Târgoviște, Wallachia, 1457: One year later
She rolled over as she awoke and saw nothing but white. Heavy snow had fallen during the night over the town and the Princely court, covering everything in sight. The sky blended into the landscape and it seemed almost impossible to distinguish where each began.
Ilona noticed she was alone in bed as Vlad had already risen. She touched the cold space next to her and remembered he was attending an execution this morning in the town square. The Prince would administer his preferred choice of torture. Impalement.
She recalled the pamphlets she had discovered not long ago, late one afternoon while looking for an item in their chambers. She had accidentally knocked one of her husband's books that lay upon his desk onto the floor. Several lose documents fell around her feet, but one, in particular, caught her attention.
'The Text of Prince Dracula,' the headline read. She knelt to retrieve it.
'In the year of Our Lord 1456, Dracula did many dreadful and curious things.'
Ilona shivered as she remembered the stories and their gruesome imagery. The woodcut printing depicted a man sitting at a table, eating a grand meal. To his side, countless corpses lay upon stakes that reached far into the sky. There were men and women, young and old.
'He had children roasted; these their mothers had to eat. And he cut the women's breasts off; these their husbands had to eat. Afterwards, he had them all impaled.'
"Are these tales true?" she had confronted him when he had found her not long after, clutching the material she had just discovered.
He took the papers from her wordlessly, picking up the misplaced book and enclosing it once more inside.
"Vlad? Are you a monster as they say? Tell me. Would you have mothers eat their babes when you claim to love your son?"
She saw the darkness again in his eyes, the side he hid away. He slammed the book down on the desk with force, making her wince.
"You understand nothing!" He yelled at her. "You have lived a sheltered and comfortable life, Ilona, with little pain and suffering. You know nothing of life or how to rule, how to protect your country and its people! I will be a monster if that is what is required of me, in the eyes of God, and I will destroy any who would dare oppose me," he spat.
She withdrew, sinking back against the chair she sat upon. His features softened and he sighed, kneeling in front of her.
"Why can't you understand?" he whispered.
"Everything I do is for us, to protect our family."
He touched the swell under her dress gently. Not long after their reunion, she had fallen pregnant once more. She was growing bigger every day and the time would come soon to deliver their second child.
She felt the insurmountable pressure he dealt with and felt ashamed. She moved closer to wrap her arms around his neck, her head burying into his shoulder. She felt him relax under her touch, his arms surrounding her.
"I know," she whispered.
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Poenari Castle, Wallachia, 1462: four years later
"Lady mother?"
She looked up from her book to the boy standing in front of her. Sometimes, he took her by surprise, for he was the exact spitting image of his father at the same age of seven years old. The black messy hair perpetually hanging in his face like a veil, paired with the deep green eyes that were just the same as she remembered from her childhood.
YOU ARE READING
The Lost Princess
Vampire*currently being re-vamped* Alucard has held many titles in his lifetime, from 'impaler' to the feared 'Dracula'. Throughout his dark history, there was a woman, one that he loved like no other. This is their story. Progresses from 15th century Roma...
