Page 31 of Queen of Darkness
“Thanks, Fred,” Aaron muttered as the silence lingered, shaking his head. “Okay. Um. Where to begin?”
“Here,” I said, waving a hand at the castle around us. “Start here.”
Nodding, Aaron motioned for me to take a seat. He pulled the high-backed wooden chair out from the side of the table and waited for me to position myself before gently sliding it in.
“Thank you,” I said, falling silent as he took a seat beside me, his face blank as he ordered his thoughts.
“This is where it all began,” he said. “Right here. Citadel Poenari, as it was called. Not much of a citadel anymore, I suppose.”
“Time changes everything.”
“That it does,” he said with a heaviness I hadn’t expected.
“Is that why Elenia would never expect you to come here?” I asked.
“What? Who told you that?”
“Fred. He suggested that this was a place he and I could lie low while I figured out how to deal with this whole Blood Letter thing. He said it was your home.”
“It was,” Aaron admitted. “A long, long time ago. But Fred was right. Elenia would likely consider this to be one of the last spots I’d ever return to.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t been here in over five and a half centuries,” he whispered.
“What? Why?” Did it have something to do with the fight they’d had in that room?
“This place, this castle and the area around it,” Aaron said, his eyes dimming, growing heavy with memory. “This is where I earned the title ‘Prince of Darkness.’ It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Because you’re Dracula?” I hedged, taking an educated guess.
“That is a name I was known by, yes. However, it came to mean more than just a name later on. There’s another that I was better known as at the time. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Vlad the Impaler.”
I winced. I’d heard of it. “He … you … doesn’t exactly have a good reputation.”
“Nor should I,” Aaron growled.
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
Aaron sighed. “That would be somewhere around the eighth century. I’m not sure. Maybe the ninth. I was born right here, in this very castle. This section is much older than most suspect. The new castle was built later. When I returned.”
I listened, enraptured. This was the most I’d ever learned about him. Seven sentences, and my knowledge of Aaron’s past and who he was had probably tripled. I didn’t dare speak for fear of stopping him.
“Although I didn’t know it at the time, vampires were prominent in the area. They hid from plain sight, but local legends were full of stories of things in the night that would snatch unsuspecting victims. One day, they came for me when I was returning from a meeting of local lords. Our convoy was attacked. Many slain. I killed two of them. I guess that caught their attention because their leader appeared and bit me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, unsure of what else to say. It had happened so long ago that it felt silly even to say that much.
“They took me, and I stayed with them until I learned of the vampire city, Madrigal. I hated the idea of feeding, so going to a place where I didn’t have to hurt humans appealed immensely to me. Once there, I made a bit of a name for myself. But eventually, even that came to an end.”
“What happened?” I asked, practically on the edge of my seat.
“The queen and I became at odds,” he said, anger tinting his words.
Still, you refuse to elaborate on her,I thought, making a note of it.Why? What are you hiding?
“And?” I pressed.
“Things didn’t go well,” he said. “I was forced back here. Drakul was living here, ruling as a vampire. He knew what I was and took me in. Claimed me as a son and protected me as best he could. Both from retaliation and also to try to cover up what I was doing, I suppose. I don’t really know.”
