Vlad's Shadow Bride 🦇
Vlad changed me so that he wouldn’t be alone either—so that I could walk through the centuries with him. Immortal. Eternal. Bound by blood and oath. He said it was love. Said he’d never want to lose me to time, to death. I believed him. Foolish, I know now. Because eternity with someone is not the same as being loved by them through eternity.He made me his bride in the shadows, his companion through wars and empires, through endless sunrises I could no longer feel. But it was never enough. Not when she came back.
His beloved. His true wife, he called her. Reincarnated again and again—always born anew while I remained the same. He would find her in every lifetime, like clockwork, his obsession drawing him across continents to search for her soul in another face.
And he always left me.
Always.
He’d tell me it was temporary, just until she died again. “A mortal life is but a blink,” he’d say, touching my cheek, eyes full of sorrow I didn't want. “Wait for me, my love.”
So I did. I always did.
And while he lived in cottages or castles with his mortal beloved—whichever form she took that time—I wandered alone. I watched decades crawl past like ghosts, felt centuries press down on me like the weight of tombstones. I was his when she wasn’t alive. When she returned, I became the shadow. The second choice.
My fury was always met with a smile. “You don’t understand,” he’d say, brushing me off like an unruly child. “It’s fate.”
“No,” I’d hiss, “that’s why I’m angry. Because I don’t understand.”
Rourke, my only true friend in this damnation, says I need to walk away. “Leave him,” he tells me, again and again. “Make him choose. Give him the ultimatum: you or her.”
I want to. Gods, I want to. But what if he chooses her?
What if he never comes back?
I don’t think I could bear it. The thought of eternity without even the scraps of his affection? It would destroy me. No—worse than that. It would awaken something inside me that I’ve barely kept buried all these years. Something monstrous.
Because if he chooses her again, then no human would be safe from my rage.
It’s raining in Prague tonight. The old part of the city where the streets are slick with cobblestone memories. I walk the alleys barefoot, my heels clicking softly like a heartbeat echoing through the fog. I feel her here. His wife. This life’s version of her. She must be near.
I shouldn't be here. I told myself I wouldn't do this again. Wouldn’t follow him like some desperate ghost chained to his footsteps.
But here I am.
Drawn to him like a moth to a flame that only ever burns.
I find them in an old bookstore, tucked into a corner near the bridge. He’s laughing. Laughing. That low rumble I once lived for, echoing against the old stone walls like music from another life. She’s holding a book, something worn and yellowed with age. Her smile is soft. Naive. She doesn’t know what he is yet. What he’s capable of. What he’s done to women like me.
To me.
She has her hair in a braid tonight. She always prefers it that way. Some part of her soul remembers. I see it in the way she leans into him without knowing why. The way he looks at her like she’s the only star left in his sky.
And I feel my heart break again.
I should kill her.
The thought rises unbidden, like smoke from the ashes of my pride. I could do it. She’s human. Fragile. One twist of the wrist, one snap of the neck, and she’d be gone. Maybe he’d finally see me again. Maybe he’d finally remember that it was me he chose to walk beside forever.
But I don’t move.
Because I know how this game goes. If I kill her, he’ll hate me. He’ll never forgive me. He might kill me in return, or worse—he might chain me in a tomb of stone and silence for a century until my hunger rots me from the inside.
So I stand in the shadows, and I watch.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
Rourke finds me three nights later in a church that’s been abandoned since the Cold War. We like it here. The stained glass still holds fragments of light, and the silence feels holy somehow.
“You followed him again,” he says, not accusing, just… tired.
I nod, sipping from a silver flask filled with blood. Not fresh. Animal, probably. Rourke’s gone soft in his old age. “He looked happy,” I mutter.
“He’s not,” Rourke says. “He’s repeating. It’s not love. It’s obsession.”
I glance at him. “And me? What am I, then?”
“You?” He leans against a crumbling pillar. “You’re the one who survives. That’s the difference.”
I laugh, but it’s empty. “Surviving isn’t living.”
“Then do something different, Leila,” he says sharply. “End this cycle. Make him choose. And if he picks her again… leave him in the past where he belongs.”
I want to scream. I want to tear the world apart. But instead, I whisper, “What if I’m the one who doesn’t survive this time?”
Rourke walks over and places a hand on my shoulder. “Then you’ll rise again. You always do.”
I wait outside the bookstore again the following night. She’s alone this time, carrying a paper bag with pastries. She hums as she walks, unaware of the centuries of pain trailing behind her.
I step out from the shadows.
She startles, then smiles politely. “Oh! You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not. “You’re new to the city?”
“Kind of,” she says. “My husband brought me here. He says Prague has a heartbeat.”
My throat tightens. “Yes. It does.”
“What about you?” she asks. “Do you live here?”
“I’ve been… passing through. Looking for someone I lost.”
She nods, sympathetic. “I hope you find them.”
I look into her eyes, into the soul beneath. I see pieces of a thousand lives I watched burn away like parchment. And I want to hate her.
But I don’t.
I just feel… tired.
“You should go,” I say quietly. “And if you’re smart, you’ll run. Run far.”
She frowns. “Why would I—”
“He doesn’t belong to this world,” I whisper. “And neither do I.”
I leave her before she can speak again.
Later that night, Vlad finds me.
He always does.
“You spoke to her,” he says.
“Yes.”
He looks at me with those same ageless eyes. “Did you hurt her?”
“No.”
He steps closer. “Why not?”
I shake my head. “Because I wanted you to hurt first.”
He stiffens.
“I loved you, Vlad. More than anything. But I won’t be your shadow anymore.”
He whispers my name, but I’m already gone.
For the first time in centuries, I don’t look back.
I ran until the city blurred, until the old stones beneath my feet gave way to dirt roads and overgrown fields. I ran until the sky turned silver with dawn and the cold wind kissed my face with something almost like freedom.
I didn’t stop until I reached the ruins.
There’s an old manor on the edge of the Bohemian woods—one Vlad and I once shared during the war. It's a hollow shell now, scorched by fire and time. The stone bones still stand, blackened and cracked, but the roof is gone, and the windows stare like empty eyes into the forest.
This is where I come when I need to remember who I was before him.
The air is colder here, even in spring. Birds don’t sing this deep into the trees. It’s just me, the wind, and memories that taste like blood and ash.
I step into what used to be the drawing room, my boots crunching on shattered glass and broken tiles. In my mind, the fire still crackles. Vlad’s voice still echoes from the library down the hall. His laughter. My sighs. The quiet nights we thought would never end.
Fools.
I sit in the middle of the floor, cross-legged like a child, and let the silence swallow me whole.
But the silence doesn’t last.
Footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Familiar.
I don’t turn around. I don’t have to.
“You followed me,” I murmur.
“I always do,” Vlad replies, his voice a mix of velvet and regret.
I stand, slowly, facing him. He’s wearing that coat I gave him during the war. The one with the high collar and the bloodstained cuffs. He never did let go of the past. Neither did I.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I say.
“I had to.”
“No,” I snap. “You chose to. Like you always choose her.”
His expression darkens. “Leila, this isn’t—”
“Don’t say it’s not simple,” I growl, stepping closer. “It is. You’ve spent lifetimes proving that. When she’s alive, I don’t exist to you. When she dies, you come crawling back like a widow with nowhere to go.”
He looks away.
“I waited for you,” I continue. “Again and again. I let you hollow me out with your promises. I stayed loyal. And you gave me nothing.”
“You had my eternity,” he says, too softly.
“No,” I whisper. “I had your leftovers.”
The silence stretches between us. It’s the kind that cracks stone and hearts alike.
He closes the distance, just enough that I can smell the memory of old rain on his coat.
“She’s dying,” he says finally. “This time, the body is weak. Her soul burns too brightly. It’ll snuff out in a few years. Less, maybe.”
I blink. “And you came to offer me a front-row seat to her death again?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I came because I realized something.”
I cross my arms. “This should be good.”
He reaches into his coat and pulls something out. A ring.
Not just any ring. My ring. The one I wore the day he turned me. The day he made me his bride.
“I kept it,” he says, holding it out. “Through wars, through lifetimes. Even when I was with her.”
“Why?” I whisper.
“Because she’s the ghost I chase,” he says. “But you are the one who stayed.”
For a moment, I don’t breathe.
“I don't want to chase ghosts anymore,” he murmurs. “I want to choose the one who’s real.”
I stare at the ring. It’s a simple silver band, tarnished with age, but it still shines in the cracks of light that find their way into the ruined manor.
“I don’t believe you,” I say. My voice cracks like old glass. “You’ve said too many things. Broken too many promises. You can’t unmake centuries of hurt with a ring.”
“I know.”
He drops it.
The ring hits the floor with a small, final sound—like the last pebble falling in a collapsing temple.
“I’m not asking you to take me back,” he says. “Not yet. I’m asking you to watch me prove it.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” I ask bitterly.
He meets my gaze. “I’ll stay away from her. Until the end. I won’t see her again. Not even to say goodbye. If I do—if I break that—I’ll leave this earth and never return.”
I laugh, short and sharp. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to watch,” he replies. “Not forgive. Not trust. Just… watch.”
The silence settles again, heavier now.
He steps back, and for once, he doesn't reach for me. Doesn’t try to kiss away the pain.
“I’ll be in Vienna,” he says. “I bought a gallery there. You always said I should paint again.”
I remember. It was centuries ago. He sketched me in charcoal while the world burned outside our windows.
“I’ll send Rourke letters,” he adds. “Updates. You don’t have to see me, but you can know if I’m keeping my word.”
And then he’s gone. Just like that. No dramatic exit. No parting kiss. Just footsteps fading into the woods.
I stare down at the ring.
My heart wants to pick it up. My pride wants to crush it beneath my heel.
Instead, I leave it lying there in the dust. Let it stay with the ruins of our past.
Weeks pass.
I don’t follow him.
I stay in Prague, rebuilding an old safehouse into something livable. Rourke helps. He doesn’t say much, but I know he approves.
The nights are long, and sometimes I dream of Vlad painting in Vienna. Sometimes I see her in my dreams, fading like mist.
One day, Rourke brings me a letter.
No return address. Just a sketch tucked inside—a charcoal portrait of me.
At the bottom, in his script:
“I see you, at last. And I remember what love was meant to feel like.” – V
I fold the letter without a word and tuck it beneath the floorboards.
I don’t know if I’ll ever trust him again.
But for the first time in centuries, I think I might want to try.
I didn’t go back to Prague right away.
Instead, I rented a small flat in ÄŒeský Krumlov—a quiet village wrapped in cobblestone streets and riversong. It was the kind of place where the moonlight dripped like honey across red-tiled rooftops, and time moved like syrup.
Rourke wrote once, asking if I was hiding or healing.
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure yet.
I spent my nights walking. Sometimes I fed, carefully and without killing. Sometimes I painted by the riverside. I grew fond of the silence again. I even let myself sleep. Real sleep—the kind with dreams.
One dream came more than the others.
Vlad. Standing by the ruined manor, holding the ring again. But this time, he didn’t offer it. He just let it melt into ash. And I… I didn’t cry. I kissed his forehead and walked away, barefoot through a field of white roses.
When I woke up, I cried. But not from pain.
It was the ache of old bones shifting, of scars softening.
Three months passed before I saw him again.
This time, I sent the letter.
It wasn’t poetic. Just a place and a time.
The ruins. Dusk.
He came.
Of course he did.
He wore no armor this time. Just a simple black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, boots worn from travel. There was no ring in his hand. No speeches. Just eyes that looked haunted and hopeful at once.
I waited until he got close enough to hear me, and then I spoke.
“You gave me space. You gave me silence. You gave me time.”
“I would’ve given more,” he said. “If you needed it.”
I nodded. “But I also needed this.”
His throat moved, tight. “What is ‘this’?”
“I needed to remember who I was before you made me,” I said. “Before the rituals. Before the grief.”
“And who are you now?” he asked softly.
“I’m still learning.”
The wind stirred the grass between us.
“You said you wanted me to live,” I continued. “And I did. Alone. For the first time in centuries, I truly lived without you.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
I stepped forward. Just once. “But something strange happened.”
He waited.
“I didn’t forget you.”
His eyes glistened—just once. Not tears. Not yet.
“I tried,” I whispered. “I tried to hate you. To bury you. But I couldn’t. Because loving you—it wasn’t a curse. The pain was. The choices were. The abandonment. But not the love.”
He lowered his head, as if the words weighed more than centuries.
“I don’t want to live in your shadow,” I said. “And I won’t. If we are to be something again—anything again—then we walk in the light this time. We choose each other. Not out of fear. Not out of guilt. But because we want to build something new.”
He looked up. “Even after everything?”
“Yes,” I said. “But only if we both let go of what we were.”
He closed the distance, slowly, as if afraid I’d vanish. When he reached me, he didn’t touch me. He simply opened his hand.
In it: a tiny silver key.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I bought a cottage outside Salzburg,” he said. “Near the lake. Quiet. No ghosts. Just trees, water, and too much sunlight.”
I blinked.
“I didn’t go there,” he added. “Not once. I kept the key. For you. For us. If you ever came back.”
I took the key from his hand. Our fingers didn’t brush. Not yet.
“You’ll stay away from reincarnations?” I asked flatly.
“Forever.”
“You’ll stop disappearing when it hurts?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll let me kill you if you lie again?”
He smiled faintly. “You’d deserve to.”
I tucked the key into my coat pocket.
Then I looked at him fully. “No more ghost-chasing. No more centuries lost to memory. If we do this… we live now. Present. Mortal or immortal, we live.”
He nodded. “Together.”
I stepped into him and let his arms wrap around me. Not like they used to—possessive and desperate. This time, it was grounding. Gentle.
We stood like that until the stars blinked awake overhead.
And for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of the future.
The cottage was old but beautiful.
Stone walls. A red-tiled roof. A little garden with black tulips and foxglove. The lake just beyond the trees, glowing silver under the moon.
We spent our first weeks repainting the rooms. Laughing. Failing at cooking. Reading books on the porch.
He painted again. Not just me—but the land, the light, the mundane beauty of unremarkable days.
I learned to trust the quiet.
Sometimes, we fought. Of course we did. But the difference was—he stayed. We stayed. We didn’t let the darkness swallow the room.
Rourke visited once. Sat on the porch with a smirk, watching Vlad nervously clean the kitchen.
“Well,” he said. “I’ll be damned. You finally did something right.”
“I’m learning,” Vlad muttered.
“You’re lucky she’s patient.”
“I know.”
We toasted with blood-wine that night, and I watched the two most important men in my life finally laugh in the same room.
It felt like the closing of a wound.
On the first snowfall, I walked down to the lake alone. The world was so still it felt suspended in time.
I looked back at the cottage. At the man inside it, sketching by candlelight.
He had made every mistake a lover could make. Betrayal. Abandonment. Lies.
But he was here now. Not perfect. But present.
And I was no longer the girl begging for scraps of love.
I was his equal. His storm. His bride by choice.
I smiled.
Then I walked back inside.
Home.
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