Dawit unsealed the last vial of enchanted blood and knew he would never make another. He held it up in the tower hall, where orange light poured through the tall glass. The blood inside glowed richer than any human vein could offer. For centuries this brew had fed the Crown of the South, so his clan never had to hunt a living soul. Dawit had sworn to perfect it, to make blood so strong the hunts would end forever. But the shamans who enchanted it were dead. Their method died with them. He set the vial on the stone table and opened their old records. Page after page held prayers, not recipes. The shamans kept the true steps in their heads. Dawit pressed his long nails into the parchment. Without their method, he could not even begin refining. The stores would run dry. Then his people would return to the throats of humans, and every promise he made would break. The great doors groaned open. Crimson Prințesă entered in red lace, her long veil dragging across the floor behind her. She was Dracula's daughter, the first blood bender, and Dawit's lover. She had once taught him to fold moonlight into blood. She looked at the dead shamans' books and understood at once. "You're mourning paper," she said. She lifted the glowing vial and turned it in the light. "You don't need their prayers. You need their power source." "The enchantment is lost," Dawit said. "I have nothing to build on." "You have me." She set the vial down and took his hand. "The shamans folded spirit into blood the slow way. I fold moonlight. I can bend this blood the way I bend the living kind." Dawit stared at her. "You would rewrite their work from nothing." "I would replace it." Her red eyes held his. "But my life pays for blood magic, Dawit. Every fold takes from me. To refine a whole store, I would burn out." She drew off her ruby headdress and pressed it into his palm. The stones were warm. "The Mother taught me to draw from stored moonlight instead of my own life. This holds years of it. Use it, not me." Dawit closed his fingers around the headdress. Here was the path the dead shamans had denied him. Not their method, but a stronger one. He could build the perfect blood at last. He carried the ruby stones to the table and held them over the last vial. Crimson Prințesă guided his hands. The moonlight in the stones bled into the blood, and the glow turned deeper, brighter, alive. It worked. But the light in the rubies dimmed with each breath. The stones were draining faster than he had ever seen. Dawit had his method now. He had one problem left. He could perfect the blood only as long as the moonlight lasted, and it was pouring out fast.

The last of the ruby moonlight had refined the whole store. Row after row of vials glowed in the blood machine, deeper and richer than any human vein. Dawit stood before the tall glass tanks and could not celebrate. He held one vial to the light and asked the only question left. Was this blood safe? One bad batch could sicken every soul who trusted him. "You keep staring at it," Crimson Prințesă said. She stood beside him in red, her long veil pooled on the floor. Her gift tugged at the blood in his hands, pulling it toward her without her trying. "Staring won't tell you if it's clean." "I refined it fast," Dawit said. "The stones ran dry before I could test a single dose. If the fold went wrong, I poison my own clan." Ali Gamal crossed the lab, robes bright against the dark stone. The inventor built this whole apparatus with his own hands. He knew every valve and gauge in it. He set a small brass reader against the tank and watched the needle. "You don't guess with blood," Ali said. "You measure it." He tapped the glass. "Feed one vial to my machine. It will read the fold. If the moonlight bound clean, the needle holds steady. If it soured, it drops." Dawit poured a single vial into the reader's chamber. The three of them watched the needle. It climbed, then wavered. Dawit's chest tightened. Then it settled and held, steady as stone. "Bound clean," Ali said. "But one vial is not a store." Crimson Prințesă stepped to the tank. "I can read the rest. Blood tells me its own truth." She pressed her palm flat to the cold glass. Her red eyes closed. Dawit felt the pull deepen across the whole room, every heartbeat leaning toward her. She held it a long moment, then opened her eyes. "It's whole," she said. "Every tank. The fold took the same in all of them. No sour batch. No poison." Dawit set his hand beside hers on the glass. The blood glowed back at him, steady and alive. He had feared this store would break his clan. Instead it could feed all of Walachia without a single hunt. "It's stable," he said. "We did it. We ended the thirst for human blood." Ali did not smile, but he nodded once. "Then it can't sit here in a lab." "No," Dawit said. He looked from the inventor to his lover. "A cure means nothing until the crown accepts it. We take it to Dracula's wife. And to the White Domnitor." Crimson Prințesă lifted a full vial and turned it in the orange light. "My mother's shamans died guarding this promise. Now you carry it past their graves." She pressed the vial into his hand. "Don't drop it at the throne." Dawit closed his fingers around the glass. The batch was safe. The harder test waited in the court.

For three nights Dawit carried the vial to Castle Dracul, and for three nights the guards turned him away. The court was choked with business. War councils. A truce with a human hunter. No steward would place a blood keeper before the throne. Dawit stood in the cold hall with the cure in his fist and felt it shrink to a rumor. Without the crown's word, his work was one keeper's boast. He needed an audience, and every door stayed shut. Crimson Prințesă found him there, red veil dragging over the stone. "You wait like a beggar," she said. "My father's court does not open for patience. It opens for pressure." She looked at the closed doors. "I can push a way in. But you will owe the one who does it." Before Dawit could answer, a woman in black lace crossed the hall. Countess Carmilla de Styria. Dawit knew her only by name, a newcomer clawing upward in Dracula's court, said to bend nobles with a word. She stopped close and studied the vial like she already owned it. "You have the substitute," Carmilla said. Not a question. "The blood that ends the hunt. And no one will hear you." She smiled without warmth. "I can seat you before Dracula's wife by dawn. I have her ear. She refuses me nothing." Dawit tightened his grip. "For what price?" "You speak my name at court," Carmilla said. "You name Styria as the house that carried your cure forward. That is all." Her red eyes did not blink. "Refuse, and you rot in this hall another week." Crimson Prințesă stepped between them. "He owes you nothing." The heartbeats in the hall lurched toward her, tugged off rhythm by her gift. Even Carmilla's pulse leaned. "I can open my father's door myself." "You can," Carmilla agreed, unmoved. "And you will spend your blood doing it. You have little left to spend." She had heard, then, how the princess drained herself. "I spend only words." Dawit weighed it. The princess was already hollowed out from refining the store. He would not bleed her further for a door. And a shut court killed the cure just as dead as poison. "Get me the audience," Dawit said. "I will speak your name." Carmilla nodded once and turned. "Come. She is awake now." By dawn Dawit knelt before Dracula's wife and poured the glowing vial into a reader. The needle climbed and held. The lady drank a single dose, and her face changed. "Richer than the hunt," she whispered. "We will feed Walachia on this." The crown had accepted the cure. Carmilla stood at the door as Dawit rose. She said nothing. She only watched him with the calm of someone who had gotten exactly what she planned. Dawit had won his audience. He did not yet know he had paid for it in a debt he could not see the shape of.

The crown had accepted the cure. Now Dawit had to carry it home. His clan waited in the deserts of the south, still hunting humans while he stalled in Walachia. He stood before his blood altar in the Library, gold fittings glowing, tanks full of the refined store. He filled a travel flask and watched the color turn wrong within an hour. The refined blood curdled outside his machines. Every vessel he owned failed the same way. He had a cure no one could move. He went to the Mother. She was the only witch who understood how moonlight held blood together. He found her at the head of the council chamber, her white veil pooling across the floor for what looked like miles. Dawit had spoken to her only once, years ago, and left feeling weighed and found small. She did not look up when he knelt. "My blood will not travel," Dawit said. "It falls apart outside the altar. I need it to reach my clan." The Mother studied him. "The moonlight in it wants to scatter. Bind it to something that holds moonlight." She said nothing more. She never gave more than the point. Dawit understood. The Crimson Prințesă's ruby headdress had powered the whole store. Sealed stone, moon-charged, could keep the blood folded on the road. But she was hollowed out, her reserves nearly gone. He would not drain her further. Before he could rise, the chamber doors opened. Dracula entered, his gold dragon at his chest, his red and black cape trailing. Behind him walked a human woman in leather, auburn hair tied back, a crossbow slung across her body. Iliana Van Helsing, the hunter who had bargained a truce inside these walls. A royal guard stood at the door, spear ready, red eye burning in a black helm. Dracula stopped at the altar. He looked at the failing flask, then at Dawit. "The keeper of the south," he said. "My wife tells me you have ended the hunt." "If I can move it, my lord. It spoils outside my machines." Dracula lifted the flask. The blood inside had gone brown. He set it down. "Then you will not carry blood," he said. "You will carry the machine." He turned to Iliana. "She builds vessels that hold what should not be held." Iliana crossed to the altar. She ran her fingers over the gold valves, unafraid. "Sealed, moon-lined, pressure locked," she said. "I can build a crate that keeps this stable for a month on the road. I have done harder work than this." Dawit looked between the king, the hunter, and the Mother. A vessel, built by the hands of a monster hunter, blessed by a witch's moonlight. He nodded. "Build it," Dawit said. By the next night the crate was done. The cure sealed inside held clean. Dawit could go home. But the truce that gave him his vessel now bound his clan's future to a Van Helsing's word.