Desiderium- A Tale of Longing

The story is also available in the Royal Road under the same name & username!

A young baron is dying in a castle above the Sava. This is not new. Wolfgang von Ortenburg has been slipping toward death since he was old enough to understand that the world was not made for him, and he has never particularly minded. What he minds is leaving Olena behind.

Olena is a serf girl who lives at the edges of his family's land. She is not supposed to matter this much. She does.

Teresa is the physician his father brought from Constantinople to save him, a fugitive scholar with more languages than allies and a habit of making promises she has no business keeping. She has sworn to heal Wolf. She has also sworn to see him and Olena together before she leaves. She does not intend to break either vow.

Below the castle, the town has its own troubles. Capuchin friars have arrived, and with them the particular kind of fear that travels in the company of holy men. Some nights the fires belong to witch trials. Other nights, to vampire hunts. Something has recently crawled out of a fresh grave, and it remembers every face in the crowd that put it there.

Desiderium is a Gothic historical fantasy set in 17th-century Carniola. It follows three voices: a dying baron who refuses to ask for salvation, a fugitive physician who cannot stop saving people, and the serf girl caught between them. At its heart, it is a story about what people become when someone loves them past the point of their own endurance.