A Dowry of Blood: THE GOTHIC SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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I pressed my lips tightly together, though your blood had already passed my lips. I should have been dead long ago, but somehow I was still alive, renewed vigor rushing through my veins. 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.” The novel follows Constanta, the first of Dracula's brides, and is told in a letter format, being set before and after the original Dracula.

You taught us to never feel guilty, to revel when the world demands mourning. So we, your brides, will toast to your memory and drink deep of your legacy, taking our strength from the love we shared with you. We will not bend to despair, not even as the future stretches out hungry and unknown before us. And I, for my part, will keep a record. Not for you, or for any audience, but to quiet my own mind. 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.

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. God," I rasped, coughing up bubbles of blood. Tears sprang to my eyes, half horror, half reverence. I hardly knew who I was talking to. "God, help me." Serial-Killer Killer: Constanta, upon becoming a vampire, decides to dedicate herself to killing and feeding off the most odious or evil of society. Her victims range from rapists, killers and war profiteers to just general Asshole Victims like people who would spit on a beggar or harass and grab a woman.

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.

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I will do you a twofold kindness," you said. "I will raise you out of the dirt and into queenship. And, I will give you your vengeance." It was only then I saw your face, while you leaned over me and gauged how long I had left to live. Sharp, dark eyes, a Romanesque nose, and a severe mouth. There was no shadow of malnutrition or disease on your face, no childhood scar gone white with age. Just smooth, impassable perfection, so beautiful it hurt to look at. 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. But you found me alone, my lord. Beaten down to a shadow of my former self and very near death. It was as though fate had laid me out for you, an irresistible banquet.