You will learn, little Constanta," you said with a fond, patronizing smile. "I'm going to open whole worlds to you." You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night's fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean. You came to me when the killing was done, while my last breaths rattled through failing lungs. The drunken singing of the raiders wafted towards me on the breeze as I lay in the blood-streaked mud, too agonized to cry out for help. My throat was hoarse from smoke and screaming, and my body was a tender mass of bruises and shattered bones. I had never felt pain like that in my life, and never would again. Bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death. A Dowry of Blood is a 2022 erotic horror vampire novel by S. T. Gibson.

A powerful tale of possession and liberation. This is a Dracula retelling unlike any other – undeniable and unforgettable’Rose Szabo, author of What Big Teeth You filled me with your loving guidance, stitched up my seams with thread in your favorite color, taught me how to walk and talk and smile in whatever way pleased you best. I was so happy to be your marionette, at first. So happy to be chosen. Drops of grey rain tumbled from the empty sky, splattering across my cheeks. I could barely feel them. I tightened my fingers into a fist, willing my heart to keep beating. You tipped my face and pressed your thumb down against my tongue, peering into my mouth. An urge to bite swelled up within me, but I smothered it. Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires here are able to go out in sunlight normally and feed off blood, but do not need to take the lives of others. Vampires initially start off as weak but their blood grows more powerful as they mature, with vampires that reach 1000 years old able to sire and create new vampires.

Left bleeding, a Romanian peasant, awaits her new life. An undying king rebirths Constanta. This is the end of her human life and the birth of her vampire life. Draping her in his arms, Dracula takes her to his gothic castle as his bride. Throughout the decades and centuries, they travel to romantic destinations all over europe. Diseases and war surround them but they live on no matter what fatalities meet the mortals. A Dowry of Blood is a vampire novel that sparkles of gothics, decadence, and delights but hits hard with a sexy bite. Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.

They will not hear you coming," you murmured. "I will stand a little ways off to ensure your safety, and to make sure none of them run." Stronger with Age: Vampires become more powerful the longer they age and their blood matures, with ones that reach 1000 becoming powerful enough to sire new vampires. I flinched when you knelt at my side, my body using what little strength was left to jerk away. Your face was obscured by the blinding sun, but I bared my teeth all the same. I didn't know who you were. I just knew I would claw out the eyes of the next man who touched me, if my fingers didn't seize up and betray me. I had been beaten and left for dead, and yet it was not death that had come to claim me. I will render you as you really were, neither cast in pristine stained glass or unholy fire. I will make you nothing more than a man, tender and brutal in equal measure, and perhaps in doing so I will justify myself to you. To my own haunted conscience.”

You swept your hands over my cheeks, cupping my face and taking me in. The intensity of your attention was staggering. At the time, I would have called it proof of your love, burning and all-consuming. But I've grown to understand that you have more of the scientist obsessed than the lover possessed in you, and that your examinations lend themselves more towards a scrutiny of weakness, imperfection, any detail in need of your corrective care. I’m not only talking about the incestuous undertones of calling lovers “sister” and “father” and so on. This book is also about power dynamics and abuse of those dynamics. The unnamed “father” wields his power with a veneer of elegance, but he’s really a common variety opportunist and manipulator. “We feast on the ruins of empire,” he declares with a grand flourish, forgetting that it makes him a scavenger, not a sovereign.

Atmospheric and lush. . . it will haunt you in the best possible way’Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch’s Heart Most vampire novels are extremely grounded in places and times, especially romanticised ones. Anne Rice set a precedent for seduction-by-location with her Parisian revels and New Orleans mansions, growing sensuality from the ground up. Dowry of Blood eschews the heavy historicity in favour of a vague, lovely sweep across Europe, differentiating between Vienna and Venice only in the broadest of terms.

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My mouth watered, aching gums screaming out. My stomach twisted into painful knots, as though I hadn't eaten in a fortnight. This may have baroque overtones, but it’s essentially an Impressionist book, painting with delicate dabs here and there, and then with sweeping, broad lines elsewhere. Time and place blur, faces emerge from the colourful palette of feeling rather than outward form. It’s a breathlessly emotional book, furious and horny and delighted, and always a bit mad. And anyway, who cares about painstaking detail when there are such bright colours to paint with? Red, of course being primary among them. An Eastern European peasant named Constanta finds herself dying and is sired and turned into a bride by Count Dracula himself. Dracula later adds two others to his harem, with Constanta realising that Dracula is far more vicious and evil than she's been led to believe. A Dowry of Blood is a glittering tale of obsession, seduction and power as told through the letters of Dracula’s first bride, Constanta. So strong," you said, tilting your head to take me in the way a jeweler might a perfectly cut diamond. "Hold fast, Constanta. If you live through this, you will never know the sting of death again."

No matter. Nothing else will do. Nothing less than a full account of our life together, from the trembling start all the way to the brutal end. I fear I will go mad if I don't leave behind some kind of record. If I write it down, I won't be able to convince myself that none of it happened. I won't be able to tell myself that you didn't mean any of it, that it was all just some terrible dream. Dracula's immortal harem, which consist of two women named Constanta and Magdalena and a young man named Alexei, are lovers not just with him but with each other. Constanta soon becomes lovers with the other members of her husband's harem and begins to truly find out the depths of evil he's capable of. As things begin to unravel, Constanta will ultimately have to choose whether she wants the love of her husband and her own liberty. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death. A dizzying nightmare of a romance that will leave you aching, angry and ultimately hopeful’ Hannah Whitten, author of For the WolfSuddenly it seized me, and there was no hope of denying it. I felt like I hadn't tasted a drop of water in weeks, like I couldn't even remember the taste of food. I needed the pulsing, salty nourishment streaming from your wrist, more and more of it. Vampire Procreation Limit: Vampires are only able to sire new vampires if two methods are used. The vampire in question must be over a thousand years old as it's only than that their blood is mature enough to sire new vampires, and they and the one they're siring into a vampire must exchange blood.