Eternal Reservations – Chapter 4
Vladislaus
Cobwebs brushed his cheek like spectral fingers as Vladislaus descended the narrow spiral staircase. The ancient stone steps, worn concave by centuries of forgotten footfalls, led deeper beneath the castle than most modern maps acknowledged. Two levels below the library, beyond the wine cellar where bottles slumbered in dusty racks, lay chambers the castle’s current inhabitants had never seen.
His candle flame guttered against the damp, stale air. A mortal would have found the darkness impenetrable, the air too thin for comfortable breath. Vladislaus moved with the confidence of one navigating familiar territory, silver eyes piercing the gloom with preternatural clarity.
The scriptorium had once been the heart of his family’s scholarly pursuits. Here, ancient texts had been copied by hand, family histories recorded, and secrets preserved from prying eyes of church and state. The chamber appeared untouched since his entombment—dust thick upon the writing desks, inkwells dried to black crust, quills crumbled to hollow shafts.
A bat startled from the vaulted ceiling, fluttering away through a crack in the mortar. “At least some things remain.”
Vladislaus placed his candle in a wrought-iron holder shaped like a dragon’s claw. The flame cast shadows across the chamber, illuminating shelves of leather-bound volumes. Most would crumble at a touch, the knowledge of generations reduced to dust by time’s relentless passage.
But he had not come for those.
He moved to the far wall where a stone panel, carved with the Dracul family crest, had been sealed with wax and iron bands. The seal remained unbroken, proof that no curious historian had discovered this chamber’s most precious secret during his long sleep.
From within his coat, Vladislaus withdrew a dagger. Its blade gleamed with a dull silver patina. The hilt bore the same dragon-and-rose motif as his sarcophagus. With precision, he worked the blade into the wax seal, applying steady pressure until the ancient binding surrendered with a soft sigh.
The iron bands required more force. He wrapped his gloved hand around one corroded strap and pulled. Metal groaned, then snapped. The second band followed, leaving only the stone panel itself.
Vladislaus paused. Behind this wall lay memories he had sealed away with his own hands—memories of Elenora, of blood and betrayal, of a love that had ended in tragedy.
“I will not be ruled by ghosts.” His hands betrayed an uncharacteristic tremor. With one smooth motion, he pressed his palm against the stone panel and pushed.
The hidden compartment opened with surprising ease, revealing a space no larger than a modest writing desk. Within lay a single object: a small, leather-bound book, its burgundy cover embossed with Elenora’s personal crest, a nightingale perched upon a thorned rose. The pages were edged in a rust-dark stain that Vladislaus recognized immediately as blood. Her blood.
His throat constricted. Carefully, he lifted the diary from its resting place. The leather felt warm against his cold fingers, warmer than any inanimate object should be after centuries in darkness. As if it recognized him. As if it had been waiting.
The sensation sent a chill through his immortal frame. Blood magic. Of course. Elenora had been experimenting with ancient Carpathian rituals in those final months, rituals he had forbidden after discovering their true cost.
A memory surfaced, sharp as the dagger in his hand. Elenora, candlelight gilding her chestnut curls, bent over this very diary. Her quill scratching delicate Latin glyphs across the parchment, her lower lip caught between her teeth in concentration. The scent of roses mingling with the metallic tang of blood as she pricked her finger to seal a page with her essence.
“It’s merely theoretical research, my love,” she had assured him, hazel eyes wide with practiced innocence. “Knowledge, not practice.”
He had believed her. By the time he discovered the truth, it was too late.
Vladislaus traced the nightingale crest with one pale finger. The leather pulsed beneath his touch, a subtle rhythm matching the heartbeat Elenora had possessed in life.
The candle flame danced wildly, though no draft stirred the air. Shadows leapt across the stone walls. Vladislaus remained motionless, caught between past and present, between dread and desperate hope.
He should destroy the diary. Whatever blood magic lingered within its pages, whatever secrets Elenora had recorded in her final days were best left buried.
With careful restraint, Vladislaus opened the diary to its first page. The parchment crackled but did not crumble. Blood magic had preserved it perfectly, each elegant stroke of Elenora’s hand as crisp as the day it was written. Latin text flowed across the page, interspersed with intricate glyphs that shimmered in the candlelight.
His eyes caught a phrase that made his dead heart clench. Cordis resurrectio. Heart’s resurrection.
The ancient Carpathian ritual he had expressly forbidden. The one Elenora had pursued in secret, believing it would bind them together for eternity. The one that had, instead, led to her death.
And now, centuries later, a woman with Elenora’s face walked his halls. Coincidence? Or consequence?
Vladislaus closed the diary with a sharp snap. He tucked it inside his coat, its weight a physical manifestation of his burden. The candle sputtered as he turned to leave, shadows stretching like grasping hands across the chamber.
Whatever answers the diary held, he would not examine them here, in this tomb of memories. Nor would he share his discovery with Anabelle—not yet. Knowledge was power, but it was also danger. Until he understood exactly what Elenora had done, what forces she had set in motion, Anabelle was safer in ignorance.
The thought sat uneasily as he ascended the spiral staircase, each step carrying him closer to the world of the living. To her.
The ancient clock tower struck three, its deep chime resonating through sleeping corridors. Vladislaus moved through the castle like liquid shadow, the diary a leaden weight against his chest. The master keys Anabelle had entrusted to him hung from his belt, unused. He needed no keys to access the castle’s secrets—he had designed many of its hidden passages himself, centuries ago.
He paused outside the Moonlight Suite, where the honeymooning Blakelys slumbered. Their mingled heartbeats formed a gentle duet, peaceful and content. Vladislaus allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. His quick intervention had prevented harm to Anabelle’s guest, securing her business from potential disaster.
A more pragmatic part of him acknowledged that his actions had drawn unwanted attention. The murmurs about his “vampire-fast” reflexes could spread beyond the castle walls, attracting dangerous curiosity. He would need to be more circumspect.
His feet carried him, almost without conscious direction, toward the east wing. Toward Anabelle.
Her door stood partly open, a careless oversight from a woman who had hired a stranger as night caretaker. Vladislaus hesitated at the threshold, propriety warring with temptation. Even from this distance, he could hear her steady heartbeat, could smell the faint bergamot of her evening tea lingering on her breath.
One step would bring him to her bedside. One moment of lost control would bind her to him irrevocably.
Vladislaus closed his eyes, mastering the hunger that stirred within him. Not for blood, though that primal thirst was ever-present, but for connection. For the simple comfort of watching over her while she slept, as he had once watched over Elenora.
“Not yet,” he whispered, forcing himself to retreat. “Not like this.”
Instead, he turned toward her office. The door yielded to his touch, swinging open on well-oiled hinges. Light spilled through leaded glass windows, painting silver rectangles across the polished desk where ledgers and blueprints lay in organized chaos.
Vladislaus moved to the desk, gloved fingers hovering over the scattered papers. Renovation plans for the grand ballroom, cost estimates for electrical upgrades, a half-finished letter to the historical preservation society requesting guidance on appropriate restoration methods. Anabelle’s neat handwriting filled the margins with questions, ideas, small sketches of architectural details.
His gaze lingered on one such drawing, a rendering of the ballroom as it might have appeared in its prime. She had captured the essence with remarkable accuracy, despite having never seen it in its original glory. The grand chandelier, the musicians’ gallery, even the pattern of the parquet floor were all rendered with attentive detail.
Something tightened in his chest. She cared for his castle, truly cared, beyond its value as a business venture. She sought to honor its history, to restore rather than reinvent.
Her teacup sat abandoned at the corner of the desk, a film of cooled bergamot still coating its interior. Vladislaus traced the rim with one finger, imagining her lips pressed to the same spot hours earlier. An intimate connection, separated by time yet tangible.
The diary pulsed against his chest, a silent reminder of secrets kept and truths withheld. He should tell her. Should place the diary before her with an explanation of who, what, he truly was. Should warn her of the danger that might be stirring if his suspicions about Elenora’s ritual proved correct.
But such revelations would shatter the fragile trust building between them. Would burden her with knowledge no mortal should bear. Would bind her to his darkness before she had the chance to choose.
No. He could not yet speak the truth. But perhaps he could offer a gesture, something to acknowledge the connection neither of them could deny.
Vladislaus slipped through the window, returning moments later with a single crimson bloom from the castle gardens, where late-blooming roses defied October’s chill. He placed it atop her blueprints, positioning it so it would be the first thing she saw upon entering.
As he arranged the rose, his sleeve brushed against her sketchbook, dislodging it from its perch atop a stack of invoices. It fell open to a page filled with detailed drawings of the ballroom, and there, in the corner, a small portrait that made him freeze.
A man in formal 18th-century attire, silver eyes gleaming beneath a strong brow, hair tied back in the fashion of the era. The original Count Dracul, rendered with such precision it might have been drawn from life rather than copied from a portrait.
Beneath it, in Anabelle’s flowing script: “Who were you really?”
Vladislaus closed the sketchbook with trembling fingers, returning it to its place. She was searching for him, even as he searched for her. The symmetry would have been poetic if it weren’t so dangerous.
A sudden prickle crawled along his nape, an ancient warning system more reliable than any modern alarm. Vladislaus straightened, senses expanding beyond the castle walls, beyond the sleeping village, into the dark Carpathian forest beyond.
Something stirred in that darkness. Something old. Something hungry.
Something that recognized him.
The sensation lasted only a moment before fading, but it left him cold with certainty. He was no longer the only vampire awake in these mountains.
Lucian. It could only be Lucian Vârcolac, his oldest rival, his most persistent enemy. The one who had orchestrated Elenora’s death three centuries ago.
Vladislaus withdrew from the office, locking the door behind him. If Lucian had awakened—if he sensed Vladislaus’s return, then time was shorter than he had hoped. The diary’s secrets could not wait.
He retreated to the servants’ wing, to the modest quarters Anabelle had assigned him. From beneath the narrow bed, he withdrew an iron-bound chest, another relic of his era that had somehow survived the centuries. The diary fit perfectly within its velvet-lined interior, protected from prying eyes and casual discovery.
As he secured the lock, a distant howl echoed from the mountains, too deep, too resonant to belong to any natural wolf. Vladislaus moved to the window, staring out at the fading night. The darkness illuminated nothing, yet he knew with bone-deep certainty that something watched from those shadows. Something that remembered him. Something that hungered.
Beyond the pines, something answered his presence with a hunger older than memory.
The pale light of dawn crept through the castle windows as Anabelle unlocked her office door, stifling a yawn. The renovation contractor would arrive soon to assess the staircase damage, and she needed to review the budget before—
She stopped short.
A single crimson rose lay atop her blueprints, its petals still beaded with dew. Perfectly formed, impossibly fresh, as if it had been plucked moments ago.
Anabelle approached slowly. She lifted it with careful fingers, bringing it to her face. Its scent filled her senses, rich, sweet, with an undertone of something darker, more complex than any rose she’d encountered before.
Her gaze dropped to the blueprint beneath, noting the precise placement. The rose had been set directly over the ballroom drawing, its stem aligned with the grand staircase where couples would have descended in another era.
Not random. Deliberate. A message.
“Count Midnight,” she whispered, a smile tugging at her lips despite the flutter of unease in her stomach. Her mysterious caretaker moved in shadow, spoke in riddles, and now left roses like some gothic novel hero.
She twirled the stem between her fingers, remembering silver eyes and the impossible speed with which he had saved Diane Blakely. The logical part of her brain suggested calling the police, demanding identification, verifying his outlandish claims of aristocratic heritage.
Instead, she found herself placing the rose in her empty teacup, arranging it carefully, preserving it as he had placed it.
“Who are you really?” she whispered to the empty room, the same question she had scribbled beneath her sketch of the original Count.
Only silence answered, broken by the distant crowing of a rooster greeting the new day.
You have been reading Eternal Reservations...
Anabelle inherited a crumbling castle. She didn’t expect it to come with a devastatingly handsome vampire who thinks she’s his dead fiancée.
Vladislaus Dracul appeared in her office like he owned the place—which he had for three centuries. Impossibly beautiful, infuriatingly knowledgeable about every flaw in her building, and insisting he work only at night.
Red flags everywhere.
But when he saved a guest with superhuman speed, when she felt fangs during a kiss that left her breathless, denial became impossible. Her night caretaker was the original Count Dracul, and she wore the face of the woman whose death had driven him to centuries of guilt-ridden slumber.
Every touch awakened memories that weren’t hers. Every glance carried the weight of a love story that ended in flames.
But was he seeing Anabelle, or mourning Elenora’s ghost?
She should run. Should call the police, or a priest, or an exorcist.
Instead, she was falling for a man who whispered her name like a prayer and kissed her like he’d been starving for centuries.
Then his ancient enemy arrived to finish what he’d started. Lucian wanted her blood for a ritual that would grant him unimaginable power, and he was willing to burn down her castle—again—to get it.
With her heart torn between a vampire who might love a ghost more than her, Anabelle faced an impossible choice: trust the man who’d awakened something she thought she’d buried, or lose everything to an enemy who’d waited three centuries for revenge.
