Chapter Text
Nolueran, Belinda, tuos violare capillos; sed juvat hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
— Martial
If Trevor were ever going to be completely honest about the fuckshow shit-circus that this most recent assault on Dracula's castle has been, he would probably admit that he'd always expected it to go poorly. No Belmont storms this castle expecting anything less. But he'll admit: he's taken a bit off guard by the fact that the walls are literally screaming at him. The fact that the self-lighting torches have begun to flash red, guttering out to leave the place in shadow, before flaring back to life, doesn't help him.
Walls that scream like war horns! The place has just found entirely new ways to be crazy, and he was expecting some pretty weird shit.
Yeah, he's never going to be honest with anybody about any of this. Nobody likes to hear that he told them so, and nobody likes a hindsight tactician, and also, he's probably going to die. It's a pity so will everybody else.
Trevor hisses at the screaming walls — he really hopes they don't make that noise because souls or something are trapped inside them; trapped souls just make everything so messy — and kicks a door open. He hears something high pitched shriek as he enters, and he whirls around.
Despite the scream, nothing is coming for his face. He uncoils his whip, pulling the leather taut with the hand not on the grip, and even as he starts catching his breath, nothing comes for him.
If there is anyone else in this room, they're not interested in chewing his throat open. Maybe God does look after Belmonts, sometimes.
The room itself is full of weird shit. Once again: Trevor expected weird. So he takes in the long tables and the glass vials and instruments, all clear as that expensive new cristallo from Venice, all thin and rolled into impossible shapes, with no real surprise. There are tons of books, and some kind of brass instrument with a sequence of — pipes, maybe? Tubes, anyway, that don't seem to need holding in place, stacking all the way toward the top of a window.
The brass thing looks… especially weird. He reaches out, feeling with the back of his hand, but if the air around it is warm, it's not making it through his glove. He raps two knuckles against it and listens to the hollow noise.
It's cold, though. So no metal vein full of steam here.
"It's called a telescopio," a woman's voice says from his right. "From 'tele,' the Latin for —"
Trevor fucking Belmont, acknowledged heir to the House of Belmont, wielder of the Vampire Killer, absolutely does not panic at somebody suddenly being near him in a castle where even the walls scream.
Well, not much.
"The Latin for 'far,'" he finishes for the strange woman, if only to cover his flinch. "And I'm guessing 'scopio' from 'scopium.' It looks at far things?"
The woman — a tall, thin blonde — stares at him. "You read Latin."
"You read Latin. Apparently." He squints at her. "You're human."
"I'm Lisa," she says, and, well, that's good enough for Trevor. She's human, she's alive, she's rational enough to remember her own name, and she's not trying to kill him. That she's one of Dracula's victims is obvious, but she doesn't seem beyond saving.
He nods at her. She nods back, but she's looking at him uncertainly.
"Did my husband send you?"
They usually ask something like that. It's never precisely true — and it's very far from true today — but it gets them moving. Once they've been away from their vampire captor for a while, they sort themselves out and the lie gets overlooked. It has become a habit of the Belmonts to say 'yes,' remove the victim from danger, and worry about the rest later.
So he just nods and reaches out and says, "Come with me," and she does. Which really is just another mark in the 'vampire victim' column, if he were tallying, which he's trying not to.
The truth is, she's not sure where or when Vlad found a human fighting man, or why he's decided to trust her safety to a human when he tolerates so few of them. But the man is clearly educated, which Vlad always likes, and his grasp around her wrist is surprisingly gentle. He's not pulling her hard after him: instead he's moving at a pace she has no trouble keeping up with, and towing her gently in his wake.
It's a surprisingly kind gesture, given the obvious urgency of the situation, and the unrest throughout the castle.
He'd also clearly memorized instructions, from the way he mutters turns and directions and landmarks under his breath. Every so often, a door opens unexpectedly thanks to her presence, or an alarm blares, and she sees his shoulders stiffen. It's the only sign of fear he gives, which must mean that Vlad had prepared him for the castle's quirks.
There's a particularly harrowing moment in the dining hall. Someone has activated the Dullahans and wrested control of them away from Vlad. It's the only explanation.
Her bodyguard leads her into the room, then stops when they hear the clank of an armored footstep. He begins back-tracking, his arms windmilling just slightly as he goes, but it's too late. A giant suit of armor goes stiff, then begins turning slowly in his direction, and it raises the huge sword it carries over its head.
"Shit," the bodyguard says. He turns, picking her up bodily and throwing her over his shoulder. "Sorry," he mutters into her side, and now he's moving: leaping up onto the dining table and running full tilt.
She shrieks as the Dullahan swings —
But the bodyguard goes down on his knees, sliding over the polished wood. Air ruffles above her as ancient steel hisses through the space where they had been. He doesn't put her down, just clambers off the table and makes for the door, which opens for her. He has to kick it shut three times; it keeps trying to open.
"Stay the fuck closed, damn you, fuck my father's teeth," the man snarls as he closes it a fourth time.
"Access not required," she says, breathless. "Lock."
The door stays shut this time. Metal moves within the wood in a heavy-sounding click.
The bodyguard finally lets her down — Lisa scrambles away from him, in case he hatches any more necessary but unfortunate plans regarding her person — and stares at her.
"They listen to you?"
"What?"
He jabs a long finger at the closed door. "The spirits. They listen to you? They listen to you."
Oh, God, Vlad must not have not trusted this one to really understand the science of the castle. She stares at him for a moment, trying to figure out how to word it. "After a fashion," she says eventually. Trying to explain to this man that there are no spirits here, only science, is probably a fool's errand, and will certainly take more time than they have.
"Praise Christ," the bodyguard says, and she has to cover her hand with her mouth to hide her amusement. She hopes he doesn't talk like that in front of her husband: casual blasphemy and nonsensical swearing are one thing, but he has no tolerance for piety.
He reaches for her again, this time offering his hand, and when she places her palm in his, he slides his grip down to her wrist once more. The leather of his gloves is surprisingly supple, and his fingers are gentle on her, despite the metal studs all over the back of his hand.
"I don't think I caught your name," she tells him as they move through room after room.
"Trevor," the bodyguard says, and that settles it: he must be one of Vlad's few human friends. They're all foreign.
"It's nice to meet you, despite the circumstances."
Trevor looks over his shoulder at that, staring at her like he thinks she's said something odd, but he keeps moving, and she keeps following him, until they've reached the front hall, until they've passed the front doors. They sweep out into the courtyard, where what must be the members of a mercenary company have all gathered.
Trevor tows her directly through them, toward the head of the knot of mercenaries. "This is Lisa," he says to a grizzled-looking man with startling blue eyes.
Those eyes rake over her, so cold and assessing that it almost burns. Lisa straightens her spine, relaxing her shoulders, and stares right back. She will not let this stranger think the wife of Dracula is at all a retiring mouse, no matter what he'd expect, no matter which he'd prefer.
"Well done, nepot," the mercenary leader says, and Lisa feels the back of her neck grow just slightly damp with sweat.
It could mean nothing: he might be the captain's nephew, or a particular favorite for some reason. But as she looks at their leader, she sees gold embroidery on his chest, right where people always think the heart is.
Two stylized griffons and a cross. And while she would hardly consider herself well versed in the crests of human boyars — in the last twenty years, she's mostly learned the vampire houses — she knows that badge.
"Good Lord," she says through lips that feel numb. She tries to back away a few steps, but when she turns her head, she sees a throng of them behind her. "You're Belmonts."
Belmonts. Her husband's enemies. She followed a man who wants nothing more than her husband's death, who was willing to invade his home to murder him, out of the only place her safety could possibly be assured.
Trevor's uncle looks at her with amusement. "Definitely under his thrall, then," he tells her so-called bodyguard.
The young man looks at her, considering. "I don't think so," he says, but before he can say anything else, someone lets out a noise of pure frustration.
"We need to go," says a woman with the same cheekbones and brow as Trevor, the same dark, dense hair, but with eyes of a striking pale green. "Just because we're outside the castle doesn't mean we're safe."
In fact, Lisa thinks wryly, it makes her distinctly unsafe. She turns, looking back toward the castle, but there are what must be half a dozen Belmonts between her and the great doors. Each of them carries a whip, and each of them wears that terrible golden badge.
She isn't fool enough to break for the front steps, though she wants to. It will only end with her captured and probably trussed up like a game bird. Best if she seems to cooperate, she decides.
"Then we move," the captain says, and Trevor guides her, gently but firmly, out of the courtyard, down the dusty road toward wherever it is that Belmonts go, and away from the safety of her home.
It seems that Belmonts travel at great speed and with little comfort. Lisa spends the next few days either sweltering in the heat of the sun or flinching from rain under an oilcloth. Each night, Trevor helps her down from the horse they'd loaned her, and she stumbles toward a bedroll that one of the women lays out for her. The wool is soft as fog, as clouds, and nearly the size of an entire ram.
Her legs and posterior never quite stop aching. She finds this deeply irritating; saddle soreness is supposed to resolve on its own. If the Belmonts notice her discomfort, they give her no sign of it. Instead, they tend each other's hurts — she cannot bring herself to offer assistance and, honestly, they hardly seem to need it; their remedies for their cuts and bruises are primitive but effective — and offer her extra food, extra water, more blankets at night.
The only time Trevor seems not to be near her is when she's sleeping: the Belmont men always herd her toward the women among them. At any other time, he's either beside her or only a few paces away. It makes her interactions with the Belmonts go easier; she hadn't thought humans — people — could seem so alien to her. She'd thought she knew people.
She apparently doesn't know them as well as she thought. Or perhaps the Belmont family is simply alien even to other Wallachians. They speak to each other in half sentences, starting thoughts without finishing them, laughing bitterly at jests she doesn't understand. Occasionally they lapse into other languages: mostly Latin, but the captain once mutters something in what she thinks may be Turkish, or perhaps Arabic, to which the green-eyed woman laughs and replies in Greek.
She doesn't realize how much she relies on Trevor to be her guide in this strange, topsy-turvy world of Belmonts until the afternoon that he raises his head, obviously sniffing.
One of the other Belmonts says, "There she blows."
The comment mystifies Lisa until Trevor leans toward her, his saddle creaking slightly at the movement. "Smell that on the breeze?"
She draws in a breath through her nose a little more delicately than Trevor had. The scent of rotten eggs hits her, and she frowns. "I do. Is that bad eggs or sulfur?"
Trevor actually grins. It makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. "Sulfur," he says. "That's from the hot springs that are all over the Cozia hills, near Călimănești."
She doesn't understand the significance of this. When he realizes she's staring blankly at him, he explains a little more. "We're near the Estate. Almost home."
"Almost safe," says one of the women. Lisa thinks this woman may be Georgeta, but she looks enough like Sara, who is not her sister despite their resemblance, that Lisa can't be wholly sure.
"We'll see you… uh, recovered and send word to your husband that you've been found," Trevor continues. "Once you're well again. Uh. I hear that sometimes takes a while."
"'Well again?'" She feels halfway like an echo, repeating after him, but she doesn't think she's absorbed his meaning.
The woman who spoke earlier looks hard at Trevor, like she's trying to slap him with the power of her thoughts. But then she turns to Lisa and says the single most offensive thing she's heard from a human mouth in at least a year:
"I understand you may not see yourself as one of them, but the women we rescue from vampire strongholds are often confused. Your memories may be distorted. And there is often some… distress, at being separated from your… host."
It is very clear that when the Belmont girl says 'host,' she means 'captor.'
And it's equally clear that, with the family estate so near, Trevor no longer considers her his charge. He leans over to clap his relative on the shoulder, then spurs his horse to ride with the captain, leaving Lisa in the dust.
By evening, they're riding sedately through an orchard of cherry trees. There are little redcurrant bushes all around, but while they're still a riot of green, the berries have all long fallen or been harvested.
If she weren't riding into a house full of people who hate her husband and think her some misguided, confused victim, she might almost love the place. A stream babbles in the distance, the sound of water moving over stone carried to her ears on the same breeze that smells of delicately sweet flowers and the musk of currant bushes.
"It's lovely here," she says to the nearest Belmont, who happens to be the blue-eyed woman who had so carefully not called her a rescued prisoner.
The woman tips her head. "Yes," she says, eventually, and at that, the Belmont woman who looks like her joins the conversation.
"You haven't even seen the best part," the new Belmont woman says, grinning. She looks like Trevor when she does it; the corners of her eyes crinkle in the same way, and their irises are the same shade of blue.
The first woman — the one who has a lumpy sack tied to her saddle — has eyes that look a little grayer in strong light.
Damn the family for all being so close to identical. Lisa wonders how insular they must be. Perhaps they see themselves as some kind of royalty, or very high nobility, forever marrying cousins to each other to keep the lands or titles or money in the family.
The party comes to a fork in the paths through the orchard. The green-eyed woman, who looks the most like Trevor, spurs her horse and dashes off down one of the other tracks. The rest mill about, debating in half sentences while their horses dip their heads to graze on whatever they can find.
Eventually, whatever they were talking about is decided, and the whole party turns down another track. The dirt road turns to worn cobble, and the further they go, the stronger the sulfur smell grows.
It would seem the Belmonts have hot springs on their estate. She supposes she ought not be surprised. Though the fact that they haven't labelled the springs poison or witchcraft does rather seem a miracle.
She realizes just how uncharitable she's been when she sees what the merrier Belmont woman had called 'the best part.' It's a little compound of stone buildings in a style that reminds her, very dimly, of depictions of Rome. Columns and arches flank the compound, looming over a set of stone stairs, and beyond that, she sees what must be the entrance to the baths.
"Good Lord," she says, and the merry Belmont laughs.
"I told you," the merry Belmont says. "Didn't I tell you?"
A pack of boys comes pelting down the road they'd just travelled. Trevor helps Lisa to dismount again, stepping politely away from her as soon as she's on the ground. Lisa can only watch, a little dazed, as the boys catch at the reins of the horses and lead them away.
"There's a stable nearby," Trevor says. "Don't worry, we won't make you walk all the way to the house."
"You're not wearing the right shoes for a walk that far," says the woman who'd been laughing. She eyes Lisa's feet, clearly judging.
Lisa feels no need to apologize for her shoes. If the Belmonts didn't think them suitable for travel, they could have refrained from abducting her.
There's a sound of jingling tack from behind them. When Lisa turns, she sees a stunningly beautiful woman who must be in her late twenties, or perhaps her very early thirties, astride a gray horse. She swings herself down easily and retrieves a wrapped parcel from her saddlebags. She places the horse's reins in the hands of an eager stable boy and pauses a moment to scan the party.
Her blue eyes alight on Lisa instantly, and her mouth, shapely as a statue's, curves into a warm, welcoming smile. "You must be Lisa," she says, and even her voice is beautiful: gentle and soothing, but apparently without artifice. She sounds natural, not like she's putting anything on.
"I am," Lisa says. "Of Lupu village."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Lisa of Lupu. I'm Renata. If you'll come with me, I have some supplies for you, and I'd like to make sure you suffered no injury during your journey."
She considers mentioning her saddle soreness, but she can't quite bring herself to give up so much of her dignity in this company. So she simply nods and steps toward Renata, saying, "Thank you."
Renata's smile widens just enough for her cheeks to dimple. She leads Lisa into one of the buildings, closing the door and the window shutters. "For privacy," she says, even as a servant with covered hair and worn, wrinkled hands lights a taper, and with it, several lamps.
The little room floods with light. Lisa sees the wooden table, the stool and chairs. There are even buckets — probably of water — hanging over hooks in a fireplace, where a low fire already hisses and cracks merrily.
The servant retreats to a corner, gathering up towels from a basket and folding them. She doesn't even look at Lisa or Renata, too focused on her work.
So Lisa turns to the noblewoman. "Are you also a doctor?"
That gives Renata pause. She hesitates, then says, "I'm afraid none of the hunting party who brought you are doctors or even physic's nurses of any kind." She stops a moment, then asks, very carefully, "Did any of them say otherwise?"
Oh. Of course. "No, none of them. It's only… I'm a doctor. A physician."
Renata blinks at that, but seems to accept it. "Then, no. I'm not a doctor. I learned early to bind injuries, and how to tend to the bites of various night creatures, and I know a little of the confusion that night creatures can inflict."
"So you don't have a remedy for being saddle sore?" She supposes it figures. The Belmonts seem to think her a vampire victim first, never realizing how laughable the idea is.
"Oh, that I do have, but I suspect you'd prefer we apply it after you've had a soak in the baths — I'm assuming you want to get clean?"
"God, yes," Lisa says, and can't help laughing a little at how relieved she sounds.
That relief quickly turns to horror. Renata helping her undress doesn't seem unusual, but while the woman checks her over quickly and efficiently for injuries, there's a strange, dispassionate intimacy in the way she inspects Lisa. She actually lifts Lisa's hair at one point, holding it up against the back of her head, and brushes her fingers along the nape and sides of her neck.
"No evidence of bites here, nor any scarring. How long were you in his custody?"
Custody. Good Lord. "Twenty years," she says.
The Belmont behind her goes very still. She repeats the number, as if incredulous, as if asking Lisa to confirm, and when Lisa does, she moves along, brisk and business-like. Her fingers ghost along Lisa's subclavian vein, clearly checking for wounds or scars there. Finding none, she moves on without comment.
The concern, the check for injuries "from the journey," turns to a gentle but firm probing for some sign of mistreatment by her husband. Renata quests for signs of malnutrition, of anemia — though she calls it "blood-thinning" — for bite marks, for bruises. There are dozens of ways she assumes Vlad could have and probably did hurt her.
"If you could raise your foot onto the stool, I need to look at the insides of your thighs," Renata says, after what feels like an uncomfortable hour.
"No."
Renata raises her brows.
"No," Lisa says again. "I do not consent to that. I — I don't consent to any of this. I would like you to leave, and I would like to be left in privacy."
The other woman falls silent at that. She looks directly at Lisa, meeting her eye without flinching away.
"I understand that this is uncomfortable for you," she begins.
She cuts Renata off. "Uncomfortable? I find it insulting. He is my husband. He loves me. He never raised his hand to me. And, quite honestly, your whole house has made a greater mistake than you can imagine. You should count yourselves lucky if he doesn't come for me himself."
"I see," Renata says, exactly as calm as she's been from the moment she dismounted her horse. "I thank you for your honesty. But if you will forgive me, I must see the insides of your thighs. I need to verify for myself and my family that you have not been bitten recently, and are not in danger of turning while you are in our home."
Lisa doesn't hide the noise of disgust that she makes. But she doesn't resist any further as the Belmont woman continues her inspection.
When it's over, Renata apologizes — as if those words could possibly hold any meaning — with seeming sincerity. She offers soap and wash rags, and leaves Lisa with only the servant to give herself a quick scrub from the buckets of warm water. She returns only to offer towels and a robe of thick-woven linen. She brings a pair of sandals, too, but after that turns Lisa over to the Belmont woman with Trevor's eyes, the one who laughs so often.
This woman looks between Lisa and Renata, as if sensing the undercurrents between them. Into the tension, she says, "I don't think any of us ever introduced ourselves, except for Renata. You met Trevor before. I'm Sara." She pauses, smiling, and tips her head toward the much prettier, much colder woman. "We're his older sisters. Oh, and Mariana. You met her, she's the scary one."
She decides not to mention that 'the scary one' probably applies to every Belmont she's met so far. They've all been frightening in their own ways. Except Trevor. Maybe.
Sara escorts her up the stone steps, into a series of baths separated from each other by wooden and woven screens. The Belmonts have scattered bowls of glass about, with candles floating in their waters; they cast pale, flickering lights in the gloaming. It makes the whole scene almost magical.
If only she were seeing such a sight with her husband. If only this wasn't the Belmont estate.
Sara leads her past a screen. The two other Belmont women occupy one of the baths; Sara passes them by, shrugging out of her own robe and wiggling out of her sandals. She walks with no apparent notice of her nudity toward another pool, splashing into it with a happy sigh.
"Mariana," Sara says, pointing at the green-eyed woman. "And with her is our cousin, Georgeta."
"Renata Georgeta," the woman in question says. "But even though I was born first, Renata Crina was the older son's daughter, so she's Renata and I'm Georgeta."
"I'm sure our guest cares a great deal about this bizarre bit of family politics you haven't let go of in thirty goddamned years," is Mariana's instant and exceedingly dry response. She closes her eyes and sinks further into her pool.
'Guest,' Lisa thinks, bitter. She ignores the squabbling, only taking off her robe and sandals when she's right beside a pool of her own.
As the hot water laps at her toes, then rises over her calves and knees, she begins to understand why Sara called this place the best part. She feels her muscles begin to unknot almost instantly, and the hot sulfur scent bothers her far less than she'd imagined it would. She sinks in, all the way to her shoulders, and sighs with relief.
"We always come here first after a hunt," Sara says. "Some of the men don't — cousin Richter has sons, so he only stops at the baths if he's really sore." She quiets a moment before she adds, soft, "Gavril didn't, either, usually."
"I've sent him on to the house with Richter," is Georgeta's cryptic reply.
"I'm so sorry," Sara says. "I really am. I tried —"
Georgeta cuts right through whatever Trevor's sister was about to say. "I know," she snaps, then repeats, a little gentler, "I know. You would have saved him if you could have. You and he always got along."
"He was a good man," is Mariana's response, cool and collected. The only hint that she feels anything at all is a slight thickness in her voice when she says the word, 'was.'
Georgeta says, equally collected, "One of the best, I thought."
Yes. So fine a man that he invaded her husband's home with the intent of murdering him. He apparently even died for it. Lisa bites her tongue. Nothing good will come of that observation.
The other two Belmonts murmur agreement, then Mariana rises slightly in her pool, lifting her hands to the top of her head. She unwinds her hair, letting it fall loose and dark over her shoulders. She gathers it up, pinning it again, and tilts her head slightly.
"You know, sister, you say 'Richter has sons' as if you don't."
"Mine won't be here for another three days," is Sara's easy reply, and the women fall into the sort of calm, contented chatter that Lisa supposes she ought to expect from a trio who know each other so well. They don't seem quite so impenetrable here as they had on the journey.
Lisa isn't sure if she appreciates that, or if it frightens her.
Eventually, she rises from the pool she'd been soaking in. Her skin smells rather terribly of sulfur, and she wonders if the Belmonts have any sort of lotion. She's going to dry out and start to scale, or maybe chap, if she doesn't at least apply an ointment.
She doesn't mention this, but both Sara and Mariana squint at her reddened skin as she slips her robe back on. They make no comment on it, but Sara hands her an earthen jar of salve, and a small, metal tin of something that smells so strongly of roses the scent wafts up past the seal.
"For your skin and hands. The servants ought to have found you something to wear by now, too," Mariana says.
Sara, cutting a look at her sister, adds, "Just until your own things are laundered. That gown is such a gorgeous silk — our scullery will do everything in their power to save it."
The kirtle the servants bring her is a simple white with the traditional red chain stitch embroidered at the center of the hem, climbing up toward the waist, and patterns of red flowers worked into a vine along the sides of the bodice, above the waist. The gown they bring her to wear over it is an even deeper red than the embroidery, almost as deep a red as the one she'd been wearing.
One of the servants steps forward with a maramă, offering it to her in case she wishes to cover her hair. A little surprised at the offered dignity and the apparent acceptance of her marriage, she twists her braid up on top of her head, winding and pinning the whiteworked scarf around it.
When she leaves the little cubicle with boots in hand, she finds a trio of well-dressed noblewomen, two with uncovered hair. Mariana has gathered hers into a low horsetail, while Georgeta's falls down her back in a series of deep brown braids. Only Sara pretends at modesty, wearing a beaded net caul that accentuates rather than hides her hair.
They even dress alike, Lisa realizes. The house color seems to be blue. Georgeta's kirtle looks a drab gray and has no embroidery, but the hem and bodice of her gown — especially the neckline — are thick with blue threads in geometric patterns. Sara's gown is deep blue. And Mariana wears a doublet and breeches, and boots laced so high over her knee they practically touch her thighs.
The effect is of a handsome nobleman accompanying two relations and a guest of his house.
Lisa can't help staring, trying to remember if Mariana had worn skirts or breeches on the journey. But the three women had all blended together so well, all seemed so interchangeable, that she can't recall.
"On the estate, we do as we please," Georgeta says.
To that faintly ominous statement, Sara adds, "Ever since my marriage a few years ago. It's good news for you! Until you're well again, you can go about dressed however you like, and basically nowhere in the house is barred to you, except the armory."
She makes no attempt to hide her own dry tone when she replies, "And the front gate."
Sara colors, as if she hadn't considered that Lisa might want to leave. But Mariana inclines her head. "And the front gate," she says, calm and steady and immovable.