Madness is a strange thing.

It's like being handed a 5 gallon bucket of broken glass, and being told it's a mirror. Great. That's nice. Thanks. Now put it back together.

Sitting on the floor with the bucket of broken glass, you have a few options. Reach in and pick out each piece, one by one - turn it over in your hand, and lay it down upon the floor. Each one in turn, threatening to cut you. Not badly - not enough to kill you - but a hundred thousand potential cuts with each piece of tiny, insignificant glass.

You could upend the bucket - send pieces sprawling about everywhere, and sift through the pile. Likely cutting yourself to ribbons in the process. But it would be, at least, faster. But oh, it would be painful.

Or choose to sit with the bucket of glass, accept that you will never have a mirror again - no matter how hard you try, and give up. Because there's no hope in ever reassembling the mirror back to the way it was. Not really. Pieces would be missing. Specs in between the shards would be impossible to replace. And even where the glass met perfectly - there would be cracks. Hairline faults in the surface. It would never be whole again.

So what was the point in trying?

Each time she reached into the bucket grab a new piece of glass, she had to ask herself that question. What was the point? Each time she turned it over in her hands, and felt the glass prick at her skin - each time she reflected on this broken, worthless chunk of glass, she asked herself 'why bother.'

The mirror was her, after all. This glass was her, after all. Why was this broken mirror of her mind worth trying to salvage? Why spend all this time and effort piecing back together something that was so pointlessly over? So worthless?

But she kept going. Sifting through the broken shards of her mind. How long she'd been like this - taking each metaphorical piece out of the bucket and looking it over, feeling it cut her hand, and debating where it should go in the puzzle - she wanted to stop.

She didn't know much about herself anymore. One thing she did know, though… was that she was stubborn. And the pain that it brought her to sift through the glass - to reach into the bucket and pull out another part of her own mind, and debate where it should go - was nothing compared to what it felt like to sit there and do nothing at all.

She looked down at her hands - cut from the glass of her own mind - and simply went back to each piece in turn. As she began to make progress - she began to dig into the bucket to find the larger chunks of glass. The big pieces. The important ones.

Who was she?

Who had she been?

Why was she like this?

Her hand wrapped around a large shard of glass. Black wings. Dark magic. A vampire. Death and blood and violence.

She put it down on the ground with the others, and debated if she should stop again. Was hers a life even worth salvaging?

Reaching into the bucket for another piece - she felt its answer. Love.

She loved someone. And, maybe, just maybe - they loved her in return.

She placed it down with the other, and saw for the first time how two pieces might meet. She swiveled them around, and slid them together - and watched as the two pieces lined up. There was a crack - a fracture between the two - but they fit.

Hope. That was what hope felt like.

It gave her the drive to go faster. Pulling chunks from the bucket now without any care for the cuts on her hands - and placing them down in an attempt to start to see the whole. In an attempt to see how it might all fit together.

Finally, she could start to see its shape. She placed her hand down against the glass - felt the cuts in her fingers as she touched one of the hairline fractures between the pieces. It would never be whole again. But maybe that was okay. Maybe she could lead the pieces together, and make a stained glass piece out of it. Take what was broken, and make something beautiful from it.

All at once, she became aware of the fact that she was… not in her own mind. Not in wherever that place was, with the broken mirror. Her hand was not touching broken glass any more - it was touching the leadwork of… a stained glass window. Running her fingertips along it, mirroring what she had been doing in her dream.

Was it a dream?

Can you be asleep, while you're awake?

Madness is a strange thing.

She blinked, and took her hand away from the stained glass, and tried to figure out where she was. Turning her head - it looked like a library of some kind. She was sitting on the stone sill of some massive window that stretched up over her tall enough that she could not make out what the glass was meant to represent. A pair of figures maybe - one in white, one in black.

A figure in black - the image of black wings, oil slick with colors like a raven, flashed in her mind and threatened to dump her back into that world of broken pieces. She shoved it aside, and refused to let it take her.

Her knees were pulled up to her chest - and she slowly let them stretch out. The room was lavish and heavily decorated in warm wood tones. It smelled of slightly musty books, and a wood fire that blazed in a hearth nearby. A figure sat on a sofa in front of the flame - his head in his hands. Long blond hair like silk tendrils fell around his face, obscuring it - and it glinted red and orange in the firelight.

Besides the crackle of the flame, the room was silent.

She slid from the window sill, and she watched his shoulders stiffen - but he didn't look up. Like someone afraid that looking would either confirm, or deny, their worry. But what he was worried over, she had no idea.

She didn't know anything, really. Didn't know where she was - who he was - who she was. Why she was here. What she was doing here. Why she couldn't think straight.

Black wings, slicked like oil, and a hand pressed over her heart. Digging into it like steel, like a poison dagger in the dark. She'd been betrayed. Someone hurt her - someone did this to her.

But it wasn't the man, she saw forlorn and morose, struck with grief over some great loss, sitting before the fire. She walked, slowly and carefully - through the room towards him. She made her way around to stand beside him, and simply sunk down onto the cushion next to him. She didn't know what else to do.

It was only then, that he lifted his head to look at her - but just barely. Still afraid of what he might find. Why was he afraid of her? No. Not afraid of her. But afraid of… what she'd become. Another piece of glass in the broken mirror, fitted into place. Another part of her mind, clicking back to where it belonged.

She looked down at her hands - and wondered why she couldn't see the cuts on her hands anymore. They'd been there a moment ago - hadn't they? A flash of an image in her mind - of her grasping some giant mirror and tearing it down on top of herself. Of a rain of broken shards around her. Of taking one of the pieces and tearing out her own throat. Of the blood that had poured from the gash in her neck like the flow of a waterfall. Hot and sticky - her own lifeblood.

She had killed herself. That was a real memory - not an imagined, broken piece of her mind. That mirror had been real. That was what he was afraid of. That she'd do it again. That she was still… broken.

How was she still alive, now? How could she remember all the times she had died, over and over again? She had, though. She knew she had. A hundred times or more, her heart had stopped beating. But this was… this was real. This place was real. That much she knew. That much had been put back together. She was no longer in the emptiness of her mind, surrounded by so much broken glass.

She reached out her hand, and took one of his in hers. Laced her fingers into his, and pulled it into her lap, and simply… held it. She didn't know why. She merely knew she wanted to. Needed to.

"Veil..?" he spoke, his voice a hesitant whisper.

He said it like that was her name. Was it? Maybe. … No, probably. "I think so," she responded equally as wary. "But I…" she broke, having surprised herself with the sound of her own voice. "Did I kill myself? I… I remember a mirror."

"Yes."

It had brought him great pain, when she had. She remembered lying on the floor, dying in a puddle of her own blood, as he knelt at her side and clutched at her hands. He had wept. "I'm sorry," she said - and felt deeply much so for causing him pain.

"It's… it's alright," he said, and seemed unsure what else to say.

He was tense - his shoulders locked - sitting rigidly next to her. Terrified to move, or touch her, or speak - or anything. It was suddenly funny to her - and she wasn't sure why. But something about that reaction was familiar. Something about his nervousness bloomed something in her heart. Like turning on a switch for a light that had been there the whole time - but she had forgotten about entirely. Love. She loved him. Loved his stupid apprehensions about everything.

It made her want to laugh - want to cry - want to scream and throw herself into his arms, all at once. But everything jammed up into a ball and nothing could make it through the bottleneck. So instead, she just… leaned on his arm. Let her shoulder rest against him. He shifted to let his arm curl around her, and hold her to his side.

"I love you," she said to him quietly. It was as much of an admission as it was a question.

"And I, you," he responded, and placed his lips against her temple. "And I always will."

He was the reason she was trying. The feeling of his lips - tepid against her warm skin - clicked another piece of the broken mirror of her mind into place. The memory of kissing him - of holding him in her arms. Of what they meant to each other. The great white wolf, and a castle in the darkness. The prince - the knight - the king. Alucard. No. Not that. Not anymore. That name didn't matter anymore. Whatever reason he had worn that name was long gone. Was dead in the ground. Another piece slipped into place. "Adrian…?"

A noise like a single sob left his throat - and he turned to face her, and wrapped both his arms around her, hugging her to his chest. Everything was still a jumble and a mess in her head - but as the image was starting to come clear, more and more bits and pieces began to slip into place.

Veil buried her head into his shoulder, and just held him. Let herself grasp onto his coat like he were a raft in an ocean. And to her, he might as well have been. For it was because of him, she could feel her shattered mind trying to repair itself. It'd never be whole again - bits and pieces would always be out of place. Dust in the cracks. But for him… she would try.

She missed him. Missed him like a person would miss breathing air. "How long has it been?"

"Since…?"

"Since I've held you."

"Thirty-two years," he replied, his voice wavering.

Thirty two years. She almost cried and laughed at the same time again, and instead wrapped her arms around his neck and clutched herself closer to him. He responded by drawing her into his lap, so that she could sit sideways on him, and tuck herself closer to him. His cheek was lying atop her head. Who was a raft in the ocean to whom now, she didn't know. Probably both.

"It has been two years since you…" he began, but broke off, unable to finish.

Of course. She hadn't always been like this. She was weak - and spent two years lost in a fog of madness. "Since I broke."

"Were broken," he insisted. "This was not your doing..."

A tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek, and she felt her shoulders shake as more threatened to follow. He tilted her head away from him with the gentle touch of fingers under her chin - just enough to turn her to look up at him, and stroke the tear away from her with his thumb. "I'm sorry," she said again - feeling somehow… inadequate.

"No. Do not apologize. Never apologize. Not to me - not to anyone for what has happened. You were wronged, my love… you were torn to pieces. Any other would have sunk irretrievably into darkness. You climbed from the pit that would have consumed all others," he said intensely.

Veil kissed him, then. Kissed him to say to him all that she could not put into words. That she loved him - and always would. That she could live for him. That she would never let him go. Even trapped halfway between life and death, sanity and not - he would guide her from the darkness like a lantern in the night.

When she broke the kiss, he whispered to her. "I would wait for you for a hundred thousand more, if I must. For you are my queen..."

For two years, he had lived with a ghost. For two years, he had been haunted by the woman he loved. But he would have suffered it for a thousand more - rather than to leave her the muzzled creature he found in the care of Asmodeus.

Breaking the spell the fallen archangel had placed over Veil had, as Azrael had warned - broken her. Sent her spiraling into madness. She had been little more than a wandering corpse - prone to outbursts and fits of violence either on herself or others. One that he had trouble containing, with her ability to walk through walls and pass in between this world and the spirit world at will.

More than once, she had found the means of attempting to end her own life. More than once, she had stabbed or struck him, out of a desperate attempt to lash out what was happening in her own mind. No manner of magic could cure madness - only time. Time, and hope.

And those were two things he had in abundance, it seemed.

So he waited.

For if there was one thing in this world in which he had faith, it was in Veil. In her indomitable nature. That she would find a way, where all else seemed gone - to wield the resilience she had bred in herself over her years.

The night that she had slunk next to him on the sofa of his library, he had nearly wept in joy. While she was not yet whole - and indeed, may never again quite be as she had been when Asmodeus took her - she had begun to mend.

Perhaps time could heal - perhaps he had been mistaken.

Her recovery had sped, after that - as much as it was able. Her memories began to return. While she seemed to have no recollection of what had happened in her thirty years of time in Alistair's 'care' - she could at least identify that the time was missing. That there was a gap in her timeline.

What he had not anticipated, was Death's involvement in her return. More than once, he had come to find her sitting and playing chess with him. She always lost - but she didn't seem to care. It was the banter for which she seemed to be in attendance. Bickering back and forth with her pseudo 'father,' arguing and trading cynical and snide comments.

One night, he found her standing on the balcony of his suite - looking out over the forests that surrounded the castle. He had walked up to slip his arms around her waist, and she leaned back into him. It was a comfortable pattern they had fallen into. He was happy. Content. He was no longer alone.

"I would like to go see Richard," she said quietly. "I know he's… either very old, or… dead by now. But either way, I…" she sighed. "I know it's stupid - to remind myself that we don't die, but everyone else does, but-"

"I understand," he responded, cutting off her labored explanation. "I have visited the grave of my old friends when I am able," he admitted. He had, more than once, laid flowers on the grave of Sypha and Trevor - of Richter and Maria. Although their names were worn and faded, their graves long since neglected and forgotten - he would not forget. "I will instruct a scout to find him, and we will go."

"You don't need to come with me," she said with a faint smile up at him. "Unless you think I'm going to suddenly start hallucinating chickens and wander off." Ever since she had begun playing chess with Death - her humor had begun to return. For that reason alone, he allowed the irritating floating skeleton to linger in his personal wing of the castle.

"You might just," he quipped back in his dry manner, and she laughed. "I would do this with you. I would be there at your side when you see the passage of time. I have carried this burden alone, and it is not a kindness."

"Thanks," she said and leaned her head back against his chest, and he bent his own to kiss her gently at the temple. She shut her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "That'll make this less painful. Maybe more awkward, but less painful."

Adrian smirked at the dig, and squeezed her tighter. "So you think me awkward?"

"Extremely. And I don't 'think' it, I know it," she teased.

Gaps be damned - this was at least the Veil that he knew. While she may still suffer until the end of days the result of the cruelty paid to her by Asmodeus - she was not muzzled. She was not a muted, censored version of herself.

He growled playfully and whirled her about - pressing her back into the railing and stepping in to pin her there. She squeaked - and he knew quite well she could disappear and reappear a step away if she wished to. But she remained - looking up at him with that impish grin. He claimed it with his own lips, and kissed her with an ardent need. He felt her fingers tangle in the loops of his belt, and pull his hips flush against hers. No - this Veil certainly was not censored. And he would not have it any other way.

Veil had no idea what she should have expected. Somehow, stupidly - she had almost hoped that he'd be standing there, exactly how she left him - now thirty-three years having passed be damned.

For her, it'd only felt like on year at most. At most. Thirty years of her life had been taken away by Alistair. Thirty goddamn years. And that doesn't count the two she spent entirely off her rocker. So honestly, that asshole owed her thirty two years of her life.

Thirty two years, plus one spent with Adrian in the castle, patching her dumb brain back together - and she expected Richard to be exactly how she left him. Inevitably… no. When the scouts returned, she could have even maybe hoped for the address to a retirement home. What they returned with was a plot number.

So now, she stood, looking down at his name carved into a block. His wife's name, etched below him. She had outlived him by two years. The last time she had seen her long-time dearest friend, he had been tortured at Vlad's hand for betraying Adrian. She had known then that it was goodbye - that she'd likely never see him again - but hope was as insidious as it was fleeting.

Veil wasn't a 'sad' cryer. She wasn't a 'happy' cryer. It took a lot to drive her to that. What she was normally, was a 'frustrated and angry' cryer. Right now though - she was tempted to cry. Tempted to see the name of her friend etched in stone, and know she'd never see him again - not even in the afterlife. For where he went, she could never follow.

Veil crouched, and placed the flowers she had brought - even if it was stupid to bring flowers to a grave, it's not like they cared - they were gone. They were for her, really. The bouquet was a way to say goodbye to someone she had loved and cared for like they were family. It was the only closure she could get, honestly.

When she stood up, a hand rested on her shoulder in silent support. Silent understanding. At least she wasn't alone in what she was experiencing - as rare of an 'edge case' as her life was, Adrian shared it with her. He too, would now never truly die. He too, would spend his life burying mortal friends if he allowed himself to form bonds like that ever again. She hoped they both would. Losing Richard wasn't bad enough to lock herself away in an ivory tower like Vlad and so many of his kin had done. Refusing to acknowledge the outside word, for the pain that it would bring.

Veil let out a wavering breath, and looked to Adrian with a faint smile. Long lives like theirs were storied with loss and goodbyes. Storied with catastrophe and suffering. Those things came easy - finding the other things… friendship, love, happiness - those things took work.

Adrian drew close and placed a kiss on her forehead. He offered her no words - as he was want to do as his default. He had changed, in the thirty-and-change years she had been 'away.' But reigning as king was no more a burden than the one he carried when he sought to foil his father at every turn. Just a different one. If anything, he seemed far more at peace with what he now was. At peace with the hunger that burned inside him.

She took his hand, and they turned to leave. They walked for a time through the stones and down the gravel paths. Veil had debated for a time going to see his children - but they were grown adults with families of their own, now. If they knew who she was - she was a myth or a legend to them. If they didn't know about her - and part of her hoped they didn't - that would be an unwelcome part of their father's past that was as good as dead and gone.

They were ghosts in this world. Removed from it, and yet a part of it all the same. Her story in this mortal world was over. Wherever Asmodeus had gone - wherever his cults had fled - they weren't her problem anymore. She had chosen to give all that up to stand at Adrian's side - and it had been ripped away from her along with her freedom when Asmodeus had put the curse over her heart.

"I need a stiff drink," she complained.

Adrian chuckled at her summation of events into that, and shook his head. "Your wish is my command, my lady." Veil didn't even make a fuss when he swept them up into a swarm of bats and headed for the horizon. Once you got over trying to make sense of what was happening and simply went along for the ride, it wasn't nearly so bad. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Every year on the anniversary, Veil would stand next to Adrian in front of his family tomb. Every year, he would light the cauldrons on either side, in tribute now to both his mother and father. It seemed they would always be carrying out these rituals of death and the commemoration of it.

It was clear, that no small part of Adrian missed his father. Missed the simplicity of their life before he had taken the throne. Veil had no small part to play in that - as she was the reason he was now so much dust on the wind.

The thought of oblivion made Veil shudder. But in time, she might welcome it as a friend - rather than this endless existence. For they were headed down the same path as Vlad had been forced to walk. Although at least, they had each other.

Things had become.. Normal. Life took a pattern. Veil was now - laughably - 'queen' of this place. She was Adrian's sense of humor - the counterpoint to his seriousness. And he was the rational and self-sacrificing king. While the castle was not without its drama or its horror - it was… peaceful.

No bands of holy priests or vampire hunters came pounding on the door, demanding entry to strike down the wicked monsters within. Indeed - the world seemed keen to dutifully ignore them entirely. She would wonder if they weren't trapped in her madness still, if it weren't for that people still traveled to their door to seek shelter and sanctuary for one reason or another. For knowledge - for immortality and power - or to feed some dark hunger they couldn't sate elsewhere.

'This was how it once was,' Adrian had said to her one night. 'When Mother was alive. When Vlad did not seek the ruin of mankind.'

'I don't think he ever wanted to destroy the world,' she had told him. And she still believed it. 'I think he just didn't know how else to exist in it anymore.' Now facing down eternity in the same way he had - she didn't know as she blamed him.

"If I ever sink into madness such as he did," Adrian said from beside her, where they stood watching the fires burn in the cauldrons on the stairs of his family's mausoleum. "Would you rend my soul from my body, such as you did for him?"

"To save the world..?" she preambled to stall for time. "Yes. To save you from eternity? No. That's a gun I can't turn on myself. And I won't… I can't do this alone. I won't send you into the void unless it means you would send all of the earth to hell instead."

His hand found hers again, and squeezed it gently. That answer seemed good enough for him. "It is hard, to fathom becoming nothing. For all my days, I have been told of heaven and hell. For all my life, I have dreamt of joining my friends and my mother in heaven. To now that my only way out of this world is to become nothing at all is… a horror that I cannot fully comprehend."

Veil nodded. "I never had to worry about it. I never will. Now, what'll become of me, is I'll just… dissolve back into madness. I'll trade you," she said with a sarcastic half-laugh.

"No, I think not," he responded in his dry humor. She shoulder checked him in the arm - nudging him playfully. "Sometimes… I wonder if mother is at peace with what became of him. That he will never join her."

"Do you think he could have anyway? I mean, I assume she's…" in heaven, she finished. And realized she really didn't know anything about the afterlife - only that it existed. She had no clue how it really worked. Even if she was 'related' to an archangel, and had been 'married' to a fallen one. Veil had entirely no concept of how 'heaven and hell' really worked - or if they even really existed.

"Things are rarely so simple," came a voice from behind them. Adrian and Veil turned in unison - not having expected an intrusion. She blinked in surprise at who had spoken - standing there with his bright eyes and warm smile.

"Azrael..?" she asked, and turned to face her 'father.' She hadn't seen him since… well, that she could remember, since before Asmodeus put her under that curse. Adrian told her it was Azrael who had brought him to her - who had freed her of her curse. But that after he had unwittingly shattered her mind, he had left and not returned.

On seeing her, Azrael's smile faltered. A deep look of shame came over his face, and he looked to the ground - unable to meet her gaze. Veil left Adrian's side and walked up to the sheepish archangel. She reached out, and hugged him. She knew why he felt such grief. She knew that he likely blamed himself for what had happened - it was a dumb thing to do. But if they switched places, that's how she would feel. "Hey, dad…" she said to him quietly. A greeting, a confirmation, and forgiveness for what had happened, all in one.

His arms wrapped around her and he hugged her with such intensity she knew he had thought he would never again get the chance. "I am glad you are well - or, rather, as well as can be expected…" he referenced her lingering 'issues.' Night terrors, momentary loss of awareness of herself or where she was. Missing time and memories. But the moments were coming fewer and far between these days. The normalcy of their lives - the routine of it, helped. "I could not… I did not know how to visit sooner."

"It's alright," she said with a smile, and took both his hands in hers. "I get it. I really do."

His face drew in pain as he seemed to viscerally relieve some painful moment. Maybe when he had freed her from Alistair's curse - and dropped her into a pit of madness instead. "I am so sorry," he whispered to her. "Forgive me, I-"

"Don't be stupid," she scolded him and couldn't help it - reached up and ruffled his hair. He laughed quietly, and watched her with a fondness that made her smile at him. "All's well that ends well," she said with a grin. "Besides. I'd rather have not spent eternity as a mindless puppet. I'd rather have been crazy."

"So he said," Azrael responded with a glance over her shoulder to Adrian. "And he was not wrong. And… on the matter of 'all's well that ends well,' I thought perhaps I could answer your query, Adrian."

"What query..?" the dhampir asked.

"Whether or not your mother is at rest," Azrael smiled faintly. "I would know, after all, wouldn't I?" He took in a breath, and let it out before speaking again - giving some space to what he was about to say. "Worry not for her soul. For it is at peace with all that she sees. For they are both at peace with what they see has become of their son."

"What?!" Adrian and Veil said in unison.

Azrael laughed, and smiled sheepishly again. "I could not very well let my oldest human friend end in nothingness. It was not a fair exit to someone who had suffered as much as he. His crimes were arguably paid with his hell on earth - and Lisa was owed a debt. I think it was more for her sake than his, that I was allowed to snatch his soul from the jaws of the void."

"You're kidding me!" Veil said with an astonished sound and took a moment to pace away, and look up at the Tepes vault before looking back to her 'father.' "You mean he… he's free. Really free from all this."

Azrael nodded. "Where they are is… complicated. It does not really matter - and would require a many hour lecture on the finer points of the greater planes of the universe and… They are neither in heaven nor hell. Call it 'limbo' if you will. But, regardless - well, they are immeasurably proud of you, Adrian. Of you both." He pulled in a breath. "Except, perhaps, for one thing, Adrian - that you saw fit to ignore a proper wedding ceremony."

"It seemed stupid, all things considered," Veil said with a shrug. "What with my being half-mad after all." Veil made a face suddenly. "And what the fuck - it's not like he had any respect for what was 'proper' and what wasn't! And he hated the church!"

"He 'saw fit to marry Lisa, after all,' he said, when he predicted one of you would protest," Azrael shrugged, and raised his hands in a 'don't shoot the messenger' kind of way. "I'm only telling you what he told me."

Adrian sighed and when she looked over at him, the dhampir king had his hand over his face. "Even from the grave, father… you find means to jest at my expense."

Veil thought about it, and then decided… why the hell not. "Might as well give the dead bastard what he wants. Well, what do you say, Adrian?" Veil said with a snort. "You, me and the priest. And you, too, Dad, if you want to come. Nobody else. I don't want a big thing. We'll pop a bottle of champagne and call it done."

Adrian lowered his hand and looked at her first in surprise, then curiosity - then transitioned to a mild amusement. "Very well."

If you had asked him, at any point prior to this moment in his life - if he would ever be wed… he would have offered a rare laugh and a resounding 'do not be ludicrous.'

Except, perhaps, when he was a child. When he was a boy, in this place he called home - he had dreamed of his princess. Who he would wed and make a queen some day. For Vlad had told him that one day, all the castle would be his. He did not understand what it meant when he was a naive, ignorant child. He did not understand what would have to transpire for this moment to occur.

But now that he could look back upon it, it all seemed like some master plan his father had laid before him for generations. That it had all come to this - as if orchestrated by some maestro. And what was his father, but simply that? The greatest tactician the world might ever know?

When his father descended into bloodthirsty madness at the loss of Lisa - he had thought all of his future had been dashed before him. That all he would ever become was another forlorn painting on the wall - the memory of a man who once was. The tragic prince, forever doomed to battle until he died.

Yet, here he stood. At the altar of the castle's great cathedral. The room was empty, save for a precious few. Lyon, stood betwixt them and slightly towards the altar - reading from a book in his hands. Azrael sat in a pew, next to… of all people, Elizabeth. His 'cousin' would not be denied entry. It was not worth making a scene. And besides, she had helped Veil dress for the occasion. Truth be told, he could not fault her for her presence.

Veil was stunning - standing before him in finery she had made a great fuss about having to wear. 'The only two times you'll catch me in anything like this is now, and if you ever have to bury my dead ass, and we know that won't ever happen-' she had complained vehemently under her breath at him before the ceremony had started. Adrian had tried not to laugh - and only smiled at how uncomfortable she was. Oh, but how she looked like a vision from his dreams. Her sapphire hair had been done up in curls and elegant waves - decorated with pearls and stones that offset the deep color.

Adrian even barely registered the exchange of vows - so distracted he was, by the moment itself. So caught up in all that this meant in his life, and in his soul. He had dismissed the ceremony of it all as a paltry scrap of pageantry - but now that he was in the moment, he could not deny that it held some manner of weight he could not understand.

Even Veil seemed effected. Her lips were twisted in an an odd, awkward and shy smile that he had never once seen her wear in his time knowing her. Lyon - meanwhile, could not have looked more the role of the proud parent. Somehow even more so than Azrael.

The rings. He had to have his father's resized to fit him - for it was far too large. He let Veil place the ring on his finger, as she recited the vows as was the tradition. It was a simple band of metal that he could not identify - somewhere between steel and zinc perhaps - like many of the metal gravestones that dotted the yards. He had never asked his father why he had chosen a band that was so plain - but perhaps, it was for its honesty that he had picked it.

It was his turn, and it seemed he had nearly missed his cue, he was so very much caught in his thoughts. He stammered uselessly for a moment, sighed, took a moment, and tried again this time more successfully. Veil was clearly suppressing a laugh at his expense. He lifted her hand, and, repeating the same vow, slipped her ring onto her finger. Simple as well, but out of white gold. A twist in the band to look as though it were braided. Vlad had recovered it from the fire that had destroyed Lisa - but had chosen not to bury it with his wife. For this express reason, apparently… In hopes that someday, Adrian would place it upon the hand of his own bride.

Perhaps for that reason alone, Vlad had sent a message back from the grave - from his seemingly impossible victory over his doomed existence. That his act of recovering Lisa's ring would not go to waste. It seemed oddly fitting.

"Adrian."

Lyon's voice was gentle - but firm. It was the sound of a disapproving school teacher. Adrian blinked back into the present moment, and looked over to him. "Hm?"

Veil was snickering - and had put one hand over her face and turned it away to keep from laughing outright.

"Will you please pay attention..?" Lyon said with a smirk. "For one more second?"

"I- ah-" Adrian gritted his teeth and nodded once. He had lost track of what was happening again, he had been so absorbed into his thoughts. This was an ill time to let his focus escape him.

"I said-" Lyon repeated himself, with all the affected patience of a saint. "You may now kiss the bride."

For that, Adrian would follow his advice without question. With a hand laced gently into the hair at the base of her neck, he pressed his lips gently to Veil's. For a moment, he reflected upon their existence once more. For they were both broken, damaged creatures. Children of the damned - children of cruel gods. Each, in their own right, trapped halfway between the living and the dead. Each, in their own right - struggling to find their own way in this world.

Each, in their own right, finding love in the other.

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed this tale. It's done (for now… Never say never, but no sequels planned for the moment.)

Thank you all for reading - it really does mean the world to me to know that there are people out there enjoying my silly stories.