Growing old is easy - she needs only to remain still, in the stone coccoon of her own castle, and let age drip upon her like a stalagmite. She is comfortable, she thinks, in her old age, in the creaking flesh that gives her the appearance of harmlessness. Her brides, her pets, her sisters do not like to see her such - they desire the woman whose beauty lured them there, smooth-skinned and dark-haired. They pick at her red robes, offering their throats, trying to coax her into desire.
But she is no Ezrebet Bathory, for all that legends have confused the two of them at times. She only smiles at her acolytes and touches their hair, waiting for Jonathan Harker, who brings her fate.
Growing younger is more difficult, re quiring as much effort as it takes for the butterfly to burst from its chrysalis. But she must be recongizable, when she meets Elisabeta again. She looks at her own body closely, critically. As a human, she hated it for a long time, hated the restrictions to which her unchosen femininity condemmed her. A prince, she thought, would not have had to bear such exile from his native land, such gilded imprisonment within the harem of Sultan Mehmed. A prince would not have had to fight so hard to get back to his own land of snow and ice, wolves and mountains. A prince would not have had to fight to the very tips of his fingernails to claim his father's name as his own.
How they had laughed, when they thought her dead. Voivode Daciana Draculea. Unnatural, they called her, and other words. Slut, whore. Devil, witch.
When she heard of what they did to Elisabeta before killing her, Daciana could have impaled all of them with her bare hands.
But that was over now. She had won. She had outlived those who spoke against her. And now she would reclaim her Elisabeta, and never, this time, let her go.
Her women helped to dress her in the new, unfamiliar clothing of that time. They laughed to see her in it, corsets and petticoats and high-heeled boots. Daciana laughed too, for all that mirrors were barred to her. Would Elisabeta recognize her? She must. She felt her body, the smooth, narrow line of her corseted torso. Centuries had not changed her. Elisabeta could not have forgotten.
"Come with me," she said, extending a hand, "you have nothing to fear."
She hesitated, Daciana's Elisabeta, Jonathan's Mina. Was that recognition which passed across her face, glinted in her eyes? It must be. Elisabeta had not changed, though what had once gleamed so pure and clear and firery in her was not dimmed as though by a veil. Daciana's hands itched to pull it from her, as she itched to pull off the hat, the hairpins, the dress, the stockings, and hold Elisabeta's body against her own.
Elisabeta took her hand.