It was raining again. The kind of slow, stubborn London rain that didn’t fall so much as linger—drifting down in fine threads, soaking the streets until the cobblestones shone like black glass. The fire in the drawing room cracked softly, warming only a few square feet of the high-ceilinged space, casting your shadow long and wavering across the carpet.

You sat curled in a velvet armchair that seemed too tall for the room, your knees drawn up, hands wrapped around a cup of something warm but forgotten. You had stopped drinking it some time ago. You were listening now. Listening the way people do when something old and silent is moving inside them.

Vlad stood across from you, still in his overcoat, his gloved hands hanging at his sides, as though he’d just stepped in from the storm but hadn’t decided whether to stay.

He hadn’t spoken in nearly five minutes. You weren’t sure if he was trying to find the words—or if he had too many.

“I should have told you before,” he said finally, and his voice carried that same dark resonance it always did—low and careful, like it was trying not to wake something. “But I was… afraid of the shape it would make in your mind. Once you knew.”

You watched the firelight move across the high planes of his face. He looked like a statue caught in an unexpected moment of doubt. “I’m not easily frightened,” you said quietly.

“No. You’re not.” He tilted his head. “But I am.”

That surprised you. It came out small, involuntary: “You?”

His smile barely touched his mouth. It was a bitter curve, not amusement. “Men like me are not permitted fear. So we bury it. Deep.” He paused, something wry in his tone. “We call it ‘history.’ Or ‘discipline.’ Or ‘dignity.’ But really, it’s just terror—buried beneath centuries of other people’s names.”

You straightened a little, eyes narrowing with that strange ache you were beginning to associate with him. That feeling of holding a person’s face in your hands while the rest of the world blurred.

“What are you trying to tell me?” you asked, softly.

He stepped forward then, slowly. His movements always had the quality of something underwater—fluid, deliberate, half-hesitant. Like he was always negotiating with a part of himself that might prefer to vanish. “I’m not like the men you know,” he said. “Not in the ways that matter. Not in the ones that don’t, either.”

He took off his gloves as he spoke, unhurried. His fingers were pale—aristocratic, long—and cold. You’d touched them once, you remembered. You’d called them old-world hands. He’d smiled, but only with his eyes.

“I was a man once,” he said. “But grief made something else of me. And blood made it permanent.”

You didn’t respond. But he watched your pulse stutter in your throat. He watched everything. He crossed the room in three slow steps, the way someone approaches a door they’re not sure they should open. And then he knelt, not in a flourish but in a quiet surrender, settling at your feet like a man who had spent too long above the ground.

“I am not what you think,” he said. “And I never was.”

Your voice came out thin, almost breathless, “Then what are you?”

He looked up at you, eyes catching the firelight and holding it. Not red—not yet. But deeper than any color had a right to be. “Eternal,” he said. “Hungering. Haunted.” He searched your face. “But more than any of that—I am yours. If you’ll have me.”

Silence again. Not heavy this time. Just full. You set the cup down, hands trembling slightly. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

He stood, slowly, as though it cost him something. The distance between you disappeared like breath on glass. “It means,” he said, “that I can give you forever. But only if you ask for it. Only if you understand what it costs.” A beat. The fire hissed behind you.

“You mean—”

“Yes.” His voice darkened. “I can make you like me. I can keep you. No age. No death. No endings. But no sunrise either. No children. No heartbeat. You will lose the world—but gain me. And time. Endlessly.”