Brice’s revelation turns Glynis Wright’s captivity in Buda into a conspiracy she can finally name. The British servant tells her that the Baroness helped bring about her family’s fate and shows her evidence of the arrangement: Vlad Dracula feeding in the Baroness’s bedroom, while the Baroness waits for the immortality she covets. From their conversation, Glynis learns that the Baroness helped direct Vlad toward her and persuade her parents to come to him, but that Vlad claims the choice as his own. He has chosen Glynis for a purpose: to help him establish a mortal life in England. The encounter also reveals a reversal in the household’s hierarchy: Vlad calls Glynis his first Bride and says the Baroness will serve her.

The warning and its context

The disclosure comes after Glynis has been living under Vlad’s control in Buda, where her proximity to Andrew Wright is carefully managed. Vlad orders her to wear a veil around her brother, both to conceal her changed appearance and to keep Andrew from recognizing clothes and possessions from her former life. The veil is not a minor inconvenience: it makes even the anticipated reunion something Vlad regulates. When Glynis tries it on, she realizes that the layers of organza and lace will prevent her from truly seeing Andrew. Her public appearance, like her movements and relationships, has become subject to her husband’s commands.

The encounter follows a moment of separation from Ignatius. Brice approaches Glynis from behind and addresses her as Countess Dracula. She recognizes him as the British servant she had seen before, but not as someone who had tried to intervene in her family’s fate. He explains that he was present when the Baroness greeted her on the banks of the Danube and that he attempted to speak with her father, but was thwarted. He had recognized Glynis as being in danger, yet at the time could not warn her. Now, he says, he can.

Brice is explicit about the danger. He calls Vlad evil and describes the Baroness as his faithful servant, then tells Glynis that her husband is not human and that she and Vlad possess what the Baroness desires: a life beyond mortality. He does not treat Glynis as simply another monster. Having seen her with Andrew that evening, he believes that she remains the spirited young woman he encountered the previous spring. His testimony offers a distinction the household’s power structure denies: Glynis has been changed, but, in Brice’s judgment, she is still herself. He also says the Baroness has conspired against others, placing the Wright family’s disaster within a wider pattern rather than presenting it as an isolated misfortune.

What Glynis witnesses

Brice asks Glynis to follow him and look through a narrow opening into the Baroness’s bedroom. Inside, she sees a young woman lying pale and lifeless on a table, with bite marks on her throat and wrists. The Baroness reclines nearby while Vlad speaks with her. His teeth are still tinged with blood; he touches the Baroness’s cheek and tells her that good things come to those who wait. The scene makes the arrangement between them visible: the Baroness is close to Vlad and serves his desires, but she is not yet what she longs to become.

Their conversation clarifies both the Baroness’s involvement and the limits of her power. She admits that she directed Vlad’s attention toward Glynis, praising her beauty and identifying her as an ideal English noblewoman in Buda. She also helped Sir Stephen Sheridan persuade Glynis’s parents to bring their daughter to Vlad. Yet Vlad rejects the idea that the Baroness chose Glynis for him. He insists that the Baroness may have guided his attention, but that he alone decided he wanted her. The distinction does not absolve the Baroness: she helped make the approach possible, even as Vlad claims responsibility for his own predatory choice.

Vlad also explains why Glynis matters to his plans. He wants to move to England and needs her to establish a mortal life there. The revelation gives his earlier instructions a political and practical purpose: Glynis is not only a captive wife or a source of blood, but a necessary part of the identity he intends to construct abroad. The Baroness, by contrast, longs to become immortal herself. Watching the blood on the table, she says that she wants to take life as Vlad does and make it her own. Her desire turns her service into a bargain marked by envy and frustrated expectation.

The Bride hierarchy and its reversal

The Baroness’s ambition makes Vlad’s treatment of her especially stark. He tells her that she will become Glynis’s sister and his Bride, but then throws her to the ground and orders her not to resent Glynis. He makes the rank explicit: Glynis is the first among his Brides, and the Baroness will serve her. Glynis is shocked. Vlad has called her his first Bride before, but she had taken the claim for flattery intended to win her devotion. Hearing him say it to the Baroness, in a conversation that exposes his plans, forces her to consider that the title carries real authority within the household.

The declaration also unsettles the existing order around Cneajna. Glynis notes that Vlad has named her first rather than Cneajna, and the thought opens possibilities she had not allowed herself to take seriously. The exchange does not free her from Vlad’s control, but it reveals that his household has ranks and that he has placed Glynis above the Baroness, who helped secure her capture. The title of Bride thus carries two meanings at once: it marks Glynis as an object of possession and makes her, in Vlad’s announced hierarchy, a figure the Baroness must obey.

Consequences and significance

Once she and Brice leave the hidden passage, he asks whether she understands that the Baroness has been obsessed with her since discovering she had come to Buda. Glynis understands the central accusation: the Baroness conspired against her and her family because she wanted the condition Glynis now bears. Her anger rises, and she curses the woman. Brice confirms that the Baroness yearns to become what Glynis is. The revelation therefore changes Glynis’s account of her past without making the past less violent: the Baroness helped draw the family into Vlad’s reach, while Vlad remains responsible for choosing and claiming Glynis.

The scene resonates with the freedom Glynis had wanted before her transformation. She once imagined living as a woman with the liberty men possess, without the restraints imposed on her because she was female. In Buda, those restraints have taken another form. Vlad controls her clothing, hides her behind a veil, and plans to use her to establish his English life. His promise to make her his first Bride can sound like elevation, but it remains part of the same system of ownership. Brice’s information gives Glynis grounds for anger and a clearer understanding of the forces that shaped her captivity; it does not yet give her an escape. What changes is her knowledge: the Baroness is not merely Vlad’s companion, and Glynis’s place beside him is not merely a private marriage. Both are bound into a plan of deception, ambition, and supernatural power.