing that matters most.

This feast, this celebration of a birth and a reign, is but a mummer’s show. Its true purpose is to take the measure of friend and foe, to see which foreign lords and internal rivals will bend the knee to Matthias, and what dark interests stir beneath the surface of the wine and the music.

You take a final, steadying breath, the scent of beeswax and cold stone filling your lungs. The girl in the mirror is no longer just a girl. She is a weapon, finely wrought and aimed into the dark.

The door to your chamber whispers open, and in the silvered glass, you see your mother’s reflection appear behind your own. Her eyes, the same shade as yours, meet yours in the polished surface, and for a moment, the two of you are a portrait: the young huntress and the seasoned 'queen', bound by blood and circumstance.

“The moon pales tonight beside you, drága gyermekem,” she says, her voice a low, melodic hum that seems to quiet the frantic beating of your own heart. Her hands, cool and steady, come to rest on your bare shoulders. You feel the slight tremor in your own frame still beneath her touch. She sees everything. “The air around you crackles like a summer storm. You are afraid.”

You cannot lie to her. “Is it so obvious?”

“Only to a mother,” she murmurs, her fingers gently sweeping a stray curl from your neck. “And to anyone who knows what it is to have the world rest on a single glance.” She picks up the silver comb from your vanity, its teeth catching the candlelight. With a ritualistic slowness, she begins to draw it through your hair, each stroke a calming, measured rhythm. “You think you must conquer the entire hall tonight. You think you must be a hurricane. But a hurricane destroys. You must be the still, deep lake that a man cannot help but drown in.”

You watch her in the mirror, her own legendary beauty a tempered version of yours, hardened by years of courtly intrigue. “I feel I am aiming an arrow in utter darkness.”

“Then you must become the arrow and the light,” she says, her voice firm yet gentle. She sets the comb down and from a hidden fold in her deep blue sleeve, she produces a small velvet pouch, midnight black and tied with a silken cord. She places it in your palm. It is surprisingly cool and heavy for its size.

You look down at it, then up at her reflection, a question in your eyes. “What is this?”

“A tool,” she says, her hands closing over yours, forcing your fingers to curl around the pouch. You feel the distinct, smooth shape of a stone within. “A focus. It will help you see what others wish to hide. It will… clarify intentions.”

You turn the pouch over in your hand. It feels ancient, thrumming with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. “Magic?” you whisper, the word tasting both forbidden and familiar on your tongue. Your father’s house, for all its power, pays lip service to the Church’s laws. But your mother’s line… the Báthorys… they have always traded in older currencies.

She does not flinch. “A different kind of sight. A way to listen to the silence between a man’s words. To feel the truth of his power.” Her gaze is unwavering in the glass. “I know what you intend tonight. I know the wolf you must avoid. A mother does not send her daughter into a den of beasts without giving her a weapon.”

Your throat tightens. “What great beast do you hope this will help me catch?”

Her smile is a sad, beautiful thing. She cups your cheek, her thumb stroking your skin. “Your heart’s desire. Or at the very least, your salvation. I did not raise you to be a transaction on Pongrác’s ledger. I did not pour the ancient essence of our blood into your veins for you to wither under the touch of a greedy man.”

“What did you raise me for, then?” you ask, the weight of the stone in your hand feeling like the weight of her expectations, of your entire legacy. “In this world where we are both respected and vulnerable, where our king is a boy and our safety is a wager?”

She leans forward, her lips brushing your ear, her whisper a secret for you alone. “I raised you to be the best that you could be. Not just tonight. Always. Now, keep it close. Let it guide you. And remember,” she adds, stepping back, her regal composure returning, “the greatest magic is already in your blood. This is merely a key to help you unlock it.”

“Well, Amen,” You look from the retreating form of your mother to your own determined eyes in the mirror, your fist closing tightly around the velvet pouch. “Amen to that. And may the new moon bring me something better.”

The great hall is a roaring sea of silks, velvets, and the low thunder of a hundred murmured conversations, all washed in the golden light of a thousand candles. The air is thick with the scent of spiced wine, roasting meat, and the faint, cloying perfume of ambition. You stand with your mother in the place of honour, just behind and to the right of the Queen’s Catherine gilded throne. Catherine, your almost-sister, sits with a hand resting on the pronounced curve of her belly, a serene smile fixed upon her face, though you see the faint strain of fatigue at the corners of her eyes. You feel a protective surge, quickly banked. Tonight, you cannot afford to be merely a protective cousin.

The procession of dignitaries begins, a river of power and pretension flowing toward the dais to pay homage to the boy-king and his heavily pregnant queen. Your father stands at Matthias’s other side, a pillar of stern authority, his voice a constant, low murmur in the young king’s ear, shaping his perceptions, guiding his reactions.

Your own guide leans closer to you, her breath a soft whisper against your ear, her fan fluttering gently as if to stir the air, but in truth, to mask her words from all others.

“See there,” your mother murmurs, her eyes on a broad-shouldered man with a forked beard bowing low before Matthias. “János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom. A mind like a steel trap, and ambition to match your father’s. He would be a powerful shield, but his loyalty is to the Church first, and his own power second. A dangerous ally.”

The man moves on, and another takes his place, a younger, fiercer-looking noble with a hawk’s nose and restless eyes.

“And that one,” her whisper is laced with a hint of disdain. “Nicholas Újlaki. His lands border Pongrác’s. They are rivals in greed, two vultures circling the same carcass. He would take you to spite Ladislaus, but you would simply be trading one monster for another, perhaps a more foolish one.”

A duke from Bohemia is announced, his chest glittering with Jewerly. He offers extravagant compliments to the Queen.

“Empty courtesies from an empty purse,” your mother dismisses him instantly. “His influence is a phantom. He seeks loans, not a bride.”

You watch, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs, as man after man is presented and just as swiftly dismissed by your mother’s quiet, ruthless commentary. The velvet pouch feels like a lead weight tucked against your skin, its promise feeling more foolish by the minute. How can this stone help you navigate this labyrinth of flawed and dangerous men?

Then, a new figure steps into the circle of torchlight before the dais. He is not announced with the blaring titles of the others.

He is dressed not in bright silks, but in deepest black, a stark, severe contrast to the riot of colour in the hall. His doublet is of simple, elegant cut, devoid of jewels, his only ornament a dark fur draped over one shoulder. His face is pale, sculpted and severe, with eyes so dark they seem like pools of night. He moves with a predator’s grace, silent and deliberate, and the crowd parts before him without a sound. This is not a man who announces his presence; his presence announces itself, and the world falls silent in acknowledgment.

He is the most compelling, the most terrifying man you have ever seen. Your breath catches. This is him, a voice screams inside you. The one.

He stops before the dais and offers a bow that is not subservient, but a calculated gesture of respect from one power to another. His voice, when he speaks, is low, measured, and carries effortlessly in the silent hall. It is a voice that has known command.

“King Matthias,” he says, and the name sounds like both a recognition and a challenge on his lips. “Hungary flourishes under your gaze. I bring greetings from the Carpathians, where the wolves are restless and the earth remembers its ancient debts. An alliance forged in steel is stronger than one written on parchment. I am here to remind us both of that truth.”

You wait for your mother’s whisper. You crane your ear toward her, desperate for a name, a title, a crumb of information about this man who holds the entire court in thrall.

But her whisper does not come.

You turn your head slightly. Her face is a carefully composed mask, but you see the tension in her jaw, the white-knuckled grip on her fan. She is staring straight ahead, refusing to even look at him.

Confused, you lean in. “Mother,” you whisper urgently. “Who is that?”

She does not look at you. Her lips barely move. “Vlad Țepeș. Voivode of Wallachia.”

And you understood the most obvious part. Everyone knew that man's story, at least the most famous part, the reputation that followed him like a shadow.

“He… his power is palpable,” you breathe, your eyes drawn back to him like a moth to a flame. “Could he… would he be—”

“No.” The word is a sharp, final dagger. She finally turns her head, and her eyes are not guiding now; they are warning. They are frightened. “He is not an option. Not for you. Not for anyone in this family.”

“But why? Hungary needs his armies against the Turks. He needs our support.”

“What he needs and what he seeks are two different things,” she hisses, her voice low and venomous. “His father, Vlad Dracul, and your uncle, John Hunyadi… their history is written in blood and betrayal. Actions were taken. Terrible actions. If he is here, it is not for a bride. It is not for pleasant alliances. A man like that does not forget. He does not forgive. He bides his time. He is here for one thing only, should he ever get the chance: vengeance. And we,” she says, her gaze sweeping over you, then back to the dangerous figure before the throne, “must be very, very careful not to give him that chance.”

A tense silence stretches after Prince words, thick and heavy as the fur on his shoulder. All eyes are on the young king. Matthias, to his credit, does not flinch under the weight of that dark gaze or the cryptic warning. He leans forward, his boyish face set in a mask of regal composure that you know your father helped him practice.

“The Crown of Hungary welcomes the Voivode of Wallachia,” Matthias replies, his voice clear, though it lacks the deep, resonant gravity of the man before him. “We remember the ancient debts of the earth, and we value steel above parchment. Your alliance is noted and appreciated. Let us speak more of our Kingdoms after the feast.” It is a dismissal, but a polite one, an attempt to steer the conversation back to the safe, public waters of celebration.

The moment breaks. The courtiers remember to breathe, and the low murmur of conversation slowly swells to fill the void left by the prince’s daunting presence. The prince offers another of his minimal, unnerving bows and turns to melt back into the crowd, which parts for him as water parts for a shark.

Your eyes are locked on him, your mother’s warning a distant buzz in your ears. You watch the straight line of his back, the way he moves without seeming to notice the people around him. And then, just as he is about to be swallowed by the throng, he stops.

It is as if he felt the weight of your stare, a physical pull. He turns his head, not fully, just a slight shift. And his eyes, those pools of absolute night, find yours across the crowded hall.

There is only the startling, direct connection of his gaze. It is not a glance; it is an assessment, swift and thorough, taking in every detail of you standing there beside the queen. It lasts less than a heartbeat, a fleeting, electric moment that leaves a strange, cold heat prickling on your skin. Then he turns away and is gone, absorbed into the tapestry of the court.

You blink, your heart hammering against your ribs as if trying to escape. You force yourself to look away, to turn back toward the safety of the dais, your mind reeling.

He saw me.

A profound disappointment washes over you, cold and final. Of all the men who had paraded before you tonight, he was the only one who had truly stirred your curiosity, the only one whose very essence seemed to radiate a power so absolute it could shatter a man like Pongrác with a word. But that same power made him the most dangerous choice of all. If your family, who held every card at this court, feared him, then you had no choice but to fear him too.

A pity. A truly devastating pity. For a moment, you had seen your shield. And in the next, you saw the sword that could destroy you all.

Now you understood why your father was so urgent to bring Ladislaus’s territories under his control, or so you thought. You could only listen as he laughed with the man, as if they were lifelong companions and friends, as if just a few months ago Ladislaus had not switched sides, nearly swearing loyalty to the sister of Matthias’s deceased predecessor over the decisions of the nobles. An insult, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, for your cousin’s teetering reign, the fragile borders, and the imminent Ottoman invasion, the resources Ladislaus offered were key. His lands were where supplies could be most easily and quickly procured should any of the three situations turn dire.

This was the new reality at the banquet. On purpose, your father had seated you right beside Ladislaus. For the past hour, you had only listened to your father and him talk, to Ladislaus reminiscing and boasting about the vast, prosperous resources he possessed—resources that would be of great help in case of a disastrous rule. In your mind, you could only recall the man’s reputation as a thief and an enslaver. And though your father agreed with everything he said, you knew that once you were married, it would be your father who would manage everything as his own. He only needed an excuse to take them without Ladislaus being able to refuse, and that excuse was his marriage to you.

It was then that Matthias interrupted to propose a toast. He struck his glass with a spoon, and the sound of crystal cut through the murmur like a knife. All eyes turned to the king. He stood, imposing, the crown on his head gleaming with a golden glow.

“Friends, allies, loyal subjects,” he began, his voice projecting with a natural authority that filled the hall. “I toast to this night. To the relationships that grow stronger, to the goodwill that unites us, and to the faith in God that guides us—the very faith our enemies so desperately wish to destroy.”

The crowd murmured its approval. Matthias raised his glass even higher.

“I toast to my wife, Catherine, the rock upon which my heart rests and the mother of my future heir.” She inclined her head gracefully, a hand on her womb. “I toast to my loyal uncle and subject, Michael Szilágyi, whose counsel and sword have been pillars of my reign.” Your father nodded solemnly, his face expressionless but his eyes shining with pride.

Then, Matthias’s gaze settled on you. A faint surprise coursed through you.

“And I toast,” he continued, his voice taking on an almost tender tone, “to my cousin, whose gentle spirit and loyal service have not only been a balm to our queen but a constant companionship and a reminder of the family for which we fight every day. Her presence has been a light in moments of great darkness.”

As if you were the true center of attention, he extended his hand over Catherine, gesturing for you to rise.

And you did, your legs slightly trembling, feeling the weight of hundreds of eyes upon you. You did not understand such adulation. You had only done what was expected of you. You looked at Catherine, seeking guidance, and she responded with a slight, encouraging smile.

“And in that spirit of securing our future,” he declared, his eyes sweeping the room, “it brings me great joy to announce a union that will further strengthen the bonds of our kingdom. A marriage that will unite two great houses and ensure the prosperity and security of our lands.”

Your blood ran cold even before he spoke the names. Your father’s placid expression, Ladislaus’s smug, triumphant smirk—it all made a terrible, horrifying sense.

“I hereby announce the betrothal of my beloved cousin,” Matthias said, his hand gesturing toward you, “to our most loyal and resourceful supporter, Lord Ladislaus Pongrác. May their union bring not only personal happiness but enduring strength to Hungary!”

The applause was immediate.

“To all of them!” Matthias proclaimed, raising his glass. “And to the future of Hungary!”

“To the future of Hungary!” the room roared in unison, and the sound of clinking glasses filled the air like a peal of bells.

You stood frozen, a smile plastered on your face that felt like a death mask. Across the table, your mother’s face was a pale, stoic mask, her knuckles white as she too clapped, her eyes screaming a silent apology to you.

Ladislaus rose, giving a grandiose bow, his eyes glinting with possessive victory as they swept over you. He had won you. The key to the door he wished to unlock had been handed to him publicly, irrevocably, by the king himself.

The future of Hungary, it seemed, would be built on your sacrifice. And as you sat back down, the taste of wine on your tongue was as bitter as ash.

Confusion curdled in your chest, thick and sickening. The announcement… it was today? You had thought this night was merely for welcoming the foreign guests, for your father and Matthias to subtly interrogate each envoy, to take the measure of friend and foe. You had believed you had time—precious, desperate time—to find another path, to ignite a spark of interest in some other powerful man. You had clutched your mother’s strange stone as if it were a lifeline, a promise of a chance to fight.

That chance had been stolen from you before you could even draw a weapon. The despair was a physical blow, a wave of impotent fury that threatened to crack the porcelain smile on your face. A bitter resentment, hot and sharp, flared toward your family—toward your father for his ruthless pragmatism, toward Matthias for his grand, casual gesture that had sealed your fate as if gifting a prized horse. Did they love you so little? Did they know the monster they were chaining you to and simply not care? The thought was a betrayal in itself, but it was there, a poisonous vine twisting around your heart.

You forced it down, choking on the guilt that immediately followed. They are securing the kingdom. You are a Szilágyi. This is your duty.The mantra felt hollow, a shield of rotted wood against the reality of Ladislaus’s gloating presence beside you. How could your father, who claimed to love you, condemn you to a life under that man’s thumb? The disconnect between his affection and his action was a chasm you were falling into.

The roar of the toast faded, replaced by the resumption of feasting. The taste of ash in your mouth would not leave. You were so lost in the tumult of your own despair that the conversation at the high table seemed to come from a great distance, a dull hum beneath the ringing in your ears.

It was the sudden shift in the quality of the silence around you that pulled you back. You blinked, forcing yourself to focus. Matthias was leaning forward, his face set in an expression of keen interest. And his gaze was fixed not on your father, or on a foreign duke, but on the one man in the hall who seemed to carry his own winter with him.

“And you, Voivode Țepeș,” Matthias’s voice cut through the chatter, deceptively light. “Your… methods in Wallachia are the subject of much discussion. You hold your differences against the Transilvanian Saxon with a firmness others find… extreme. Tell me, do you believe fear is a more reliable currency than gold in the defense of a kingdom?”

The question hung in the air, a blade poised. You could not fathom why Matthias would introduce such a volatile topic at his own celebration, a public challenge to a man known for his brutal pragmatism. It felt like tossing a lit torch into a room full of gunpowder. You glanced at your father, expecting him to smoothly intercede, to deflect and soothe as he always did. But his silence was deafening. He merely watched, his expression unreadable, a strategist observing a battle unfold from a safe hill.

Then, the Voivode spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it cut through the din of the hall with the chilling clarity of ice cracking on a winter lake.

“A king must understand the nature of the tools he uses,” Vlad began, his dark eyes fixed on Matthias, utterly ignoring your father’s presence. “The Saxons of Transylvania declared their loyalty to those who usurped my father’s throne. They funded my enemies. They celebrated my family’s suffering. I cannot risk such a disease festering within my own borders. Gold?” He almost smiled, a cold, sharp thing. “Gold can buy a man’s service, but it cannot buy his loyalty. It makes him a richer mercenary, not a truer subject. A man who betrays for gold will betray again for more gold. Or for a prettier title. Or simply because the wind changes direction.”

The silence in the immediate vicinity of the high table was absolute. Ladislaus, beside you, had stopped chewing, his face slightly pale.

Your father finally stirred, clearing his throat, the sound overly loud. “Surely, Voivode, there are always… alternatives to such permanent solutions. Diplomacy. Sanctions. The guidance of the Church. Spilled blood is a stain that is difficult to wash away, even from the hands of a king.” It was the expected rebuke, the voice of civilized politics.

But Vlad’s gaze did not waver from Matthias, as if your father were a gnat buzzing at the periphery of his vision. “When the rot is deep, Count Szilágyi, one does not paint over the wood. One cuts it out. I was left with no other action. I chose the one that ensured my survival and the security of my throne. A ruler who hesitates to protect what is his does not deserve to keep it.”

Then, his eyes swept, for the first time, across the table. They passed over your father’s rigid face, over Ladislaus’s irritated one, and for a fleeting second, seemed to brush against yours before returning to the king. He delivered his final blow, his voice dropping to a intimate, carrying pitch that felt like it was meant for every betrayed soul in the room.

“A traitor will always be a traitor. A thief, a thief. You can give them the brightest gold, the most powerful title, even your most beautiful daughter…” His words landed on the recent announcement with the weight of a tombstone. “…and you will still lie awake at night wondering when they will turn their face against you. I have always preferred to see men for what they are: selfish, arrogant, and treacherous. It saves a great deal of disappointment later.”

The air rushed from your lungs. It was a direct, undeniable strike. He had taken the very foundation of your betrothal—the political calculation that a man like Ladislaus could be bought and trusted with your body and your family’s future—and had held it up to the court not as strategy, but as profound, wilful foolishness.

A shocking, treacherous sensation flared in your chest. It was not offense. It was vindication. It was a fierce, blazing agreement. He had given voice to the screaming protest in your own soul, the one you had to choke down with talk of duty and family. He had looked at the transaction your father had made and had named it for the dangerous gamble it was. The words were a blow to your father’s plans, and to your own future, yet you felt a perverse, thrilling sense of gratitude. Someone had said it. Someone had seen the rot.

You dropped your gaze to your plate, your heart hammering against your ribs, afraid that the wild, complicit agreement in your eyes would be seen by everyone. The taste of ash in your mouth was suddenly gone, replaced by the metallic tang of a truth too dangerous to speak aloud.

A faint, unbidden smile touched your eyes, a flicker of light in the gloom of your despair. It was a reflex, a spark ignited by the sheer, audacious truth of his words. Before you could stop yourself, your gaze lifted from your plate, seeking his across the crowded space.

He was still turned toward the king, his profile a sharp, pale cut against the torchlight. But as if feeling the pull of your look, his head turned. His dark eyes, which had moments ago been imparting a lesson in cold Realpolitik to a king, found yours.

This time, it was not a glancing blow, a swift assessment. This time, it was a connection. You did not look away. Neither did he. And in the depths of that midnight gaze, you saw it—a subtle, answering curve at the corner of his mouth, a ghost of a smile that acknowledged your own. It was not a smile of warmth, but one of sharp, perfect understanding. A conspirator’s smile.

There was no doubt. None at all. He had said what he had said with purpose, with brutal sincerity, and he had aimed it precisely where he meant to. And he had seen your silent, grateful applause. He had seen the vindication in your eyes and, in seeing it, had found a moment of dark amusement.

The silence that followed Vlad’s pronouncement was thick enough to choke on. It was Ladislaus who broke it, his voice a jarring, overly hearty sound that clashed with the tension. He raised his glass, a mocking smile playing on his lips.

“A most… illuminating philosophy, Voivode,” he said, his tone slick with false camaraderie. “It is always bracing to hear a man speak with such conviction about the nature of treachery. It reminds one of the… complex paths some must walk to reclaim their birthright.” He paused, letting the insinuation hang in the air before driving the dagger home, his voice dropping into a more intimate, cutting register. “Tell us, Prince Dracula, how did you find the Sultan’s hospitality during your… extended stay? And the pay he provided for your army when you first marched on Wallachia? It is a curious thing, how the definition of ‘traitor’ can shift depending on which side of the border one stands, and who is signing the paychecks. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The gasp in the hall was audible. This was no longer an insinuation; it was a direct, public accusation of the highest treason, of consorting with the Ottoman enemy. Ladislaus had not just thrown a stone; he had launched a spear aimed straight at the heart of Vlad’s legitimacy.

All eyes swung back to the Prince of Wallachia. You held your breath, expecting a denial, a flash of righteous fury.

Instead, Vlad did something far more terrifying. He smiled. A wide, sharp, and utterly chilling smile that did not touch his eyes.

“You are remarkably well-informed for a… landholder, Lord Pongrác,” he said, his voice a low, agreeable rumble that somehow silenced the hall more effectively than a shout. He did not deny a single word. “Yes, I have indeed supped with the devil. I have used the tools available to me, no matter how stained. I took the Sultan’s gold. I learned his tactics. I used his army. And when it served my purpose, I turned on him. But you see, the critical difference is this: I have never once claimed to be a saint. I do not pretend to be a loyal lamb in a court. I know precisely what I am.”

He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes pinning Ladislaus to his seat. The smile remained, a predator’s grin. “I recognize the faithless because I am capable of faithlessness. I understand the traitor because I have played the traitor when it served a greater purpose. My survival. My throne. I make no apologies for it. I simply ensure that those who would play those games with me…” his gaze flickered, for a fraction of a second, to your father, then back to Ladislaus, “…understand that I am the master of them. No one has ever successfully cut me out. They have tried. And they have learned that the rot they sought to exploit runs far deeper in them than it ever could in me.”

The air left the room. He had not denied it. He had embraced it. He had taken Ladislaus’s attempt to shame him and had worn it like a crown of black iron, transforming an accusation of treason into a declaration of supreme, unchallengeable self-awareness and power. He was not a hypocrite; he was an honest monster, and in doing so, he revealed the pathetic, cloaked greed of men like Ladislaus, who hid their own treachery behind a veil of feigned loyalty.

Ladislaus looked as if he had been physically struck. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He had thrown his spear and hit a mountain, and the mountain had laughed, the sound echoing in the stunned silence of the hall.

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[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

Chapter 1

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, reader has a surname, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

Wc: 6.1K

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

Your father is Sir Michael Szilágyi de Horogszeg, Count of Beszterce, a Hungarian nobleman, a landholder, and royal advisor to the true King of Hungary, the head of the Szilágyi–Hunyadi league. Your mother descends from the most powerful noble family: The Báthory of the Gutkeled clan, risen to formidable influence, holding high military, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions. And it is whispered, on breaths that the wind carries through the castle's stone corridors, that in her veins runs not only the blue blood of the magnates, but also the ancient, dark essence of a goodness. Or so they say, those who believe in such things.

With this twin parentage of yours—the iron loyalty of a Hungarian wolf and the dark inheritance of a lineage touched by the eternal—one could expect anything from you: an enchantress, or an ordinary girl. There are those who, after meeting your gaze, will whisper that you are both.

But tonight, as you gaze into the silvered mirror and let your fingers trace the crimson velvet of your gown, you would give all that you are, all your legacy of pride and power, to be, just this once, simply irresistible. For the sake of your surviving, you don’t have another choice but to excite the attention of another man who wasn’t Ladislaus Pongrác.

He may not even see you. He—whoever he is. You have no name, no face to fix your hopes upon, only the terrifying knowledge that among the new arrivals, the foreign guests with their strange accents and shadowed pasts, there must be one with power enough to defy a monster. You are a hunter sighting down an arrow into a crowd, with no clear target. You cannot beg. You must intrigue. You must ignite a spark of curiosity in some world-weary eye, inspire a flicker of protective instinct in a stranger for a plight he does not know exists, and etch yourself onto his memory so he cannot simply forget you when the night is over. You must find a man around whom the very air crackles with power, a prince or a Duke and before whom even a man like Pongrác must kneel.

And you are to use this unknown savior as your shield.

The very thought is a cold stone in your stomach. For the man you must escape. A man whose name is a whisper of greed, whose touch is a bruise. A man who had received the King’s own warnings to cease his horrible treatments of the people under his charge and who had been forgiven every time, every single time, simply because he held the lands and resources the Crown desperately needed. You knew, with a certainty that chilled your soul, that if you did nothing tonight, if you failed to secure the attention of some man infinitely more powerful than Pongrác, you would be ruined. You would be at his mercy, and God alone knew what would become of you under his roof, in his power.

The bitterest irony was that you held no allure for him. Ladislaus Pongrác did not desire you; he desired your name and the Transylvanian lands that were your dowry, which he would add to his own swollen holdings as if he were doing your family a favour. In the few unfortunate occasions you were forced to endure his presence, he had the gall to look through you, his eyes sliding away to flirt with other women in the very same room, all while being willing to marry you. You were a transaction. A deed to a property. A key to a door he wished to unlock.

And so you must make yourself a key for another door. You must make some unknown, powerful guest see the transaction. You must make him understand the value of the prize—not the land, but you—and the horror of the alternative. He is a stranger, perhaps an enemy, a son of a land that bred your deepest fears. But you are far beyond loyalty to ancient feuds or family pride. Your loyalty is now to your own survival.

And now you are left a pawn in a game of shifting loyalties, and what security and station you once called your own has been threatened by the ambitions of men, with the tacit approval of a boy-king whose crown is still fresh-forged and ill-fitting. The master of this fragile realm, the great strategist who is known as your own father, Michael Szilágyi, who helped make a king out of his nephew, now only seventeen, and will make a fortress of Hungary against those who still whisper for a true son of the previous line. There are rival nobles in every great house of the kingdom now, and every profitable alliance or title or favour is held in their jealous grasp.

Your cousin, the boy-king Matthias, is on the throne, and his precarious supporters form this new, glittering court. You, the daughter of his most powerful pillar, are both a jewel and a hostage in your own castle, your true king a memory, your regent father a pragmatic statesman plotting with old enemies to secure a future. You have to navigate the court of the victor, while praying that God does not desert him and your family’s fortunes are not swept away by the next tide of rebellion. In the meantime, like many a woman with a name too great and a future too uncertain, you have to stitch your safety together like a patchwork of whispers and glances. You have to secure your freedom somehow, though it seems that neither your father’s influence nor your mother’s name can shield you from this one, vile fate. You are known as a Szilágyi—a kingmaker’s daughter. You are respected but not safe. You are all but powerless in the one thing that matters most.

This feast, this celebration of a birth and a reign, is but a mummer’s show. Its true purpose is to take the measure of friend and foe, to see which foreign lords and internal rivals will bend the knee to Matthias, and what dark interests stir beneath the surface of the wine and the music.

You take a final, steadying breath, the scent of beeswax and cold stone filling your lungs. The girl in the mirror is no longer just a girl. She is a weapon, finely wrought and aimed into the dark.

The door to your chamber whispers open, and in the silvered glass, you see your mother’s reflection appear behind your own. Her eyes, the same shade as yours, meet yours in the polished surface, and for a moment, the two of you are a portrait: the young huntress and the seasoned 'queen', bound by blood and circumstance.

“The moon pales tonight beside you, drága gyermekem,” she says, her voice a low, melodic hum that seems to quiet the frantic beating of your own heart. Her hands, cool and steady, come to rest on your bare shoulders. You feel the slight tremor in your own frame still beneath her touch. She sees everything. “The air around you crackles like a summer storm. You are afraid.”

You cannot lie to her. “Is it so obvious?”

“Only to a mother,” she murmurs, her fingers gently sweeping a stray curl from your neck. “And to anyone who knows what it is to have the world rest on a single glance.” She picks up the silver comb from your vanity, its teeth catching the candlelight. With a ritualistic slowness, she begins to draw it through your hair, each stroke a calming, measured rhythm. “You think you must conquer the entire hall tonight. You think you must be a hurricane. But a hurricane destroys. You must be the still, deep lake that a man cannot help but drown in.”

You watch her in the mirror, her own legendary beauty a tempered version of yours, hardened by years of courtly intrigue. “I feel I am aiming an arrow in utter darkness.”

“Then you must become the arrow and the light,” she says, her voice firm yet gentle. She sets the comb down and from a hidden fold in her deep blue sleeve, she produces a small velvet pouch, midnight black and tied with a silken cord. She places it in your palm. It is surprisingly cool and heavy for its size.

You look down at it, then up at her reflection, a question in your eyes. “What is this?”

“A tool,” she says, her hands closing over yours, forcing your fingers to curl around the pouch. You feel the distinct, smooth shape of a stone within. “A focus. It will help you see what others wish to hide. It will… clarify intentions.”

You turn the pouch over in your hand. It feels ancient, thrumming with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. “Magic?” you whisper, the word tasting both forbidden and familiar on your tongue. Your father’s house, for all its power, pays lip service to the Church’s laws. But your mother’s line… the Báthorys… they have always traded in older currencies.

She does not flinch. “A different kind of sight. A way to listen to the silence between a man’s words. To feel the truth of his power.” Her gaze is unwavering in the glass. “I know what you intend tonight. I know the wolf you must avoid. A mother does not send her daughter into a den of beasts without giving her a weapon.”

Your throat tightens. “What great beast do you hope this will help me catch?”

Her smile is a sad, beautiful thing. She cups your cheek, her thumb stroking your skin. “Your heart’s desire. Or at the very least, your salvation. I did not raise you to be a transaction on Pongrác’s ledger. I did not pour the ancient essence of our blood into your veins for you to wither under the touch of a greedy man.”

“What did you raise me for, then?” you ask, the weight of the stone in your hand feeling like the weight of her expectations, of your entire legacy. “In this world where we are both respected and vulnerable, where our king is a boy and our safety is a wager?”

She leans forward, her lips brushing your ear, her whisper a secret for you alone. “I raised you to be the best that you could be. Not just tonight. Always. Now, keep it close. Let it guide you. And remember,” she adds, stepping back, her regal composure returning, “the greatest magic is already in your blood. This is merely a key to help you unlock it.”

“Well, Amen,” You look from the retreating form of your mother to your own determined eyes in the mirror, your fist closing tightly around the velvet pouch. “Amen to that. And may the new moon bring me something better.”

The great hall is a roaring sea of silks, velvets, and the low thunder of a hundred murmured conversations, all washed in the golden light of a thousand candles. The air is thick with the scent of spiced wine, roasting meat, and the faint, cloying perfume of ambition. You stand with your mother in the place of honour, just behind and to the right of the Queen’s Catherine gilded throne. Catherine, your almost-sister, sits with a hand resting on the pronounced curve of her belly, a serene smile fixed upon her face, though you see the faint strain of fatigue at the corners of her eyes. You feel a protective surge, quickly banked. Tonight, you cannot afford to be merely a protective cousin.

The procession of dignitaries begins, a river of power and pretension flowing toward the dais to pay homage to the boy-king and his heavily pregnant queen. Your father stands at Matthias’s other side, a pillar of stern authority, his voice a constant, low murmur in the young king’s ear, shaping his perceptions, guiding his reactions.

Your own guide leans closer to you, her breath a soft whisper against your ear, her fan fluttering gently as if to stir the air, but in truth, to mask her words from all others.

“See there,” your mother murmurs, her eyes on a broad-shouldered man with a forked beard bowing low before Matthias. “János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom. A mind like a steel trap, and ambition to match your father’s. He would be a powerful shield, but his loyalty is to the Church first, and his own power second. A dangerous ally.”

The man moves on, and another takes his place, a younger, fiercer-looking noble with a hawk’s nose and restless eyes.

“And that one,” her whisper is laced with a hint of disdain. “Nicholas Újlaki. His lands border Pongrác’s. They are rivals in greed, two vultures circling the same carcass. He would take you to spite Ladislaus, but you would simply be trading one monster for another, perhaps a more foolish one.”

A duke from Bohemia is announced, his chest glittering with Jewerly. He offers extravagant compliments to the Queen.

“Empty courtesies from an empty purse,” your mother dismisses him instantly. “His influence is a phantom. He seeks loans, not a bride.”

You watch, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs, as man after man is presented and just as swiftly dismissed by your mother’s quiet, ruthless commentary. The velvet pouch feels like a lead weight tucked against your skin, its promise feeling more foolish by the minute. How can this stone help you navigate this labyrinth of flawed and dangerous men?

Then, a new figure steps into the circle of torchlight before the dais. He is not announced with the blaring titles of the others.

He is dressed not in bright silks, but in deepest black, a stark, severe contrast to the riot of colour in the hall. His doublet is of simple, elegant cut, devoid of jewels, his only ornament a dark fur draped over one shoulder. His face is pale, sculpted and severe, with eyes so dark they seem like pools of night. He moves with a predator’s grace, silent and deliberate, and the crowd parts before him without a sound. This is not a man who announces his presence; his presence announces itself, and the world falls silent in acknowledgment.

He is the most compelling, the most terrifying man you have ever seen. Your breath catches. This is him, a voice screams inside you. The one.

He stops before the dais and offers a bow that is not subservient, but a calculated gesture of respect from one power to another. His voice, when he speaks, is low, measured, and carries effortlessly in the silent hall. It is a voice that has known command.

“King Matthias,” he says, and the name sounds like both a recognition and a challenge on his lips. “Hungary flourishes under your gaze. I bring greetings from the Carpathians, where the wolves are restless and the earth remembers its ancient debts. An alliance forged in steel is stronger than one written on parchment. I am here to remind us both of that truth.”

You wait for your mother’s whisper. You crane your ear toward her, desperate for a name, a title, a crumb of information about this man who holds the entire court in thrall.

But her whisper does not come.

You turn your head slightly. Her face is a carefully composed mask, but you see the tension in her jaw, the white-knuckled grip on her fan. She is staring straight ahead, refusing to even look at him.

Confused, you lean in. “Mother,” you whisper urgently. “Who is that?”

She does not look at you. Her lips barely move. “Vlad Țepeș. Voivode of Wallachia.”

And you understood the most obvious part. Everyone knew that man's story, at least the most famous part, the reputation that followed him like a shadow.

“He… his power is palpable,” you breathe, your eyes drawn back to him like a moth to a flame. “Could he… would he be—”

“No.” The word is a sharp, final dagger. She finally turns her head, and her eyes are not guiding now; they are warning. They are frightened. “He is not an option. Not for you. Not for anyone in this family.”

“But why? Hungary needs his armies against the Turks. He needs our support.”

“What he needs and what he seeks are two different things,” she hisses, her voice low and venomous. “His father, Vlad Dracul, and your uncle, John Hunyadi… their history is written in blood and betrayal. Actions were taken. Terrible actions. If he is here, it is not for a bride. It is not for pleasant alliances. A man like that does not forget. He does not forgive. He bides his time. He is here for one thing only, should he ever get the chance: vengeance. And we,” she says, her gaze sweeping over you, then back to the dangerous figure before the throne, “must be very, very careful not to give him that chance.”

A tense silence stretches after Prince words, thick and heavy as the fur on his shoulder. All eyes are on the young king. Matthias, to his credit, does not flinch under the weight of that dark gaze or the cryptic warning. He leans forward, his boyish face set in a mask of regal composure that you know your father helped him practice.

“The Crown of Hungary welcomes the Voivode of Wallachia,” Matthias replies, his voice clear, though it lacks the deep, resonant gravity of the man before him. “We remember the ancient debts of the earth, and we value steel above parchment. Your alliance is noted and appreciated. Let us speak more of our Kingdoms after the feast.” It is a dismissal, but a polite one, an attempt to steer the conversation back to the safe, public waters of celebration.

The moment breaks. The courtiers remember to breathe, and the low murmur of conversation slowly swells to fill the void left by the prince’s daunting presence. The prince offers another of his minimal, unnerving bows and turns to melt back into the crowd, which parts for him as water parts for a shark.

Your eyes are locked on him, your mother’s warning a distant buzz in your ears. You watch the straight line of his back, the way he moves without seeming to notice the people around him. And then, just as he is about to be swallowed by the throng, he stops.

It is as if he felt the weight of your stare, a physical pull. He turns his head, not fully, just a slight shift. And his eyes, those pools of absolute night, find yours across the crowded hall.

There is only the startling, direct connection of his gaze. It is not a glance; it is an assessment, swift and thorough, taking in every detail of you standing there beside the queen. It lasts less than a heartbeat, a fleeting, electric moment that leaves a strange, cold heat prickling on your skin. Then he turns away and is gone, absorbed into the tapestry of the court.

You blink, your heart hammering against your ribs as if trying to escape. You force yourself to look away, to turn back toward the safety of the dais, your mind reeling.

He saw me.

A profound disappointment washes over you, cold and final. Of all the men who had paraded before you tonight, he was the only one who had truly stirred your curiosity, the only one whose very essence seemed to radiate a power so absolute it could shatter a man like Pongrác with a word. But that same power made him the most dangerous choice of all. If your family, who held every card at this court, feared him, then you had no choice but to fear him too.

A pity. A truly devastating pity. For a moment, you had seen your shield. And in the next, you saw the sword that could destroy you all.

Now you understood why your father was so urgent to bring Ladislaus’s territories under his control, or so you thought. You could only listen as he laughed with the man, as if they were lifelong companions and friends, as if just a few months ago Ladislaus had not switched sides, nearly swearing loyalty to the sister of Matthias’s deceased predecessor over the decisions of the nobles. An insult, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, for your cousin’s teetering reign, the fragile borders, and the imminent Ottoman invasion, the resources Ladislaus offered were key. His lands were where supplies could be most easily and quickly procured should any of the three situations turn dire.

This was the new reality at the banquet. On purpose, your father had seated you right beside Ladislaus. For the past hour, you had only listened to your father and him talk, to Ladislaus reminiscing and boasting about the vast, prosperous resources he possessed—resources that would be of great help in case of a disastrous rule. In your mind, you could only recall the man’s reputation as a thief and an enslaver. And though your father agreed with everything he said, you knew that once you were married, it would be your father who would manage everything as his own. He only needed an excuse to take them without Ladislaus being able to refuse, and that excuse was his marriage to you.

It was then that Matthias interrupted to propose a toast. He struck his glass with a spoon, and the sound of crystal cut through the murmur like a knife. All eyes turned to the king. He stood, imposing, the crown on his head gleaming with a golden glow.

“Friends, allies, loyal subjects,” he began, his voice projecting with a natural authority that filled the hall. “I toast to this night. To the relationships that grow stronger, to the goodwill that unites us, and to the faith in God that guides us—the very faith our enemies so desperately wish to destroy.”

The crowd murmured its approval. Matthias raised his glass even higher.

“I toast to my wife, Catherine, the rock upon which my heart rests and the mother of my future heir.” She inclined her head gracefully, a hand on her womb. “I toast to my loyal uncle and subject, Michael Szilágyi, whose counsel and sword have been pillars of my reign.” Your father nodded solemnly, his face expressionless but his eyes shining with pride.

Then, Matthias’s gaze settled on you. A faint surprise coursed through you.

“And I toast,” he continued, his voice taking on an almost tender tone, “to my cousin, whose gentle spirit and loyal service have not only been a balm to our queen but a constant companionship and a reminder of the family for which we fight every day. Her presence has been a light in moments of great darkness.”

As if you were the true center of attention, he extended his hand over Catherine, gesturing for you to rise.

And you did, your legs slightly trembling, feeling the weight of hundreds of eyes upon you. You did not understand such adulation. You had only done what was expected of you. You looked at Catherine, seeking guidance, and she responded with a slight, encouraging smile.

“And in that spirit of securing our future,” he declared, his eyes sweeping the room, “it brings me great joy to announce a union that will further strengthen the bonds of our kingdom. A marriage that will unite two great houses and ensure the prosperity and security of our lands.”

Your blood ran cold even before he spoke the names. Your father’s placid expression, Ladislaus’s smug, triumphant smirk—it all made a terrible, horrifying sense.

“I hereby announce the betrothal of my beloved cousin,” Matthias said, his hand gesturing toward you, “to our most loyal and resourceful supporter, the Count Ladislaus Pongrác. May their union bring not only personal happiness but enduring strength to Hungary!”

The applause was immediate.

“To all of them!” Matthias proclaimed, raising his glass. “And to the future of Hungary!”

“To the future of Hungary!” the room roared in unison, and the sound of clinking glasses filled the air like a peal of bells.

You stood frozen, a smile plastered on your face that felt like a death mask. Across the table, your mother’s face was a pale, stoic mask, her knuckles white as she too clapped, her eyes screaming a silent apology to you.

Ladislaus rose, giving a grandiose bow, his eyes glinting with possessive victory as they swept over you. He had won you. The key to the door he wished to unlock had been handed to him publicly, irrevocably, by the king himself.

The future of Hungary, it seemed, would be built on your sacrifice. And as you sat back down, the taste of wine on your tongue was as bitter as ash.

Confusion curdled in your chest, thick and sickening. The announcement… it was today? You had thought this night was merely for welcoming the foreign guests, for your father and Matthias to subtly interrogate each envoy, to take the measure of friend and foe. You had believed you had time—precious, desperate time—to find another path, to ignite a spark of interest in some other powerful man. You had clutched your mother’s strange stone as if it were a lifeline, a promise of a chance to fight.

That chance had been stolen from you before you could even draw a weapon. The despair was a physical blow, a wave of impotent fury that threatened to crack the porcelain smile on your face. A bitter resentment, hot and sharp, flared toward your family—toward your father for his ruthless pragmatism, toward Matthias for his grand, casual gesture that had sealed your fate as if gifting a prized horse. Did they love you so little? Did they know the monster they were chaining you to and simply not care? The thought was a betrayal in itself, but it was there, a poisonous vine twisting around your heart.

You forced it down, choking on the guilt that immediately followed. They are securing the kingdom. You are a Szilágyi. This is your duty.The mantra felt hollow, a shield of rotted wood against the reality of Ladislaus’s gloating presence beside you. How could your father, who claimed to love you, condemn you to a life under that man’s thumb? The disconnect between his affection and his action was a chasm you were falling into.

The roar of the toast faded, replaced by the resumption of feasting. The taste of ash in your mouth would not leave. You were so lost in the tumult of your own despair that the conversation at the high table seemed to come from a great distance, a dull hum beneath the ringing in your ears.

It was the sudden shift in the quality of the silence around you that pulled you back. You blinked, forcing yourself to focus. Matthias was leaning forward, his face set in an expression of keen interest. And his gaze was fixed not on your father, or on a foreign duke, but on the one man in the hall who seemed to carry his own winter with him.

“And you, Voivode Țepeș,” Matthias’s voice cut through the chatter, deceptively light. “Your… methods in Wallachia are the subject of much discussion. You hold your differences against the Transilvanian Saxon with a firmness others find… extreme. Tell me, do you believe fear is a more reliable currency than gold in the defense of a kingdom?”

The question hung in the air, a blade poised. You could not fathom why Matthias would introduce such a volatile topic at his own celebration, a public challenge to a man known for his brutal pragmatism. It felt like tossing a lit torch into a room full of gunpowder. You glanced at your father, expecting him to smoothly intercede, to deflect and soothe as he always did. But his silence was deafening. He merely watched, his expression unreadable, a strategist observing a battle unfold from a safe hill.

Then, the Voivode spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it cut through the din of the hall with the chilling clarity of ice cracking on a winter lake.

“A king must understand the nature of the tools he uses,” Vlad began, his dark eyes fixed on Matthias, utterly ignoring your father’s presence. “The Saxons of Transylvania declared their loyalty to those who usurped my father’s throne. They funded my enemies. They celebrated my family’s suffering. I cannot risk such a disease festering within my own borders. Gold?” He almost smiled, a cold, sharp thing. “Gold can buy a man’s service, but it cannot buy his loyalty. It makes him a richer mercenary, not a truer subject. A man who betrays for gold will betray again for more gold. Or for a prettier title. Or simply because the wind changes direction.”

The silence in the immediate vicinity of the high table was absolute. Ladislaus, beside you, had stopped chewing, his face slightly pale.

Your father finally stirred, clearing his throat, the sound overly loud. “Surely, Voivode, there are always… alternatives to such permanent solutions. Diplomacy. Sanctions. The guidance of the Church. Spilled blood is a stain that is difficult to wash away, even from the hands of a king.” It was the expected rebuke, the voice of civilized politics.

But Vlad’s gaze did not waver from Matthias, as if your father were a gnat buzzing at the periphery of his vision. “When the rot is deep, Count Szilágyi, one does not paint over the wood. One cuts it out. I was left with no other exit. I chose the one that ensured my survival and the security of my throne. A ruler who hesitates to protect what is his does not deserve to keep it.”

Then, his eyes swept, for the first time, across the table. They passed over your father’s rigid face, over Ladislaus’s irritated one, and for a fleeting second, seemed to brush against yours before returning to the king. He delivered his final blow, his voice dropping to a intimate, carrying pitch that felt like it was meant for every betrayed soul in the room.

“A traitor will always be a traitor. A thief, a thief. You can give them the brightest gold, the most powerful title, even your most beautiful daughter…” His words landed on the recent announcement with the weight of a tombstone. “…and you will still lie awake at night wondering when they will turn their face against you. I have always preferred to see men for what they are: selfish, arrogant, and treacherous. It saves a great deal of disappointment later.”

The air rushed from your lungs. It was a direct, undeniable strike. He had taken the very foundation of your betrothal—the political calculation that a man like Ladislaus could be bought and trusted with your body and your family’s future—and had held it up to the court not as strategy, but as profound, wilful foolishness.

A shocking, treacherous sensation flared in your chest. It was not offense. It was vindication. It was a fierce, blazing agreement. He had given voice to the screaming protest in your own soul, the one you had to choke down with talk of duty and family. He had looked at the transaction your father had made and had named it for the dangerous gamble it was. The words were a blow to your father’s plans, and to your own future, yet you felt a perverse, thrilling sense of gratitude. Someone had said it. Someone had seen the rot.

You dropped your gaze to your plate, your heart hammering against your ribs, afraid that the wild, complicit agreement in your eyes would be seen by everyone. The taste of ash in your mouth was suddenly gone, replaced by the metallic tang of a truth too dangerous to speak aloud.

A faint, unbidden smile touched your eyes, a flicker of light in the gloom of your despair. It was a reflex, a spark ignited by the sheer, audacious truth of his words. Before you could stop yourself, your gaze lifted from your plate, seeking his across the crowded space.

He was still turned toward the king, his profile a sharp, pale cut against the torchlight. But as if feeling the pull of your look, his head turned. His dark eyes, which had moments ago been imparting a lesson in cold Realpolitik to a king, found yours.

This time, it was not a glancing blow, a swift assessment. This time, it was a connection. You did not look away. Neither did he. And in the depths of that midnight gaze, you saw it—a subtle, answering curve at the corner of his mouth, a ghost of a smile that acknowledged your own. It was not a smile of warmth, but one of sharp, perfect understanding. A conspirator’s smile.

There was no doubt. None at all. He had said what he had said with purpose, with brutal sincerity, and he had aimed it precisely where he meant to. And he had seen your silent, grateful applause. He had seen the vindication in your eyes and, in seeing it, had found a moment of dark amusement.

The silence that followed Vlad’s pronouncement was thick enough to choke on. It was Ladislaus who broke it, his voice a jarring, overly hearty sound that clashed with the tension. He raised his glass, a mocking smile playing on his lips.

“A most… illuminating philosophy, Voivode,” he said, his tone slick with false camaraderie. “It is always bracing to hear a man speak with such conviction about the nature of treachery. It reminds one of the… complex paths some must walk to reclaim their birthright.” He paused, letting the insinuation hang in the air before driving the dagger home, his voice dropping into a more intimate, cutting register. “Tell us, Prince Dracula, how did you find the Sultan’s hospitality during your… extended stay? And the pay he provided for your army when you first marched on Wallachia? It is a curious thing, how the definition of ‘traitor’ can shift depending on which side of the border one stands, and who is signing the paychecks. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The gasp in the hall was audible. This was no longer an insinuation; it was a direct, public accusation of the highest treason, of consorting with the Ottoman enemy. Ladislaus had not just thrown a stone; he had launched a spear aimed straight at the heart of Vlad’s legitimacy.

All eyes swung back to the Prince of Wallachia. You held your breath, expecting a denial, a flash of righteous fury.

Instead, Vlad did something far more terrifying. He smiled. A wide, sharp, and utterly chilling smile that did not touch his eyes.

“You are remarkably well-informed for a… landholder, Lord Pongrác,” he said, his voice a low, agreeable rumble that somehow silenced the hall more effectively than a shout. He did not deny a single word. “Yes, I have indeed supped with the devil. I have used the tools available to me, no matter how stained. I took the Sultan’s gold. I learned his tactics. I used his army. And when it served my purpose, I turned on him. But you see, the critical difference is this: I have never once claimed to be a saint. I do not pretend to be a loyal lamb in a court. I know precisely what I am.”

He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes pinning Ladislaus to his seat. The smile remained, a predator’s grin. “I recognize the faithless because I am capable of faithlessness. I understand the traitor because I have played the traitor when it served a greater purpose. My survival. My throne. I make no apologies for it. I simply ensure that those who would play those games with me…” his gaze flickered, for a fraction of a second, to your father, then back to Ladislaus, “…understand that I am the master of them. No one has ever successfully cut me out. They have tried. And they have learned that the rot they sought to exploit runs far deeper in them than it ever could in me.”

The air left the room. He had not denied it. He had embraced it. He had taken Ladislaus’s attempt to shame him and had worn it like a crown of black iron, transforming an accusation of treason into a declaration of supreme, unchallengeable self-awareness and power. He was not a hypocrite; he was an honest monster, and in doing so, he revealed the pathetic, cloaked greed of men like Ladislaus, who hid their own treachery behind a veil of feigned loyalty.

Ladislaus looked as if he had been physically struck. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He had thrown his spear and hit a mountain, and the mountain had laughed, the sound echoing in the stunned silence of the hall.

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[moniquekye]

Us, when he said that he is the worst of monsters when it comes to what is his.

[velieditss]

My exact reaction writing that part:

[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

Chapter 1

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, reader has a surname, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

Wc: 6.1K

Main Masterlist / Masterlist

This is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

Your father is Sir Michael Szilágyi de Horogszeg, Count of Beszterce, a Hungarian nobleman, a landholder, and royal advisor to the true King of Hungary, the head of the Szilágyi–Hunyadi league. Your mother descends from the most powerful noble family: The Báthory of the Gutkeled clan, risen to formidable influence, holding high military, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions. And it is whispered, on breaths that the wind carries through the castle's stone corridors, that in her veins runs not only the blue blood of the magnates, but also the ancient, dark essence of a goodness. Or so they say, those who believe in such things.

With this twin parentage of yours—the iron loyalty of a Hungarian wolf and the dark inheritance of a lineage touched by the eternal—one could expect anything from you: an enchantress, or an ordinary girl. There are those who, after meeting your gaze, will whisper that you are both.

But tonight, as you gaze into the silvered mirror and let your fingers trace the crimson velvet of your gown, you would give all that you are, all your legacy of pride and power, to be, just this once, simply irresistible. For the sake of your surviving, you don’t have another choice but to excite the attention of another man who wasn’t Ladislaus Pongrác.

He may not even see you. He—whoever he is. You have no name, no face to fix your hopes upon, only the terrifying knowledge that among the new arrivals, the foreign guests with their strange accents and shadowed pasts, there must be one with power enough to defy a monster. You are a hunter sighting down an arrow into a crowd, with no clear target. You cannot beg. You must intrigue. You must ignite a spark of curiosity in some world-weary eye, inspire a flicker of protective instinct in a stranger for a plight he does not know exists, and etch yourself onto his memory so he cannot simply forget you when the night is over. You must find a man around whom the very air crackles with power, a prince or a Duke and before whom even a man like Pongrác must kneel.

And you are to use this unknown savior as your shield.

The very thought is a cold stone in your stomach. For the man you must escape. A man whose name is a whisper of greed, whose touch is a bruise. A man who had received the King’s own warnings to cease his horrible treatments of the people under his charge and who had been forgiven every time, every single time, simply because he held the lands and resources the Crown desperately needed. You knew, with a certainty that chilled your soul, that if you did nothing tonight, if you failed to secure the attention of some man infinitely more powerful than Pongrác, you would be ruined. You would be at his mercy, and God alone knew what would become of you under his roof, in his power.

The bitterest irony was that you held no allure for him. Ladislaus Pongrác did not desire you; he desired your name and the Transylvanian lands that were your dowry, which he would add to his own swollen holdings as if he were doing your family a favour. In the few unfortunate occasions you were forced to endure his presence, he had the gall to look through you, his eyes sliding away to flirt with other women in the very same room, all while being willing to marry you. You were a transaction. A deed to a property. A key to a door he wished to unlock.

And so you must make yourself a key for another door. You must make some unknown, powerful guest see the transaction. You must make him understand the value of the prize—not the land, but you—and the horror of the alternative. He is a stranger, perhaps an enemy, a son of a land that bred your deepest fears. But you are far beyond loyalty to ancient feuds or family pride. Your loyalty is now to your own survival.

And now you are left a pawn in a game of shifting loyalties, and what security and station you once called your own has been threatened by the ambitions of men, with the tacit approval of a boy-king whose crown is still fresh-forged and ill-fitting. The master of this fragile realm, the great strategist who is known as your own father, Michael Szilágyi, who helped make a king out of his nephew, now only seventeen, and will make a fortress of Hungary against those who still whisper for a true son of the previous line. There are rival nobles in every great house of the kingdom now, and every profitable alliance or title or favour is held in their jealous grasp.

Your cousin, the boy-king Matthias, is on the throne, and his precarious supporters form this new, glittering court. You, the daughter of his most powerful pillar, are both a jewel and a hostage in your own castle, your true king a memory, your regent father a pragmatic statesman plotting with old enemies to secure a future. You have to navigate the court of the victor, while praying that God does not desert him and your family’s fortunes are not swept away by the next tide of rebellion. In the meantime, like many a woman with a name too great and a future too uncertain, you have to stitch your safety together like a patchwork of whispers and glances. You have to secure your freedom somehow, though it seems that neither your father’s influence nor your mother’s name can shield you from this one, vile fate. You are known as a Szilágyi—a kingmaker’s daughter. You are respected but not safe. You are all but powerless in the one thing that matters most.

This feast, this celebration of a birth and a reign, is but a mummer’s show. Its true purpose is to take the measure of friend and foe, to see which foreign lords and internal rivals will bend the knee to Matthias, and what dark interests stir beneath the surface of the wine and the music.

You take a final, steadying breath, the scent of beeswax and cold stone filling your lungs. The girl in the mirror is no longer just a girl. She is a weapon, finely wrought and aimed into the dark.

The door to your chamber whispers open, and in the silvered glass, you see your mother’s reflection appear behind your own. Her eyes, the same shade as yours, meet yours in the polished surface, and for a moment, the two of you are a portrait: the young huntress and the seasoned 'queen', bound by blood and circumstance.

“The moon pales tonight beside you, drága gyermekem,” she says, her voice a low, melodic hum that seems to quiet the frantic beating of your own heart. Her hands, cool and steady, come to rest on your bare shoulders. You feel the slight tremor in your own frame still beneath her touch. She sees everything. “The air around you crackles like a summer storm. You are afraid.”

You cannot lie to her. “Is it so obvious?”

“Only to a mother,” she murmurs, her fingers gently sweeping a stray curl from your neck. “And to anyone who knows what it is to have the world rest on a single glance.” She picks up the silver comb from your vanity, its teeth catching the candlelight. With a ritualistic slowness, she begins to draw it through your hair, each stroke a calming, measured rhythm. “You think you must conquer the entire hall tonight. You think you must be a hurricane. But a hurricane destroys. You must be the still, deep lake that a man cannot help but drown in.”

You watch her in the mirror, her own legendary beauty a tempered version of yours, hardened by years of courtly intrigue. “I feel I am aiming an arrow in utter darkness.”

“Then you must become the arrow and the light,” she says, her voice firm yet gentle. She sets the comb down and from a hidden fold in her deep blue sleeve, she produces a small velvet pouch, midnight black and tied with a silken cord. She places it in your palm. It is surprisingly cool and heavy for its size.

You look down at it, then up at her reflection, a question in your eyes. “What is this?”

“A tool,” she says, her hands closing over yours, forcing your fingers to curl around the pouch. You feel the distinct, smooth shape of a stone within. “A focus. It will help you see what others wish to hide. It will… clarify intentions.”

You turn the pouch over in your hand. It feels ancient, thrumming with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. “Magic?” you whisper, the word tasting both forbidden and familiar on your tongue. Your father’s house, for all its power, pays lip service to the Church’s laws. But your mother’s line… the Báthorys… they have always traded in older currencies.

She does not flinch. “A different kind of sight. A way to listen to the silence between a man’s words. To feel the truth of his power.” Her gaze is unwavering in the glass. “I know what you intend tonight. I know the wolf you must avoid. A mother does not send her daughter into a den of beasts without giving her a weapon.”

Your throat tightens. “What great beast do you hope this will help me catch?”

Her smile is a sad, beautiful thing. She cups your cheek, her thumb stroking your skin. “Your heart’s desire. Or at the very least, your salvation. I did not raise you to be a transaction on Pongrác’s ledger. I did not pour the ancient essence of our blood into your veins for you to wither under the touch of a greedy man.”

“What did you raise me for, then?” you ask, the weight of the stone in your hand feeling like the weight of her expectations, of your entire legacy. “In this world where we are both respected and vulnerable, where our king is a boy and our safety is a wager?”

She leans forward, her lips brushing your ear, her whisper a secret for you alone. “I raised you to be the best that you could be. Not just tonight. Always. Now, keep it close. Let it guide you. And remember,” she adds, stepping back, her regal composure returning, “the greatest magic is already in your blood. This is merely a key to help you unlock it.”

“Well, Amen,” You look from the retreating form of your mother to your own determined eyes in the mirror, your fist closing tightly around the velvet pouch. “Amen to that. And may the new moon bring me something better.”

The great hall is a roaring sea of silks, velvets, and the low thunder of a hundred murmured conversations, all washed in the golden light of a thousand candles. The air is thick with the scent of spiced wine, roasting meat, and the faint, cloying perfume of ambition. You stand with your mother in the place of honour, just behind and to the right of the Queen’s Catherine gilded throne. Catherine, your almost-sister, sits with a hand resting on the pronounced curve of her belly, a serene smile fixed upon her face, though you see the faint strain of fatigue at the corners of her eyes. You feel a protective surge, quickly banked. Tonight, you cannot afford to be merely a protective cousin.

The procession of dignitaries begins, a river of power and pretension flowing toward the dais to pay homage to the boy-king and his heavily pregnant queen. Your father stands at Matthias’s other side, a pillar of stern authority, his voice a constant, low murmur in the young king’s ear, shaping his perceptions, guiding his reactions.

Your own guide leans closer to you, her breath a soft whisper against your ear, her fan fluttering gently as if to stir the air, but in truth, to mask her words from all others.

“See there,” your mother murmurs, her eyes on a broad-shouldered man with a forked beard bowing low before Matthias. “János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom. A mind like a steel trap, and ambition to match your father’s. He would be a powerful shield, but his loyalty is to the Church first, and his own power second. A dangerous ally.”

The man moves on, and another takes his place, a younger, fiercer-looking noble with a hawk’s nose and restless eyes.

“And that one,” her whisper is laced with a hint of disdain. “Nicholas Újlaki. His lands border Pongrác’s. They are rivals in greed, two vultures circling the same carcass. He would take you to spite Ladislaus, but you would simply be trading one monster for another, perhaps a more foolish one.”

A duke from Bohemia is announced, his chest glittering with Jewerly. He offers extravagant compliments to the Queen.

“Empty courtesies from an empty purse,” your mother dismisses him instantly. “His influence is a phantom. He seeks loans, not a bride.”

You watch, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs, as man after man is presented and just as swiftly dismissed by your mother’s quiet, ruthless commentary. The velvet pouch feels like a lead weight tucked against your skin, its promise feeling more foolish by the minute. How can this stone help you navigate this labyrinth of flawed and dangerous men?

Then, a new figure steps into the circle of torchlight before the dais. He is not announced with the blaring titles of the others.

He is dressed not in bright silks, but in deepest black, a stark, severe contrast to the riot of colour in the hall. His doublet is of simple, elegant cut, devoid of jewels, his only ornament a dark fur draped over one shoulder. His face is pale, sculpted and severe, with eyes so dark they seem like pools of night. He moves with a predator’s grace, silent and deliberate, and the crowd parts before him without a sound. This is not a man who announces his presence; his presence announces itself, and the world falls silent in acknowledgment.

He is the most compelling, the most terrifying man you have ever seen. Your breath catches. This is him, a voice screams inside you. The one.

He stops before the dais and offers a bow that is not subservient, but a calculated gesture of respect from one power to another. His voice, when he speaks, is low, measured, and carries effortlessly in the silent hall. It is a voice that has known command.

“King Matthias,” he says, and the name sounds like both a recognition and a challenge on his lips. “Hungary flourishes under your gaze. I bring greetings from the Carpathians, where the wolves are restless and the earth remembers its ancient debts. An alliance forged in steel is stronger than one written on parchment. I am here to remind us both of that truth.”

You wait for your mother’s whisper. You crane your ear toward her, desperate for a name, a title, a crumb of information about this man who holds the entire court in thrall.

But her whisper does not come.

You turn your head slightly. Her face is a carefully composed mask, but you see the tension in her jaw, the white-knuckled grip on her fan. She is staring straight ahead, refusing to even look at him.

Confused, you lean in. “Mother,” you whisper urgently. “Who is that?”

She does not look at you. Her lips barely move. “Vlad Țepeș. Voivode of Wallachia.”

And you understood the most obvious part. Everyone knew that man's story, at least the most famous part, the reputation that followed him like a shadow.

“He… his power is palpable,” you breathe, your eyes drawn back to him like a moth to a flame. “Could he… would he be—”

“No.” The word is a sharp, final dagger. She finally turns her head, and her eyes are not guiding now; they are warning. They are frightened. “He is not an option. Not for you. Not for anyone in this family.”

“But why? Hungary needs his armies against the Turks. He needs our support.”

“What he needs and what he seeks are two different things,” she hisses, her voice low and venomous. “His father, Vlad Dracul, and your uncle, John Hunyadi… their history is written in blood and betrayal. Actions were taken. Terrible actions. If he is here, it is not for a bride. It is not for pleasant alliances. A man like that does not forget. He does not forgive. He bides his time. He is here for one thing only, should he ever get the chance: vengeance. And we,” she says, her gaze sweeping over you, then back to the dangerous figure before the throne, “must be very, very careful not to give him that chance.”

A tense silence stretches after Prince words, thick and heavy as the fur on his shoulder. All eyes are on the young king. Matthias, to his credit, does not flinch under the weight of that dark gaze or the cryptic warning. He leans forward, his boyish face set in a mask of regal composure that you know your father helped him practice.

“The Crown of Hungary welcomes the Voivode of Wallachia,” Matthias replies, his voice clear, though it lacks the deep, resonant gravity of the man before him. “We remember the ancient debts of the earth, and we value steel above parchment. Your alliance is noted and appreciated. Let us speak more of our Kingdoms after the feast.” It is a dismissal, but a polite one, an attempt to steer the conversation back to the safe, public waters of celebration.

The moment breaks. The courtiers remember to breathe, and the low murmur of conversation slowly swells to fill the void left by the prince’s daunting presence. The prince offers another of his minimal, unnerving bows and turns to melt back into the crowd, which parts for him as water parts for a shark.

Your eyes are locked on him, your mother’s warning a distant buzz in your ears. You watch the straight line of his back, the way he moves without seeming to notice the people around him. And then, just as he is about to be swallowed by the throng, he stops.

It is as if he felt the weight of your stare, a physical pull. He turns his head, not fully, just a slight shift. And his eyes, those pools of absolute night, find yours across the crowded hall.

There is only the startling, direct connection of his gaze. It is not a glance; it is an assessment, swift and thorough, taking in every detail of you standing there beside the queen. It lasts less than a heartbeat, a fleeting, electric moment that leaves a strange, cold heat prickling on your skin. Then he turns away and is gone, absorbed into the tapestry of the court.

You blink, your heart hammering against your ribs as if trying to escape. You force yourself to look away, to turn back toward the safety of the dais, your mind reeling.

He saw me.

A profound disappointment washes over you, cold and final. Of all the men who had paraded before you tonight, he was the only one who had truly stirred your curiosity, the only one whose very essence seemed to radiate a power so absolute it could shatter a man like Pongrác with a word. But that same power made him the most dangerous choice of all. If your family, who held every card at this court, feared him, then you had no choice but to fear him too.

A pity. A truly devastating pity. For a moment, you had seen your shield. And in the next, you saw the sword that could destroy you all.

Now you understood why your father was so urgent to bring Ladislaus’s territories under his control, or so you thought. You could only listen as he laughed with the man, as if they were lifelong companions and friends, as if just a few months ago Ladislaus had not switched sides, nearly swearing loyalty to the sister of Matthias’s deceased predecessor over the decisions of the nobles. An insult, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, for your cousin’s teetering reign, the fragile borders, and the imminent Ottoman invasion, the resources Ladislaus offered were key. His lands were where supplies could be most easily and quickly procured should any of the three situations turn dire.

This was the new reality at the banquet. On purpose, your father had seated you right beside Ladislaus. For the past hour, you had only listened to your father and him talk, to Ladislaus reminiscing and boasting about the vast, prosperous resources he possessed—resources that would be of great help in case of a disastrous rule. In your mind, you could only recall the man’s reputation as a thief and an enslaver. And though your father agreed with everything he said, you knew that once you were married, it would be your father who would manage everything as his own. He only needed an excuse to take them without Ladislaus being able to refuse, and that excuse was his marriage to you.

It was then that Matthias interrupted to propose a toast. He struck his glass with a spoon, and the sound of crystal cut through the murmur like a knife. All eyes turned to the king. He stood, imposing, the crown on his head gleaming with a golden glow.

“Friends, allies, loyal subjects,” he began, his voice projecting with a natural authority that filled the hall. “I toast to this night. To the relationships that grow stronger, to the goodwill that unites us, and to the faith in God that guides us—the very faith our enemies so desperately wish to destroy.”

The crowd murmured its approval. Matthias raised his glass even higher.

“I toast to my wife, Catherine, the rock upon which my heart rests and the mother of my future heir.” She inclined her head gracefully, a hand on her womb. “I toast to my loyal uncle and subject, Michael Szilágyi, whose counsel and sword have been pillars of my reign.” Your father nodded solemnly, his face expressionless but his eyes shining with pride.

Then, Matthias’s gaze settled on you. A faint surprise coursed through you.

“And I toast,” he continued, his voice taking on an almost tender tone, “to my cousin, whose gentle spirit and loyal service have not only been a balm to our queen but a constant companionship and a reminder of the family for which we fight every day. Her presence has been a light in moments of great darkness.”

As if you were the true center of attention, he extended his hand over Catherine, gesturing for you to rise.

And you did, your legs slightly trembling, feeling the weight of hundreds of eyes upon you. You did not understand such adulation. You had only done what was expected of you. You looked at Catherine, seeking guidance, and she responded with a slight, encouraging smile.

“And in that spirit of securing our future,” he declared, his eyes sweeping the room, “it brings me great joy to announce a union that will further strengthen the bonds of our kingdom. A marriage that will unite two great houses and ensure the prosperity and security of our lands.”

Your blood ran cold even before he spoke the names. Your father’s placid expression, Ladislaus’s smug, triumphant smirk—it all made a terrible, horrifying sense.

“I hereby announce the betrothal of my beloved cousin,” Matthias said, his hand gesturing toward you, “to our most loyal and resourceful supporter, Lord Ladislaus Pongrác. May their union bring not only personal happiness but enduring strength to Hungary!”

The applause was immediate.

“To all of them!” Matthias proclaimed, raising his glass. “And to the future of Hungary!”

“To the future of Hungary!” the room roared in unison, and the sound of clinking glasses filled the air like a peal of bells.

You stood frozen, a smile plastered on your face that felt like a death mask. Across the table, your mother’s face was a pale, stoic mask, her knuckles white as she too clapped, her eyes screaming a silent apology to you.

Ladislaus rose, giving a grandiose bow, his eyes glinting with possessive victory as they swept over you. He had won you. The key to the door he wished to unlock had been handed to him publicly, irrevocably, by the king himself.

The future of Hungary, it seemed, would be built on your sacrifice. And as you sat back down, the taste of wine on your tongue was as bitter as ash.

Confusion curdled in your chest, thick and sickening. The announcement… it was today? You had thought this night was merely for welcoming the foreign guests, for your father and Matthias to subtly interrogate each envoy, to take the measure of friend and foe. You had believed you had time—precious, desperate time—to find another path, to ignite a spark of interest in some other powerful man. You had clutched your mother’s strange stone as if it were a lifeline, a promise of a chance to fight.

That chance had been stolen from you before you could even draw a weapon. The despair was a physical blow, a wave of impotent fury that threatened to crack the porcelain smile on your face. A bitter resentment, hot and sharp, flared toward your family—toward your father for his ruthless pragmatism, toward Matthias for his grand, casual gesture that had sealed your fate as if gifting a prized horse. Did they love you so little? Did they know the monster they were chaining you to and simply not care? The thought was a betrayal in itself, but it was there, a poisonous vine twisting around your heart.

You forced it down, choking on the guilt that immediately followed. They are securing the kingdom. You are a Szilágyi. This is your duty.The mantra felt hollow, a shield of rotted wood against the reality of Ladislaus’s gloating presence beside you. How could your father, who claimed to love you, condemn you to a life under that man’s thumb? The disconnect between his affection and his action was a chasm you were falling into.

The roar of the toast faded, replaced by the resumption of feasting. The taste of ash in your mouth would not leave. You were so lost in the tumult of your own despair that the conversation at the high table seemed to come from a great distance, a dull hum beneath the ringing in your ears.

It was the sudden shift in the quality of the silence around you that pulled you back. You blinked, forcing yourself to focus. Matthias was leaning forward, his face set in an expression of keen interest. And his gaze was fixed not on your father, or on a foreign duke, but on the one man in the hall who seemed to carry his own winter with him.

“And you, Voivode Țepeș,” Matthias’s voice cut through the chatter, deceptively light. “Your… methods in Wallachia are the subject of much discussion. You hold your differences against the Transilvanian Saxon with a firmness others find… extreme. Tell me, do you believe fear is a more reliable currency than gold in the defense of a kingdom?”

The question hung in the air, a blade poised. You could not fathom why Matthias would introduce such a volatile topic at his own celebration, a public challenge to a man known for his brutal pragmatism. It felt like tossing a lit torch into a room full of gunpowder. You glanced at your father, expecting him to smoothly intercede, to deflect and soothe as he always did. But his silence was deafening. He merely watched, his expression unreadable, a strategist observing a battle unfold from a safe hill.

Then, the Voivode spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it cut through the din of the hall with the chilling clarity of ice cracking on a winter lake.

“A king must understand the nature of the tools he uses,” Vlad began, his dark eyes fixed on Matthias, utterly ignoring your father’s presence. “The Saxons of Transylvania declared their loyalty to those who usurped my father’s throne. They funded my enemies. They celebrated my family’s suffering. I cannot risk such a disease festering within my own borders. Gold?” He almost smiled, a cold, sharp thing. “Gold can buy a man’s service, but it cannot buy his loyalty. It makes him a richer mercenary, not a truer subject. A man who betrays for gold will betray again for more gold. Or for a prettier title. Or simply because the wind changes direction.”

The silence in the immediate vicinity of the high table was absolute. Ladislaus, beside you, had stopped chewing, his face slightly pale.

Your father finally stirred, clearing his throat, the sound overly loud. “Surely, Voivode, there are always… alternatives to such permanent solutions. Diplomacy. Sanctions. The guidance of the Church. Spilled blood is a stain that is difficult to wash away, even from the hands of a king.” It was the expected rebuke, the voice of civilized politics.

But Vlad’s gaze did not waver from Matthias, as if your father were a gnat buzzing at the periphery of his vision. “When the rot is deep, Count Szilágyi, one does not paint over the wood. One cuts it out. I was left with no other action. I chose the one that ensured my survival and the security of my throne. A ruler who hesitates to protect what is his does not deserve to keep it.”

Then, his eyes swept, for the first time, across the table. They passed over your father’s rigid face, over Ladislaus’s irritated one, and for a fleeting second, seemed to brush against yours before returning to the king. He delivered his final blow, his voice dropping to a intimate, carrying pitch that felt like it was meant for every betrayed soul in the room.

“A traitor will always be a traitor. A thief, a thief. You can give them the brightest gold, the most powerful title, even your most beautiful daughter…” His words landed on the recent announcement with the weight of a tombstone. “…and you will still lie awake at night wondering when they will turn their face against you. I have always preferred to see men for what they are: selfish, arrogant, and treacherous. It saves a great deal of disappointment later.”

The air rushed from your lungs. It was a direct, undeniable strike. He had taken the very foundation of your betrothal—the political calculation that a man like Ladislaus could be bought and trusted with your body and your family’s future—and had held it up to the court not as strategy, but as profound, wilful foolishness.

A shocking, treacherous sensation flared in your chest. It was not offense. It was vindication. It was a fierce, blazing agreement. He had given voice to the screaming protest in your own soul, the one you had to choke down with talk of duty and family. He had looked at the transaction your father had made and had named it for the dangerous gamble it was. The words were a blow to your father’s plans, and to your own future, yet you felt a perverse, thrilling sense of gratitude. Someone had said it. Someone had seen the rot.

You dropped your gaze to your plate, your heart hammering against your ribs, afraid that the wild, complicit agreement in your eyes would be seen by everyone. The taste of ash in your mouth was suddenly gone, replaced by the metallic tang of a truth too dangerous to speak aloud.

A faint, unbidden smile touched your eyes, a flicker of light in the gloom of your despair. It was a reflex, a spark ignited by the sheer, audacious truth of his words. Before you could stop yourself, your gaze lifted from your plate, seeking his across the crowded space.

He was still turned toward the king, his profile a sharp, pale cut against the torchlight. But as if feeling the pull of your look, his head turned. His dark eyes, which had moments ago been imparting a lesson in cold Realpolitik to a king, found yours.

This time, it was not a glancing blow, a swift assessment. This time, it was a connection. You did not look away. Neither did he. And in the depths of that midnight gaze, you saw it—a subtle, answering curve at the corner of his mouth, a ghost of a smile that acknowledged your own. It was not a smile of warmth, but one of sharp, perfect understanding. A conspirator’s smile.

There was no doubt. None at all. He had said what he had said with purpose, with brutal sincerity, and he had aimed it precisely where he meant to. And he had seen your silent, grateful applause. He had seen the vindication in your eyes and, in seeing it, had found a moment of dark amusement.

The silence that followed Vlad’s pronouncement was thick enough to choke on. It was Ladislaus who broke it, his voice a jarring, overly hearty sound that clashed with the tension. He raised his glass, a mocking smile playing on his lips.

“A most… illuminating philosophy, Voivode,” he said, his tone slick with false camaraderie. “It is always bracing to hear a man speak with such conviction about the nature of treachery. It reminds one of the… complex paths some must walk to reclaim their birthright.” He paused, letting the insinuation hang in the air before driving the dagger home, his voice dropping into a more intimate, cutting register. “Tell us, Prince Dracula, how did you find the Sultan’s hospitality during your… extended stay? And the pay he provided for your army when you first marched on Wallachia? It is a curious thing, how the definition of ‘traitor’ can shift depending on which side of the border one stands, and who is signing the paychecks. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The gasp in the hall was audible. This was no longer an insinuation; it was a direct, public accusation of the highest treason, of consorting with the Ottoman enemy. Ladislaus had not just thrown a stone; he had launched a spear aimed straight at the heart of Vlad’s legitimacy.

All eyes swung back to the Prince of Wallachia. You held your breath, expecting a denial, a flash of righteous fury.

Instead, Vlad did something far more terrifying. He smiled. A wide, sharp, and utterly chilling smile that did not touch his eyes.

“You are remarkably well-informed for a… landholder, Lord Pongrác,” he said, his voice a low, agreeable rumble that somehow silenced the hall more effectively than a shout. He did not deny a single word. “Yes, I have indeed supped with the devil. I have used the tools available to me, no matter how stained. I took the Sultan’s gold. I learned his tactics. I used his army. And when it served my purpose, I turned on him. But you see, the critical difference is this: I have never once claimed to be a saint. I do not pretend to be a loyal lamb in a court. I know precisely what I am.”

He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes pinning Ladislaus to his seat. The smile remained, a predator’s grin. “I recognize the faithless because I am capable of faithlessness. I understand the traitor because I have played the traitor when it served a greater purpose. My survival. My throne. I make no apologies for it. I simply ensure that those who would play those games with me…” his gaze flickered, for a fraction of a second, to your father, then back to Ladislaus, “…understand that I am the master of them. No one has ever successfully cut me out. They have tried. And they have learned that the rot they sought to exploit runs far deeper in them than it ever could in me.”

The air left the room. He had not denied it. He had embraced it. He had taken Ladislaus’s attempt to shame him and had worn it like a crown of black iron, transforming an accusation of treason into a declaration of supreme, unchallengeable self-awareness and power. He was not a hypocrite; he was an honest monster, and in doing so, he revealed the pathetic, cloaked greed of men like Ladislaus, who hid their own treachery behind a veil of feigned loyalty.

Ladislaus looked as if he had been physically struck. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He had thrown his spear and hit a mountain, and the mountain had laughed, the sound echoing in the stunned silence of the hall.

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[dmc-original-art]

My Charcoal drawing of Dracula. Drawn using charcoal and inktense blocks

[velieditss]

𝔇𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔲𝔩𝔞: 𝔒𝔣 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔰

[Masterlist / Taglist]

Paring: Vlad, Count Dracula X Fem!reader

Warnings: Kinda enemies to lovers?, angst; angst-heavy relationship conflict, mention of death, slow burn, pregnancy, religious guilt, war, smut (specifics will be listed in each chapter) may add more as I write!

Wc: 7.7K

Status: [In progress]

Summary: Long before Vlad Tepes became the monster feared for centuries, he was a man of flesh, bone… and soul. A warrior devoted to God and to his homeland, whose heart burned more fiercely for vengeance and war. But his fate changed the day he saw her: a young noblewoman, indulgent and headstrong. He, a prince hardened by battle. She, a rose grown among thorns. And yet, love was born amidst the clash of steel and a court riddled with betrayal.

First things first let’s get one thing straight: this is a work of fiction. While some characters and settings may be loosely inspired by real figures and places, the events described here are not to be taken as historical fact. I’ve woven bits of history together with imagination, taking creative liberties wherever the story demanded and then some!!!

It’s time babes!!

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For those who want to read Vlad X Elisabeta, I will be uploading the same story at the same time on Wattpad. I will let you know when that happens.