Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 34: Prison Break

Frankie found it amusing how chatty Vlad was this evening.

The moment they had left Carmen's and entered the ancient passageways beneath the city, he was suddenly overflowing with questions about who Frankie was, the people she had met, what her life had been like. He had insisted that he merely wanted to get to know her better and given the newfound affability between them, Frankie found she could not refuse him. She did not tell the man everything, of course, but in a strange sort of way it had become a little easier to now open up to him than it had been previously.

Perhaps it was because they were alone and he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. There were no signs of ulterior motives about him – just a sincere curiosity. In exchange for her honesty, the man had returned it in kind, answering her own queries. Naturally, if a topic arose that one or the other did not care to touch on, they moved on to something else and this unspoken arrangement between the pair was something Frankie silently admitted she could get used to.

Little did she understand the significance.

Vladislaus Drăculea had never been known as a particularly talkative man – but conversing with Francesca was proving itself an effortless endeavor.

"So why the name Rémy?" he asked, following up on their present course of discussion. "It doesn't exactly fit as a shortened version of Reynaund – nor does it strike me as an appropriate name for the son of a duke."

"When I was a child, I had trouble saying his given name, so he shortened it for me and it just sort of stuck," Frankie explained. "The family apparently found it so endearing that they chose to adopt it themselves and so it has been ever since."

"I have to admit, I'm still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that your brother is technically heir to the French throne."

"If it still existed, you mean," she laughed. "Regardless, no one in my family has ever had much of a desire to rule anything, save ourselves."

"Is that why your father and uncle remained so well-hidden from vampire aristocracy and his majesty's court in general?" he wondered, though mostly to himself.

"In part," she confessed. "Armand and my father had been pawns in the political machinations of their grandfather from the day they were born. My uncle in particular was usually the more openly vocal when it came to his dislike of being ruled by another person, but my father's pursuit of personal privacy ran far deeper than my uncle's ever did. Father was genuinely anxious at one point - shortly after our family was turned - that if the wrong people discovered his claim to France, he might be ordered by the likes of Dracula to take possession of the country on his behalf so our kind could obtain some sort of political standing in the world as our own sovereign nation."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Is that such a terrible idea, though?"

"It wasn't what he wanted," she stated simply.

He pondered this for a moment.

"I'm beginning to get the impression that your family doesn't particularly care for our king," Dracula pointed out after some careful deliberation.

"Well, it's less outright dislike and more of an inherent wariness," the woman replied, unwittingly reassuring him. "We moved in very different circles, and Father was never inclined to associate with the man in general given his reputation. To him, it just wasn't worth the risk."

"His reputation as what, exactly?"

"At best – a merciless, arrogant, self-serving king who took what he wanted, when he wanted it, without question."