Death of May

May Wright’s death is the moment when Glynis Wright’s attempt to protect her sister is overcome by Vlad Dracula’s authority and the violence of the Brides. Trapped together in a trunk, the sisters are separated from the danger only by a lid and the strength of the blonde vampire holding Glynis down. Glynis hears May’s terror and the attack, but cannot reach her; the vampire who restrains her also shields her from the sight and blood of the killing. The scene makes May’s death both a loss and a defining experience of helplessness for Glynis.

Circumstances and Stakes

The event follows a relationship in which the sisters had spoken openly about the limits imposed on women. May had challenged Glynis’s desire to live without the constraints placed on women, and Glynis had described wanting to live as a man while remaining a woman. Their exchange gives their later separation a particular force: the two had shared not only family ties but a conversation about freedom and the lives they were denied.

By the time May is killed, Glynis is already in the power of the vampires. She has refused their invitation to feast, saying she would rather die. May, meanwhile, searches for her in the darkness, crying out and asking to hide with her. Their positions are unequal: May is frightened and looking for protection, while Glynis is too weak to defend her. The blonde vampire tells Glynis that she cannot save May from Ariana and Elina, and identifies the decisive cause of the attack: Vlad has given May to the Brides, and it is his will.

The Attack in the Trunk

The blonde vampire slides into the trunk and pulls Glynis down with her, shutting the lid. When May finds them, she beats at the lid and calls for Glynis. Glynis tries to push it open, but the vampire restrains her. The sound of lids being forced open elsewhere in the room announces that the other Brides are rising; soon Glynis hears their murmuring voices and May’s blows against the trunk. She calls for May to hide, even as she understands that the warning cannot help her.

Glynis cannot see the attack. She hears May’s terrified screams, the movement of the other vampires, and then a scream followed by a heavy thump as May’s body strikes the trunk. The delighted laughter of the dark Brides follows. The sequence withholds a direct view of the killing, making sound the measure of Glynis’s proximity to the violence—and of her inability to intervene. Her response is not detachment: she weeps, struggles against the blonde vampire, and begs for the attack to stop. Yet the vampire overpowers her, leaving Glynis physically present but unable to act as May’s protector.

The Blonde Bride’s Refusal and Protection

The blonde vampire’s part in the scene is sharply divided. She restrains Glynis and will not release her to save May, explaining that she cannot oppose Vlad’s will. At the same time, she refuses to feed on May. She tells Glynis that she will not make her bear witness to her sister’s death, then covers Glynis and clamps her hands over her ears. Later, Glynis recognizes that the vampire’s dress was stained with blood because she had kept May’s blood from falling through the cracks in the lid onto her.

This protection does not undo the betrayal of Glynis’s helplessness or the loss of May. It does, however, make the scene morally unsettled: the same vampire who prevents Glynis from acting also tries to spare her a more immediate horror. Glynis finds comfort in the vampire’s touch despite understanding that May has died. The tenderness is not a rescue, and the vampire does not challenge Vlad’s command; it is a limited act of care inside an act of violence she allows to happen.

Aftermath and Significance

Glynis does not witness May’s death directly. In the immediate aftermath, she believes May has fainted and is oblivious to what has happened, and reasons that her frail sister’s death would come quickly. That belief registers both grief and an effort to imagine May spared prolonged suffering; it does not change what Glynis has heard or what the blood on the vampire’s dress later confirms. The distinction between what Glynis hears, what she is allowed to see, and what she subsequently understands makes her account a testimony to violence carried out behind a closed lid.

May’s death also establishes the conditions in which Glynis must continue living: a captive under Vlad’s control, separated from her former life and unable to protect those she loves. Later, she describes her new existence in the castle as torment and recognizes her status as Vlad’s slave. Her recollection of May is part of the human past she carries into that captivity. In a later exchange, her mother urges her to escape, and Glynis promises not to forget her mother, her father, or May. The promise gives the loss a continuing presence rather than treating it as an episode that ends with the attack.

The scene’s central reversal is that Glynis is saved from witnessing May’s death by a vampire who is nevertheless complicit in the order that permits it. May’s appeals expose the limit of Glynis’s strength; the closed trunk makes that limit physical, while the sounds from outside it make the sisters’ separation impossible to mistake. For Glynis, the event marks not only the death of her sister but the collapse of the role she had tried to hold onto: she cannot keep May safe, and survival itself comes through another vampire’s restraint and protection.