Vampire Princesses and Princes

My new university is a renovated medieval monastery in Slovakia called ‘Dux Ducis’ (leader of leaders in Latin). The university is run by professors from all over the world. Monks abandoned it many years ago, not exactly the place an eighteen-year-old girl wants to be, except I don’t have a choice.

I am Sweden’s Crown Princess Paola Katarina. My best friends are Crown Princess Sofia Eleonora from Finland and Crown Prince Oskar Niklas from Norway.

The sixth day in the monastery, a soft knock on the door woke me up. I glanced at the clock, and it was 1 a.m. No one was there, but I saw a boy wearing pajamas walking across the garden barefooted. The rigid, slow way he was walking made me think he was sleepwalking.

I followed him and a few minutes later he initiated a chilling conversation.

“You are so gullible, Paola. Always trying to help others even if they are strangers; I am about to teach you a lesson no professor in this university can teach you.”
When the boy said my name, I knew he was not sleepwalking. He was luring me to the praying room.

“Who are you? Why did you trick me into following you?”

The boy took a few seconds to respond without facing me.

“I used so many names the last three hundred years that I don’t remember my birth name any more; most of my acquaintances know me as Patryk Lucescu.”