Glynis’s first independent hunt

Glynis Wright’s first independent hunt is a moment of newly exercised power under continuing control. On the journey to Buda, Vlad Dracula allows her to hunt apart from her vampire sisters, but orders her to take only one mortal and return. At a small cottage, Glynis draws the farmer into inviting her inside, feeds from him, spares his pregnant wife, and leaves the man believing the encounter was a dream. The hunt shows both what she can do alone and the boundaries Vlad still places around her freedom.

Permission and Constraint

Before the hunt, Glynis’s life as a vampire has been marked by confinement and dependence. She thinks of herself as Vlad Dracula’s slave, frustrated by the rules of the castle and by having to wear clothes chosen for her. Her earlier wish to live without the constraints imposed on women gives this new independence a particular edge: she has escaped one restrictive order only to find herself subject to another. Her desire to act for herself is real, but permission to hunt comes from Vlad.

In preparation for the journey, Vlad tells her that in Buda she will have freedom she does not possess at the castle, including the chance to hunt on her own and learn the powers of the night. That promise is also an instruction to prove her loyalty and prepare for the position of his true bride. He warns that the Beckoning will always bring her back when he calls. Freedom is thus offered within a structure of obedience: she may hunt alone, but the master sets the terms and retains the power to summon her.

The contrast becomes physical when the carriage stops outside a small village. Glynis feels the moon rekindle her sense of freedom and anticipates feeding without waiting for her vampire sisters. She removes her coat and bonnet so she can hunt unfettered. Yet Vlad narrows that exhilaration to a single permitted victim: she must find one mortal and hurry back. He helps her down from the carriage, then sends her into the night under a precise limit.

The Approach to the Cottage

Glynis runs through a field and into the forest, following the scent that has caught her attention. Moonlight guides her through the trees to a clearing and a dark farmer’s hut. There, her heightened senses disclose the presence of two people by their heartbeats. She is not simply wandering in search of prey; she listens, identifies where the living are, and approaches the house with eager anticipation.

The hunt depends on both supernatural force and the victim’s participation. Glynis directs her attention to the shutters and mentally commands them to open. A young farmer appears in the darkness, sleepy and susceptible to her influence. She presents herself as beautiful and invites him to look at her; his response mixes fear with desire. He glances toward his sleeping wife, but Glynis’s allure and mental pressure prevail. When he whispers an invitation, she enters the room. The scene makes the threshold rule concrete: she could not enter the cottage without being invited, so she engineers the invitation rather than forcing her way across the boundary.

Inside, the farmer’s wife stirs. Glynis touches the woman’s hair, kisses her forehead, and commands her to sleep without waking. The gesture both protects the woman from witnessing the attack and demonstrates how thoroughly Glynis can direct the household’s awareness. The farmer is left alone with his visitor, while his wife remains unaware of what is happening beside her.

Feeding and Restraint

Glynis’s feeding is intimate and controlled. She notices that the farmer’s wife is pregnant and is disgusted that the man has welcomed a seducer while his wife sleeps. His weakness nearly provokes her to kill him, but she considers that the coming child will need its father. She chooses to take only what she needs. This is not a refusal to prey on the man; she feeds from him, but draws a limit based on the consequences his death would have for his family.

The farmer strains toward a kiss, and Glynis turns his face aside to expose his throat. She bites him and drinks until his heart weakens, then breaks away. Her feeding restores her strength, and she feels satisfaction, but the scene stops short of killing him. The difference matters: her hunger is powerful, yet she is capable of deciding how far to indulge it. The instruction to take one mortal does not itself require a death, and her judgment about the unborn child gives her a reason to leave the farmer alive.

The encounter nevertheless exposes the unequal terms of this apparent seduction. The farmer’s desire has been shaped by Glynis’s influence, and his invitation does not mean he understands what she is or what she intends. After she feeds, he speaks of serving and loving her. Glynis responds with disgust, throws him back onto the bed, and uses her mind to make him surrender his memory of her. She leaves him to sleep, with the experience recast as a dream. The encounter therefore ends not with mutual intimacy but with Glynis controlling both his body and his account of what happened.

What the Hunt Changes

This episode is independent in a specific sense: Glynis hunts without her sisters and selects and approaches her prey herself. It is not her first experience of killing. She later reflects that she considered the gypsy girl who took her ring to be her first kill, even though she had been forced to take her mother’s life. The distinction places the cottage hunt within a developing history of predation rather than presenting it as the beginning of her violence. What is new here is the latitude to hunt alone while travelling with Vlad.

That latitude remains sharply different from full freedom. Glynis savors the night, moves through the landscape by her own senses, and carries out the hunt without her sisters’ company; at the same time, Vlad has defined its limit and expects her return. Her act of restraint toward the farmer is her own decision within those terms, while her concealment of the attack is secured through supernatural coercion. The scene gives her agency without making that agency innocent or unrestricted.

The cottage also marks a shift from being merely subject to the vampire world’s rules to exercising some of its powers herself. Glynis crosses a threshold through invitation, commands a sleeping woman, feeds, and alters the farmer’s memory. Her first independent hunt in Buda is therefore at once a practical lesson in predation and a measure of her unsettled position: she can act alone, but her new powers operate inside a hierarchy whose master can still call her back.