Chapter Text
The doorman was a delight to Maria's senses. Bathed in plain soap, his fingernails scraped and cut short. His cologne was lightly applied, its warm and creamy odour able to be enjoyed without disturbance of weight. The way his eyes twinkled, and the manner in which he outstretched his hand to guide them in. I see your excitement, I celebrate. You two young women are beautiful, and I celebrate you. Go to the party, it is not complete with you beautiful ladies.
"Bonjour!" Maria and Mina said to the man, with their hands tightly intwined; pale blue crepe de shin following in the wake of plum damask.
"Bonjour, madame!" He greeted Maria, dazzled by the brief seconds he had to witness her chiaroscuro beauty, and the breathless laughter of Mina in her companionship.
"Madame, oh!" Maria exclaimed. She felt she was still a mademoiselle.
Heads turned in the women's wake; Maria's body clothed in colours of a late mourning period, though she was a woman who had never felt sorry for more than half a night. The rapture of her richly red hair in comparison to Mina's pale skin, heavy brows, and dark hair, that made her such a concerntrated profile. She needed the lightness of her clothes, her prayers, her kindness and her laugh. She looked as though she was always in a method of determinedly walking to a better place, and people who did not know the women by a single iota nevertheless managed to deduce this.
Arrogance and ignorance. Pride and ego.
They were not Maria's sins, and they were not Mina's.
Poison, through and through.
"My goodness." Mina whispered to herself as she gazed at the interior of the old building.
Carved white stone, black marble, raw gold. Brass, sterling silver, crystal. All of those precious materials seemingly created without effort. The duress of fear, the duress of care. Visionary craft and visionary beauty.
"Where are you taking me?" Mina asked with a wide smile on her face, but a plead for reassurance. A younger doorman efficiently opened a door for Maria, knowing the woman would simply break through the glass if he lost his time.
"Le Grand Hôtel." Maria enthused with an accented tone to her voice, and a declaration of its importance with a wave of her hand holding the dark silk parasol. "They serve wonderful hot chocolate here, you have to try it."
Her skirts held in the fingers of her left hand, Mina observed that there waa a dress code for the women that she had not been aware of. White gowns with white gloves, fans and adornments surrounded her. Mina knew it was Maria's nature to be tempestuous and rebellious. The abscence of reasonable conformity made a pulse of embarrassment flutter in Mina's chest. The only white dress she owned was the gown she was to be married in.
Mina suddenly looked back as a woman walked in the opposite direction, leaving the room that Maria was guiding her to. She wore a dark dress, and in that witness, Mina felt better for the fact that she and Maria were not the only women flouting the dress code.
At the entrance of the ballroom, its air saturated with perfume, cologne, and the smell of wine. A middle aged man of dignity waited for invitations, his moustache a mask and a license of his manners.
"Bonne nuit -" He began.
The invitation was slapped into his hand before he could address either she or Mina as Madame again. The man was indignant and affronted by the rudeness of the flame haired woman, yet he recovered himself with a withering expression.
"Ah!" Maria gasped, and she held Mina's arm close in hers as they entered the room abundant with attendee's that would not politely part for them.
Beneath the fourteen meter tall glass ceiling, the Second Empire's interpretation of Byzantine colours, decorated with gilding, arcades, caryatids, and candelabras, a man waited. He was surrounded by men who thought they were the most wealthy, the most intelligent and the most accomplished, in the Salon Opéra. They could never have imagined that the curious man of Vlach origin, with waxen skin, glittering eyes, and long brown hair was the most wealthy, the most intelligent, and the most accomplished of them all.
The sculptural work of Aime Millet, above and around Vlad, celebrated rather than diminished him in comparison.
He solely existed in breathless, agonized anticipation. The reversal of time to the zero hour, the last moment before the end of the world.
Light reflected in panels from women's jewels and clashed with the metallic devotion of male envy and pomp. Looks were cast upon him, and his person was openly spoken of in terms unflattering and demeaning. Remarks of his unveiled uneasiness, the breaths of rising panic kept quiet for the panic had begun to turn to fear. Fear that it would be all in vain. Fear that atrocity of biblical form would occur to defile his hope.
How many times had he been in that position before to be disappointed?
Vlad forced himself to remember the evidence of Maria, of Jonathan.
She was alive. She was attainable.
Vlad stopped looking as light blue, ice blue, arrested his periphial vision. His parted lips, anxiety thrumming beneath his skin, did not shudder as he understood what it meant.
He had never been able to get rid of her blood. He had never been able to let go of her love.
A glass shattered to the ground, and the heart and brain of the Wallachian Prince opened with the hot danger of a birth.
The scream of a pagan lover seeing the woods of the forest God open up to reveal the person they thought would not return ftom the underworld.
Maria dissipated, and she took with a laugh behind her hand the crowds of merchants, bankers, academics, nobles, actresses, and journalists.
Yes. For all that there is, yes, Vlad thought.
His lips came together, and so carefully, he smiled. He dared to believe in what he saw, and he saw her as he had last seen her. As he had met her. The grand hall of the Bessaraba castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Her mantilla decorated with diamonds and pearls, the one thousand thread count of her expansive silk veil.
Where have you been? Vlad thought. His eyes seared hot with grief and with magical exaltation. Hello, my love
Without speaking, Maria drew Mina to stand in a three pointed circle with Vlad. Mina gazed up into Vlad's face as he gazed down intently into hers.
Centuries before, two hundred years before his birth, chilvary had been born.
Mina, scarcely more than two decades old, had never seen the word put into practice.
Vlad's gaze was not as becoming as he thought it would be. It was as black as onyx, and as fixed as burnt melasă to iron.
A gaze that would make others burn with desire often failed to make the yearned for reception to those unsuspecting of it.
Maria's eyes moved between Vlad and Mina.
She understood all to well the love and suffering hs felt, and the disconcertion Mina attempted to not show.
Seconds lengthened, and lengthened again.
Blessing and curse of the supernatural.
My goodness, Mina thought. He has no moustache, no beard. His hair...and he has a scar on his face, as though someone has cut him deliberately with a knife
She glanced to Maria then to the man.
Maria had described him as being the direct opposite as he appeared to be. Mina's skin prickled under the collar of her dress with hesitation. Maria seemed to forget they were different women at times. What Mina posessed a boundary to, Maria sought to absolve. There was only so much that could be absolved before it was directly corroded.
He's staring at me, Mina thought before looking down to hide, and to recover herself.
"Well, I know my friend is very beautiful, but I'm a bit offended." Maria told the strange man, touching his arm.
Friend, beautiful, offended.
Mina's eyes lifted to Maria. For the first time, Maria seemed to have obeyed the laws of societal manners, if only to chase them into a shape for her own inadvantage. In that case, it was also Mina's advantage.
Yet Mina regretted it.
She herself was not offended. It was not the poor man's fault his face did not match the internal ideal her mind had constructed.
Mina's cheeks lightly blushed with sincere regret, and hoped God would forgive her for her folly.
"Forgive me." The man said, lifting his chin mildly as he spoke. His voice was deep, and rich. His letters rolled easily between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Mina saw the concerntration in his face as he spoke in English. His cheeks stilled, and his eyes lowered, attention singularly paid to her and her responses. "Your beauty brings light to this place full of dark suits and top hats."
Maria tipped her head back as she laughed, her eyes squeezing shut and her fingers rising to her lips as her teeth were revealed in her broad smile.
"Very true." Maria agreed.
Mina's eyes returned to the man with a mild rue, and an evolving expectation of how he may treat her.
"Madame..." Vlad said. How essential it was to call her so; nevertheless, how foreign it seemed. He comcealed it. He had so much to tell her. So much in earnest. "It is an honour, and a pleasure, to see you again."
Mina decided in an instant he was not misusing English words. He was being flirtatious, and deceptively so.
"Have we met before?" Mina replied, certainly aware that they had not.
"In a dream, perhaps." Vlad answered.
Really? Mina thought. I think not
She was aware that men of the continent showed off to young women; it was their manner of bearing, and what they deemed was the civil way to earn a young woman's kindness.
"I have this strange feeling that we have known each other for a long time." Vlad continued.
"That is...very romantic." Mina described tactfully.
"Terribly." The man agreed, almost wearily.
I'm sure it is, Mina thought. She had little idea of what else she could say to the man. A thought slowly emerged at just how old he was. His voice could have been that of a middle aged man, yet his face seen uniquely younger and older than middle age.
She was afraid she had not been as impressed as Maria had hoped she would be, yet it was something that she would not reveal to her.
Mina looked to Maria.
It was a shared expression universal to women of evolving awkwardness.
"Excuse me." The man said. He subtly moved a step closer to Mina, his tone and his expression lightening. He looked for the position of her right habd against the skirts of her dress. "I seem to have lost my mind and my manners. Vlad the Second, Prince of Wallachia."
A drop of water fell from the atmisphere to the ocean in the back of Mina's mind. It transformed into a steel ball that sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and caused a silent vacumn of water to spiral down after it, chasing it in unnatural nessecity.
"Count Dracul." Her hand was lifted to his mouth, and his eyes bore into hers as his lips shaped to kiss her fingers.
Mina's breath uneasily travelled to her lungs, before she suddenly lost sight of Vlad, and the magnificent room, by a fantasy.
Gold and red. Distressingly hot and uniamously desired. Hands reaching for a woman all too like her, the hands belonging to a figure gold, lithe and white in comparison to him.
She had not heard her name in his voice.
Mina's hand shot away, her body inwardly groaning to a near shriek in sudden protest at the inflammation her mind had been taken by in her shock of his identity.
"It's a pleasure to meet you." Mina said simply and firmly.
Maria's heart had sunk, watching the careful line she coukd have so easily orchestrated be bent out of shape by the strength of Vlad's repressed desire.
"Maria?" Mina questioned, another inquiry hidden far beneath.
Will you look after me, or him?
Maria smiled to her.
"You promised me hot chocolate." Mina drew Maria close, their arms entwined, her face reading a finality to the interaction.
Maria gazed sweetly, consolingly, soothingly, to the sudden stark and distraught look on Vlad's face.
He thought he was being abandoned, rejected, for the sake of a dessert.
"Yes, but first we are going to have a little fun." Maria said.
"Hm?" Maria rebuked it.
"Hm." Maria confirmed it.
"Hm." Mina agreed.
Maria clasped Mina's hand, and turning on her heel, began to guide her to a southern exit which was the entry of the grand ballroom.
Mina's eyes lifted and caught Vlad's for a moment as she turned to follow Maria.
What a strange man he was, yet, a Prince.
"Hurry." Maria told Mina, and invited Vlad, into the night.
Vlad breathed in the smell of their perfumes, and singularly found Mina's, as he swllowed the agitation making his chest tight. He moaned in pleasure, pain, and desire. He swiftly began to walk after the women as they giggled and laughed their path ahead of him.