The night was alive with color. Lanterns swayed above the cobbled streets of London, casting soft halos of gold over the laughter, the clatter of games, the distant strains of music. You moved among the crowd like a dream untethered. Your white dress brushing against your legs with each step. You smiled faintly at the festivities, but there was a weightless, faraway air about you, as though you belonged not to this world, but to another.

And then—his gaze found you.

Prince Vlad stood at the edge of the carnival, motionless in the press of people. For centuries, the nights had stretched endlessly before him, cold and cruel, each one more hollow than the last. But now, in a single breath, time collapsed. The world dimmed, muffled, stopped. Only you remained.

Your hair caught the lamplight, your skin glowed like porcelain, your lips curved with life. He knew that face, every line, every angle — the face he had lost, the face he had mourned, the face that had haunted him for four hundred years of torment.

A tremor of something dangerously close to joy broke through the iron control of his immortal body. His lips parted, a whisper caught between disbelief and desperate longing.

“My love…”

The carnival roared on, unaware that history itself was breaking open. For Vlad, the vampire prince, had finally found his bride once more — and nothing, no mortal law nor divine will, would keep her from him again.