When I comforted you during your rare displays of weakness or made a vow to you as a woman, as a wife. If you’ve read Dowry, be sure to read An Encore of Roses to catch up on Constanta, Magdalena, and Alexi are doing!

A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A DOWRY OF BLOOD is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.

I suppose both are a sort of gentle violence, putting down in ink what scorches the air when spoken aloud. This post uses affiliate links and I may receive a small commission for purchases made through my links at no additional cost to you. We feast on the ruins of empire,” he declares with a grand flourish, forgetting that it makes him a scavenger, not a sovereign.

Constanta and her lovers never seem to fear discovery or vengeful mortals, or feel hemmed in by their nocturnal lifestyle. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2012, Abby is an award-winning stage actress and a resident artist with the prestigious theater A Noise Within. The narrative style carries both the naivete of youth and the knowledge of hindsight as Constanta documents their life together and the slow realization of all the little things one easily brushes off but together paints a picture of abuse.

In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night's fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I hadn't been able to keep count when they attacked, and I didn't bother counting them when I descended.

I felt like I hadn't tasted a drop of water in weeks, like I couldn't even remember the taste of food. This beautiful hardback edition will include a bonus short story featuring characters from A Dowry of Blood, titled ‘An Encore of Roses’. Bait the Dog: Count Dracula seems as first to be a friendly and attentive husband to Constanta, but over the course of the novel she discovers more and more that he's truly an insidious monster that puts on airs.Really 700 Years Old: Dracula looks like a handsome, romanesque young man, but in reality he's over a thousand years old as vampires can only gain the ability to sire others into other vampires after they reach that age. By page 11 I’d purchased the audiobook to listen along to (15/10 would recommend – the format really lends to the format). I will make you nothing more than a man, tender and brutal in equal measure, and perhaps in doing so I will justify myself to you. Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires here are able to go out in sunlight normally and feed off blood, but do not need to take the lives of others.

With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. It’s very much a poly relationship but not what you would expect in a reworking of a classic gothic novel. Seductive, lyrical, and rich with period detail, this daring retelling casts the Harkers' story aside to follow Dracula's medieval bride and her tangled romance with his consorts over the centuries. Dracula later adds two others to his harem, with Constanta realising that Dracula is far more vicious and evil than she's been led to believe. The vampire in question must be over a thousand years old as it's only than that their blood is mature enough to sire new vampires, and they and the one they're siring into a vampire must exchange blood.Your presence above me blocked out the sky, until all I could see was the battered metal insignia pinning your cloak closed at your throat. My head was swimming, my heart was racing, and I had gone from nearly dead to viscerally alive in a matter of minutes. Serial-Killer Killer: Constanta, upon becoming a vampire, decides to dedicate herself to killing and feeding off the most odious or evil of society. He first has her kill her family's murderers before bringing her screaming victims to practice how to kill and feed off life.