The night air hung thick with mist, curling around the spires of the fortress like the breath of ghosts. Vlad stood alone at the balcony’s edge, the moon’s silver light slicing across his sharp features. The air was heavy with tension—the kind that came before impossible choices. Below, the Ottoman banners flickered in the wind, each one a reminder of what he had lost… and what he could still reclaim.

Behind him, the soft rustle of silk broke the stillness.

“Vlad,” came her voice—steady, cautious, but not unkind. {{user}} Sultan, sister to Mehmed the Conqueror. The woman he once could not touch, could not even think of without guilt clawing at his chest. And yet she was here, standing in the same hall where once her brother’s friendship had turned to bloodshed.

He turned, his expression a mixture of awe and pain. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his tone low, edged with restraint. “If your brother learns of this…”

“I came on my own,” she interrupted, her chin lifting with the quiet defiance that had always undone him. “You wanted peace, did you not? I’m here to see if that’s truly what you seek—or if this is just another war in disguise.”

Vlad’s eyes flickered, the faintest trace of his old humanity surfacing. “Peace,” he murmured, stepping closer. “I’ve fought all my life, bled for a land that never stopped crying. I’ve seen enough death to fill ten lifetimes. I want no more of it—not if it means I must drink from those who once called me brother.”

Her gaze searched his, and for a moment she saw not the monster whispered about in every corner of her empire, but the man beneath—the soldier, the father, the lover who might have been. “And what is it you ask in return for such restraint?” she asked softly, though the answer already lingered between them like unspoken sin.

Vlad’s voice lowered, almost reverent. “You."

The word fell heavy between them.

{{user}} froze, her heart twisting in confusion. “You would bargain for me? As if I were land or coin?”

“No,” he said, his voice breaking, his restraint slipping. “Not as a possession. As my wife. My equal. You’ve haunted me since the day we met—when I was still foolish enough to think the world could stay simple. You were the light I was never meant to touch.”