There wasn’t much hope for me, after that.
Far from stifling my love for you, my feelings for her simply stoked the devotion that enveloped my heart whenever you walked into a room. Seeing the two of you walking arm in arm through city streets, window shopping and laughing, filled me with an irrepressible delight. You called us your little foxes, and you were our north star, guiding us through the night. My heart fluttered in tandem with yours whenever she shared the latest gossip with us by firelight, and we were both thrilled to hear her latest thoughts on political developments across the continents.
Magdalena was connected to a seemingly endless network of informants, rivals, friends, and philosophical sparring partners whose letters found her wherever we stayed. You warned her against too much correspondence with the outside world, against jeopardizing our secret, but you indulged her habits in those early years. It was your honeymoon after all, this grand tour across all the European cities she had always dreamed of visiting. She should be allowed some little indulgences. It was her right as a new bride.
You wouldn’t start hiding her letters and discouraging her from answering her aging cohorts until much later, when her novelty had worn off.
We toured Lyon and Milan, then wintered in Venice at Magdalena’s request. You chafed against Venice, its seething color and swirling masses of people, but I reveled in it. The bustle reminded me so much of my Vienna. Magdalena and I never tired of wandering the piazzas, watching the merchants hustle by. We would walk along the thin edge of the canal arm in arm, me listening as Magdalena gossiped about all the city officials and their wives. She knew their families, their position on politics, and which of them were taking bribes, and she had her own opinions about all of them. I marveled at her mind for diplomacy. If only the Great Council of Venice would bend their ears to a foreigner, and a woman no less, they would have a powerful weapon at their disposal.
You were irritable during the whole first winter we spent in the city, complaining about the noise and the damp and how there was no quiet place for you to carry out your research. I had begun to unravel your fixation on science at that point, your obsession with cataloguing and dissecting the human animal. All vampires find some way to stave off the monotony of an endless life, with hedonism or asceticism or a rotating door of lovers as short-lived as mayflies. You kept your hands and mind busy with your hypotheses, your never-ending research into the condition of human and vampire. Maybe you were determined to be the first person to riddle out what processes transmuted one into the other. Or maybe you just needed a distraction. I don’t have to ask from what, my lord. I know the undying life has a certain inevitable weight to it.
“Let’s go out,” Magdalena exclaimed one night as she tossed her arms around your neck. You were hunched over your desk, peering at samples of flora and fauna from halfway across the world. Why they were of interest to you, I still have no idea.
You gave a smile that was more of a grimace.
“I’m busy, little one.”
Magdalena put on one of her spectacular pouts. A well-timed pout from her could probably have brought down the walls of Troy.
“But the opera is tonight! You promised we could go.”
“And you can go. Take your sister and give me some peace. I’m very absorbed at the moment, if you can’t tell, my love.”
Magdalena whined, but I was elated. You were giving us permission to traverse the city alone. Without you ushering us along through the shadows, glowering at passerby, Magdalena and I could make conversation, take our time as we strolled along the rain-slick streets. Venice had been in the grip of Carnival over the past week, the festivities spilling into the streets. The world outside our door was sure to be riotous with sound and color, Venice at her most ferocious and lovely.
“I’ll get my capelet,” I announced, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. I didn’t want you to change your mind at the last minute and decide we needed our usual supervision.
But in the end, the draw of your research won out, and Magdalena and I were permitted to travel by ourselves, so long as we promised to return before the first light of dawn. You were fond of these paternalistic rules, always circumscribing our freedom with little laws.
Magdalena and I put on our finest gowns and strode out into the night in a rustle of silk and ribbons, our feet leaving wet tracks on the cobblestones.
We giggled all the way to the opera house; so happy to breathe the free air with only each other for company. Magdalena laced her gloved fingers through my own as she pulled me down alleyways and over bridges, and my heart pounded a happy drumbeat in my chest. Tonight, the whole expanse of star-riddled sky seemed to be shining especially bright for us. It was her and I alone, for once, with the entire world at our feet. We could have done anything we wanted to. Caught a boat to Morocco, or passed ourselves off as princesses at one of the lord’s carnival parties, or drained a beautiful young thing together in the darkest alleyway where no one could find us. We were drunk on sheer possibility.