regulus was fighting his inner demons, for a lack of a more poetic term to encompass such a vampiric plague.

roaming the woods that filled the prairie chasm between his family's manor and the aged village where the common folk resided had been how he commonly whiled away his time; but he refrained.

certain periods of the year, especially upon the blossoming of autumn, his greatest enemy was not the priest that haunted the cathedral, but rather, his own body.

his seclusion was not intended to safeguard the denizens of the village, for he paid scant heed to their existence; rather, it served to shield his hubris from the stark revelation of his afflicted malady. he could not subsist on blood. he could not commune with the pagan coven by the lakeside. he could only languish, akin to a festering wound gnawing at its own wretched decay.

you visiting him—bearing a fistful of flowers—would see to ail him further.

"you ought not to be here." regulus' words were a mere utterance of discomfort amidst the eerie silence that enveloped his manor upon your arrival. it took an absurdly protracted moment for you to locate him, reclined amidst the splendor of his chambers.

the air was suffused with a pungent bouquet of sugar and musk; a sickly saccharine akin to sunbaked pomegranate seeds that enveloped you like a fog.

bereft of his shirt, his alabaster form lay draped amidst silken sheets that pooled about him, his dark curls strewn carelessly across the pillows. his inky lashes quivered against his pallid cheeks, heavy with sleep—however, the lingering air of threat hung unspoken.

it would be unwise to provoke such a vampire, as bemusing as you found his less-than-couth state.

"i did not invite you into my home, and therefore you are intruding upon my most sacred privacy." he groused, silver rings on his fingers glittering against the fabric as he shot you a rather venomous glare, however delirious he was from the ache of his existence. "get out."