Chapter Text
"You're going to eat yourself sick." Adrian said without opening his eyes. The sun burned him, even as it was setting, but the grass was soft and the breeze was gentle, and he couldn't bring himself to stand from where he was lying. His arms rested on his stomach, lifting and lowering as he inhaled and exhaled.
"Off of berries?" Lyudmil asked. He was still standing where he'd been for the past five minutes: tangled deep in a blackberry bramble. He'd pricked himself on a thorn—Adrian could smell the salt of blood. It made him salivate more than the sharp sweetness of the blackberries.
"I've seen it before."
"You can barely finish your plate at dinner." Lyudmil remarked. "I don't think you've made yourself sick off of anything, ever."
"That's untrue," but he didn't want to be heard, and didn't speak up. The grass rustled more loudly than his words.
"Here," the grass rustled as Lyudmil walked towards him and knelt down. "I've picked enough for compot—Adrian!"
"What?" Adrian slit his eyes. Lyudmil blocked out most of the sun, but the few rays that crept around his body were enough to shrink his pupils and make his eyes sting.
"You're red!" Lyudmil pressed a hand to Adrian's forehead. His fingertips were stained dark with juice. Ignoring his fretting, Adrian took the bundled oilcloth from his other hand and selected a few blackberries for himself. The first was sweet, but the second was bitter sour. He cringed.
"Serves you right." Lyudmil scolded him, retrieving the parasol Adrian had abandoned in the grass. "God, but you look like a salmon."
"I'm pink?" Adrian looked at his hand.
"A raw one, which is how I'm certain you'll feel tomorrow. Up."
Adrian accepted Lyudmil's hand, and pulled himself up, hinging on the other man's weight. He glanced at the sun.
"Nearly nightfall."
"You could stay in the barn. He never looks there."
"With the horses and pigs? I'd rather be switched."
They both knew how many times Lyudmil had carried breakfast and a pillow up to the hayloft.
Adrian started walking back towards the castle. Lyudmil waited three steps, and began to follow him. He had silly ideas about manners and protocol and etiquette. Where he'd gotten the idea, Adrian didn't know. He could have wandered around the castle with food stains on his shirt and never bathed, and neither Adrian nor his father would care. Perhaps he had simply been born particular.
"How is your leg?" Adrian asked him, picking a blade of dry grass off his shirt.
"As always."
Lyudmil walked with an audible limp. Or perhaps it was only audible to Adrian, having spent nearly every waking hour with this man for the past three years. Everywhere he went, Lyudmil followed with a padding thump.
"I'd like to fence tonight."
"Lord Dracula wanted you for a hunt."
"Make an excuse for me? Tell him I ate too many berries."
"Lord…"
Adrian stopped, and so did Lyudmil. "I can hardly bear to look at him." He said softly. "Isn't that awful? What's he even done wrong? He is the Voivode in the night. These are his people, to do with as he wishes. What man wouldn't avenge his wife?"
"What man wouldn't respect his mother?"
Adrian began walking at a clip. Lyudmil struggled to keep pace with him, and by the time they reached the manicured castle grounds, he was out of breath and wincing. Adrian tried to feel cruel about it, but only felt guilty instead.
"I'm sorry, my Lord." Lyudmil panted slightly. Adrian didn't respond, but he had to force himself to keep his mouth shut. It was unbecoming of a man, and even more unbecoming of a prince, to whinge and beg forgiveness.
Instead, he waited for Lyudmil to reach him, and then walked very slowly towards his chambers. His skin did ache, now that he was out of the sun and huffing the dank castle air. It smelled like stone and moss here, hard and bitter and damp. Even the chapel stank like death, now that no one burned the censer anymore.
Stone, moss, and blood, although the cloying, copper stink was so pervasive, it was simply another feature of the air. Outside, the air was fresh and light. In the village market days, it was dusty and hot, from so many bodies crammed together to sell bolts of wool and barrels of wine. They pressed it in the market stall. When Adrian was small, his mother picked him up and rolled up his trousers, and held his hands while he jumped on the grapes.
In Dracula's castle, blood and air were selfsame.
Lyudmil sneezed.
It echoed, and Adrian twisted back to throw him an amused glance.
"Apologies, Lord, I—" he sneezed again, then took another handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose.
"I tell you not to come with me."
"I have come with you, and look at the state of you. Imagine if I had been left behind?"
Grinning made his face hurt, but Adrian did it anyway, because he liked the amused twinkle in Lyudmil's eyes.
Adrian's room was situated at the top of the outermost tower. He could see across the lake from the eastern window, and only the errant medusa floated through the spiraling stairway. It was private, quiet, and most importantly, sun shone through the room during daylight.
Perhaps it was… strange, for a man to be so cautious of his own father, but Dracula was slipping further and further into his madness. Grief had driven him to it, and bloodlust kept him there. But, at the end of it all, he had the daylight, and that was something no vampire could stomach, even one as powerful as Dracula.
And at the end of that, was the rock, the bezoar in his gut: that Dracula would not kill his own son.
They took the rickety elevator up to Alucard's room. Lyudmil clung to the side the entire time, his long finger snaked around the filigree, trying not to look as terrified as he smelled.
He wasn't very successful, with how white his knuckles were turning, so Adrian reached over and took his free hand.
"You're nearly as pale as I am." He murmured.
"Only because you've been sizzled in the sun." Lyudmil relaxed fractionally. It was mostly true. The veins spiderwebbing the back of Lyudmil's hand were green and blue, stark, muted lines under his skin. Adrian's veins were flat by comparison, sagging and lifeless. He could force them to look more human by squeezing his wrist with his opposite hand and making a fist, but they receded the second he let up the pressure. Another sign of his inhumanity. His mother had hands like Lyudmil's, strong from picking herbs and catching babies.
The elevator creaked to a halt, stopping too harshly against the top of the shaft.
"That thing is a death trap." Lyudmil muttered, cursing harshly under his breath.
"My father likes to build."
"Your father is inscrutable, and so is every hellish contraption he throws together."
"You're still angry about the clock tower."
Lyudmil tsked and unlocked his door, then held it open for Adrian. "Should I not be? I was nearly drowned!"
His head had gotten wet by the mill that powered the mechanisms. Adrian didn't bother to correct him. Instead, he waited while Lyudmil filled a spare pitcher with the icy water drawn up from the caverns through the tap. It only took a few presses of the pump before the pitcher was filled. He took the berries out of his pocket, unwrapped them from the oilcloth, and tipped them into the pitcher. He covered it with a cloth (insects were few in a castle with so many bats, but it was a normal precaution), and turned to Adrian.
"Fencing gear?" He asked, rifling through Adrian's cabinet.
"Mnh." Adrian pulled on a shirt, and then his vest and his trousers. Lyudmil laced them all together with his deft hands, and helped Adrian into a jacket.
Adrian shifted his weight, settling his layers into place, and sat on his bed. The feather tick had just been restuffed, and it felt like sinking into a cloud.
"I don't think I want to get up from here." He murmured.
"You'd better, after all the effort I've gone to dress you." Lyudmil knelt down, tugging a sock up Alucard's ankle before tying it in place with a garter. He rolled his trouser leg down and pressed his boot on. Adrian pointed his toes to help it along, and tapped his heel on the ground to ensure a good fit. Lyudmil repeated the process with his left foot. His hair parted over the back of his neck as he bent his head, and Adrian watched the knobs of his spine move under his skin. There was a vein there, too. It was little and narrow, but that smudge of blue wound around from the front of his throat.
It moved when he spoke.
"Lord. Lord. Adrian." Lyudmil's voice grew harsher until Adrian's name came out as a snap, and he focused back to himself.
"Yes?" He said.
"I asked you to point your toes." He gestured with the boot in his hands. "Are you alright? You were miles away."
"I'm… fine."
Lyudmil put Adrian's boot to the side and pressed the back of his hand against Adrian's forehead.
"You don't feel feverish." He held his other hand to his own forehead, comparing the temperatures. "But you are always cool. Perhaps you're sunsick? I think you ought to rest tonight."
"I'm fine." Adrian didn't try as hard as he could have to stop watching Lyudmil's neck work as he spoke. What sin caught the apple in his throat? Trying to save Lisa? Didn't doctrine claim that humans were born sinners?
"Do you believe in Hell?" He asked.
Lyudmil looked at him. "Odd thing to ask. Are you sure you aren't sunsick?"
"I'm just curious."
Lyudmil glanced away for a second before kneeling back down and helping Adrian into his other boot. "I have seen the sort of monsters that lurk in the shadows here. Where else could they have come from?"
"Do you think we'll both go there once we die?"
"I don't think you'll ever die, my Lord." Lyudmil sounded bemused.
Adrian tapped his boot and stood, holding his arms out to the side. "You're confident in me."
"Of course I am." Lyudmil fastened the sword belt around his waist, adjusting it to hang at the proper height. "How could I not be? You saved my life. I've seen you kill monsters beyond imagination." He scoffed. "You cast no reflection. All of these things are impossible, so why would a person who does impossible things ever do something so mundane as to die?"
"I could." Adrian said. "I'm not invulnerable."
"Well, you can't draw yourself a bath or put on socks."
"I could before you came along. It's like using a crossbow—a long bow becomes impossible."
"Well, hopefully I've also negated your ability to die. My Lord." Lyudmil swept his arm out, bowing slightly. Adrian walked past him and tilted him upright.
"I'm going to fence. Father…" Adrian frowned. "Father has guests."
"Of course." It was no surprise that Lyudmil already knew. "Your cousin Bathory, and her usual cabal. Laura is doing quite well. I spoke with her before you woke."
"Stay out of her way?"
"Who, Laura's?"
"No. Camilla's."
Lyudmil snorted. "Why? Lady Camilla wouldn't touch me if I was the only human in the castle. She has no appetite for the likes of me."
Adrian looked back at him. "She's a vampire."
Lyudmil looked like he wanted to argue for a moment (and also like he wanted to laugh), but subsided. "If it will make you less nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"Then you imitate it well. Lord. Adrian. If any one of your father's guests kill me, they have him to face. It's a heady deterrent."
"Don't talk like that."
"You worry too much, Lord." Lyudmil's voice went soft. "Nothing can harm me in this castle."
"Plenty of things can harm you here. They just choose not to."
"Isn't that better then? Go on." Lyudmil turned him around and ushered him towards the door. "Go to your swords. I'll have something ready for midnight. I suspect you don't particularly want to sup with your father's friends."
Adrian favored him with a smile, and stepped out of the room. As he left, he saw Lyudmil begin to pull apart his bed clothes for laundering. Why he bothered when the persephones in the castle were created for such a task was beyond Adrian, but he appreciated it regardless. It kept his father's eyes and ears out of his personal chambers.
He took the elevator down, and wound his way through the maze of the castle until he found himself standing over the colosseum. He hadn't meant to come here, but perhaps this was simply where the castle wanted him. It was a creature of chaos, after all, only loosely bound to his father's will. And it seemed to like him. His mother had despaired at him refusing his meals as a child, only to learn that he was wandering the halls at night and very luckily finding the kitchen every time. She must have had a very stern talking to with the stone, because to this day, he still struggled to find the kitchens.
The castle must have liked Lyudmil though, because somehow he always had a pastry on hand for Adrian. He snorted, and heard footsteps.
"Dear cousin!"
The voice was husky, Adrian knew, from the ligature around the speaker's throat, when the Palatine had tried to hang her. It was unsuccessful. A tall woman walked through the stands of the colosseum and peered at Adrian. She wore fine, but practical menswear, in dour black and olivine green. Silk.
"Erzsébet Bathory." Adrian took her hands and kissed her cheek. "Cousin."
She was not, strictly speaking, his cousin. She was related by way of his father's father, his grandmother's niece, but she was of his generation, so it was more simple for them to call her his cousin, instead of the Habsburgian tangle of their family tree.
"Adrian, you look so flushed." She fussed. "You've been being mannish again, haven't you?"
"It's nothing to you." He said. "How is the Aquitaine?"
"I've moved to the island proper, now. The Lancastars and the Yorks are still trying to kill each other. It's not anything less complicated than the Continent's politics, except there's more blood between them. Imagine that Hunyadi was Uncle's brother and you can glean the picture of it."
"Sounds complicated."
"Indeed." She tilted her head. "How are you, then?"
"As well as I can be."
"Poorly, then, I assume." Erzsébet was keen. Always had been, even when they were children hiding from each other in the gardens.
"As well as I can be." Adrian repeated, firmly.
"Poor cousin." She tucked his arm into the crook of her elbow. "You must be so lonely here."
"I have my father." Adrian walked with her towards the entrance to the colosseum proper.
"An old widower who locks himself away in his paranoia. Yes, a perfect friend for you." She sniffed, and looked off, her eyes narrowing. "He's so dramatic. It was just a human."
Adrian wrenched his arm free. "She was my mother."
Erzsébet peered down at him, confusion clear on her narrow face. "It was a human, cousin. They die all the time."
The worst part was, despite her deft and practiced hand at cruelty, she wasn't trying to hurt him. This was borne of a genuine lack of comprehension.
"She wasn't supposed to… die yet." He forced out the words, as evenly as he could manage.
Comprehension bloomed on Erszébet's face. "Of course."
Adrian suspected she was sympathizing more with the prospect of a lost meal, as if his mother was a missed supper.
"I need to—" he didn't bother finishing his sentence, and instead turned and began walking back to his room.
"Adrian!" Erszébet shouted, following after him. "I've upset you."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look it. What have I said?"
He paused when she caught his arm, and allowed her to spin him to face her.
"Cousin, what have I said?"
"She was my mother." Adrian said again.
"I don't understand." She shook her head slightly. "Cousin, she was human. You shouldn't get attached to them. I have humans I like. Katarína. Dorotya. But I don't miss them. They're just human."
Adrian remained silent.
"Perhaps." Erszébet looked like it caused her a bit of pain to come to the conclusion. "Perhaps. She was your mother, after all. I suppose it's different.
"But—"
Adrian's stomach sank.
"I can never understand why uncle mourns her. There will always be another. There are so many humans." Erszébet grinned, flashing her fangs, white like a shark's teeth. "So there will be another mother, I'm sure."
She said it with more sincerity than she had ever expressed in her life. Erszébet rarely sounded this genuine, even when she spoke about how much she enjoyed killing girls. She was as truthful, and honest, and comforting as she knew how. It made his stomach feel hollow. Adrian felt detached; if he walked too quickly, he'd float away.
"Won't you fight with me, cousin?" Erzsébet asked him.
"I'm feeling poorly."
"You're dressed for it. I can't have upset you that much." She squinted at him, taking in the faint pink flush to his face. "Have you been in the sun?"
"Only for a moment." It was all afternoon.
She grimaced. "You'd better make sure to find someone healthy. I have a thrall, if you've gotten over your little issue about sharing meals."
"I haven't."
Erszébet scoffed. "Priss."
"So be it." Adrian nodded.
"You've still got that human, right? He can't be that anemic; you barely eat."
"Lyudmil is not food."
"You can't starve yourself forever, cousin. I know Karnstein does it, but she's not your father's son."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that he'll throw you in those dungeons before he lets you go hungry."
"Erszébet." A voice echoed through the stands.
They both froze. Erszébet's head snapped around, her eyes wide.
"My lord." She dropped into a low curtsy, her head bowed and her eyes pinned to the floor. Adrian could hear her frantic breathing.
"Father." Adrian dipped his head.
Vlad Dracula remained in his throne. His chin rested on his fist, and he held a glass of wine in his other hand.
"How is England?"
"Bloody, my Lord."
"Then I imagine you're enjoying it. Adrian, join me."
Erszébet glanced over at Adrian without moving her head.
"Of course, Father."
Erszébet took the dismissal as it was, bowing again before sweeping out of the colosseum. Adrian watched his father drum his fingers on the arm of the throne, before standing and walking down to join Adrian in the ring.
"You're starving yourself?"
"No, Father."
"With food, certainly not, but blood?"
Adrian didn't respond.
Dracula sighed deeply and placed a hand on his shoulder. Certainly the gesture was meant to be comforting, but it just felt possessive.
"Is it like she said?"
"You are my son, Adrian." His father squeezed his shoulder. "But moreover, how are you? You look red."
"I was out too long in the sun."
Dracula looked sad for a moment. "You're so very much like your mother. Stay away from daylight. It only weakens you."
"Yes, father."
Dracula swept out of the room, but paused before he passed through the doorway. "And join me tonight at the dinner, would you? I want my son by my side while I address the rest."
"Yes, father."
Adrian watched him go, distinctly aware that his father had never answered his question.
Carmilla, he knew, refrained from consuming blood as long as she could, as a part of some sick control game she played with herself. Go hungry until starvation, and control oneself in spite of that. He was far simpler: he didn't crave blood.
No, perhaps that was incorrect. He did not crave blood the way a starving man craved food, or the way a person, dying of thirst, would drink muddied water. It was not the insatiable drive that defined his father and their ilk, but a more subtle thing. A lingering hunger. A life without satiation. Water never truly satisfied thirst, and food never filled him.
Perhaps, if he… faltered, he could gain contentment, but it wasn't worth it.
It was… feeding the beast.
Or perhaps it was denying his nature, that innate desire to kill and feed. His congenital hunger. Had his mother ever seen his infant self squalling, uncontented by milk? Had she ever wondered what kind of monster she had borne? Perhaps she was too kind for that, or perhaps Adrian didn't want to wrestle with the reality that his mother could have been afraid of him.
Adrian drifted through the castle. Perhaps he would hide in the barn, or perhaps he'd take it a step further and stay in the chapel? Certainly Dracula could enter it if he wanted to, but Adrian hoped he would take the gesture as it was intended and leave him be, if only for the night.
There was something wrong with him, surely. Something too human and gentle, but Adrian knew what other humans could do to each other. Heard the whispers about his uncle, and more than that, seen his mother's death. There was nothing preternatural about evil, nothing arcane or occult. Nothing unhuman.
Perhaps it was both, his ambivalent blood. Or neither. Or it was his nature. Inherently delicate, the way his father was inherently powerful and his mother inherently wise.
Or he was full of air and he was simply a coward.
Lyudmil was not in his room when Adrian returned. He wasn't in his own room either, Adrian determined after knocking and waiting.
Adrian's bedclothes were missing, so Lyudmil was either in the kitchens, scrubbing til his hands turned red and scaly, or at the stables, preparing a little bed in the hayloft. Considerate. He was too kind, sometimes. Adrian needed cruelty in his life. He would wilt without it.
Adrian disobeyed his father, and instead of attending the dark meeting, he went down into the remains of the village at the base of the castle.
It was a childish desire that drove him: to sleep in his own bed.
Rather, to sleep in the bed he had slept in for twenty years. To close his eyes looking at the whitewashed ceiling, stained by rain no matter how many times he'd climbed up onto the roof to thatch it, and to open them and see the same thing. No bed curtains, no vaulted stone and paint the color of a sterling sky. He longed to be pricked by a straw tick.
Nostalgia: a homesickness so strong that it made his chest ache.
He missed his mother.
Adrian stepped out of the treeline, down into the path that led past the dye houses, still stinking of indigo, and the smithy, on the village's outskirts—Lyudmil's old home, where his father hammered out hinges and candlesticks and horseshoes, and Lyudmil made the nails—set away from the other buildings so it could burn them all when it caught fire. Then the baker, and dozens of little houses, all clustered together. The church still stood in the center of the town. Apart from some small amount of rubble, and the empty, desolate streets, the quiet, cold houses, it could have been evening, three years ago. It could have been the night before Lisa was killed. The memory was vivid: Olga's baby was due in a month, and Lisa was to meet with her one last time before the delivery, in the afternoon. Adrian woke late, and they would meet in the evening to pick the last of the stinging nettle, before the first frost took it. He had complained, he remembered, chafing at the quiet confines of his life, wanting something more. His mother had tempered him, as always, with talk of caution, and he bit down the restlessness.
And then the next day she had died.
But her home still stood, empty. The cobblestones of the town square still sat crooked in the ground. Nothing had changed. At times, he wanted to destroy everything, like Dracula. Vengeance festered in him, like a sore, but Lisa's last word stilled him. His own cowardice stilled him. The weight of it.
Adrian rounded a building, towards his childhood home, and froze. Three men stood in the shadows of the church, their heads bowed in conversation. He stood there, in the dim light of the moon, as they looked up at the scuff of his heels.
A hand snatched him back by the collar.
"Fool!" A familiar voice hissed quietly in his ear, pulling him away from the village square, back towards the forests of the mountain. "Letting them see you, you—"
The man's jaw clicked shut, and he let Adrian go. "My Lord."
"Lyudmil?" Adrian looked down at the other man. "What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here? Those men are hunters! From the Church! You—"
"Hey!" One of the men called out, and Adrian heard his footsteps grow closer. "Come out!"
Lyudmil's eyes were wide and his jaw was tense. "Hide." He whispered, pushing Alucard into the little shop. The door was off its hinges, and he was able to duck behind the wall, enclosed in shadows.
And he was able to watch, confused, his heart thumping, as Lyudmil stepped away from the shop, grinning sheepishly, his hands raised. He held a book in one hand.
"I don't mean any harm." He said, nervous. "I just came back for my family bible."
Adrian could only make the shapes of the other men, from where he was hidden. They were broad, and older. Professionals. Mercenaries. Lyudmil glanced back into the shop and locked eyes with him. Stay, his gaze said.
"Theft, I think." The tallest man said. "Sergei?"
Another man, wiry, stepped forwards and caught Lyudmil by the arms, yanking them high behind his back. The book tumbled to the ground, forgotten. Lyudmil gasped in pain, then sneered at the men.
The tall man stepped forwards and snatched Lyudmil's chin. He continued to thrash until the man pulled out a dagger.
"Smile." The man said, holding the knife above Lyudmil's mouth. Lyudmil glanced wildly, the whites of his eyes flashing, breathing like a horse, his nostrils flaring, and nervously bared his teeth. It was more a grimace than anything, but the tall man pushed back Lyudmil's upper lip with the knife, revealing his blunt and stained teeth.
"He's human." The tall man sheathed the knife.
"A common thief, then." The third man said. He'd been standing with his back to the other two men, guarding for an ambush.
"Just here for the bible." Lyudmil grunted, his voice a whisper.
"You're dressed nice." Sergei observed, letting Lyudmil go. Lyudmil snatched his hands away and took a step away from the group. He kept his back to the road, to run if he needed to. "You lived in this shit hole?"
"Sergei." The third man said.
"Where'd he get money for clothes this nice? You expect me to think the vampire just ignored him, Igor?"
"He's human, Sergei." The tall man said. "We don't get paid for humans."
"My father owned land." Lyudmil managed to stutter out the lie. "I left when I was young."
"Whatever." The third man said. "Just get out."
Lyudmil nodded, and bent to pick up the book. Sergei placed his boot over Lyudmil's fingers, not crushing them, just holding them against the cobblestone.
"Sergei."
"I'm not doing anything." Sergei stared down at Lyudmil, frozen in place. "We're just talking, right? So talk: what are you really doing here?"
"I'm just here for my bible." Lyudmil said again. His eyes were fixed on Adrian. Don't move.
"You want to stick with that story?" Sergei put pressure on his heel, until Lyudmil gasped and flinched, trying to yank his hand away.
"Sergei, enough." The tall man said. "We have more important things to do."
Sergei's boot caught Lyudmil in the ribs, and he crumpled to the ground with a choked gasp. Adrian meant to intervene, to snatch him and vanish into the treeline, regardless of Lyudmil's demand that he stay hidden. But… but something kept him frozen there, hidden in the shadows. The weight of his mother's gaze. The twisted, paralyzing fear that kept him from action.
And that was it, at the end of all things: Adrian was the one who let his mother die.