This incredible story began a long, long time ago, but it’s up to three people from our time to bring it to a close—a businessman, a clumsy artist, and a young girl.
Princes don’t just exist in fairy tales. But not every princess finds happiness in their wild, passionate love. Passion is such a powerful force that sometimes it doesn’t die with the person who felt it. It searches for a kindred soul across years and centuries. And when it finds one...
Once, a long time ago, a silver-haired, handsome man wrote a farewell letter to his unfaithful lover. Now, delicate feminine fingers carefully held the yellowed, fragile paper. Attentive brown eyes reread the lines written to her great-great-grandmother.
How? How could she have disregarded such a deep feeling?
“…I’ve made the necessary changes to my will. Despite everything that’s happened between us, I can’t leave you without means to survive. I still want to believe that this child is ours. But even if it isn’t, my eternal and lost love, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore in this chaos at the end of the world…”
A gray-haired, incredibly thin old man, dressed in a silk robe over his house clothes, set aside a self-loading fountain pen with ink, brought back ten years ago from the vineyards of Romania along with new vine cuttings. He patiently waited for the sharp needle that had long settled in his heart to quiet down, if only for a moment, and let him draw a breath of air.
Over the endlessly long years of separation, he had finally learned patience.
Too late is the same as never.
The sweet face of his wife, whom he stubbornly refused to call his ex, lingered before his faded, elderly eyes. In his mind, it was as young and innocent as it had been when it forever captured his then-healthy and strong heart.
Perhaps that was his greatest mistake and unforgivable sin—forcing her father to give the beauty to a much older recluse with peculiar ideas about how… well, what’s the point now.
She left him for love. He refused to grant her a divorce. Oh, how angry she was!
Well, he could understand her.
Naive as she was, she hoped that scoundrel would marry her. But of course, he abandoned her, and quickly too. As soon as he saw the first signs of her pregnancy.
And she still doesn’t know that the pension—supposedly for her father—wasn’t a pension at all, though he paid it on time as long as he could.
She never forgave him. Called him a tyrant and worse.
But what irony of fate. That cruel decision would now protect her from that scoundrel.
He won’t come back.
Everything will go to her, not the child. A beauty just like her mother. And nothing like that seducer. And after her mother, it will all be hers—his child’s, a child with no father, no title, no wealth.
But in these times, that’s much safer. Irony of fate again. Someday, this worldwide madness will end, and the little angel will inherit everything by right.
The man who seduced her mother will get nothing.
And the elixir… It will protect her and all her descendants from what happened to his beloved.
Still handsome even in old age, though worn down by illness and longing, the old man could barely remember how many years had passed since it all happened. Or that his will now guaranteed nothing.
The heart of the betrayed husband calmed a little, though the familiar pain never left.
He was doing what he could. Because back then, he didn’t do what he should have.
A large hand with long, strong fingers picked up the modern tool that would much later be called a fountain pen. New, even lines of letters crawled across the page, written in an old bourgeois script with characters the new regime had abolished. Just like they abolished the bourgeoisie.
His handwriting was still clear, without the flourishes of a scribe, and he was no scribe.
“I ask you to tell no one, except our daughter, about the entrance to the cellar where I’ve hidden the treasure. I don’t need to remind you of that man’s baseness. I’ve left a fake cellar in a place that’s easy to find if people are interrogated. I hope the hegemon will get drunk and move on. And when this apocalypse ends, you’ll return to this house.
Don’t worry. I won’t be there, and even my shadow won’t disturb you.
Though more than anything, I wish to protect you and our child even beyond the eternal boundary, if only with the strength of my love.
I’ve laid the foundation for your well-being for many generations. Our child will have the best dowry. And I’ve officially recognized her. She will inherit the title you, my angel, renounced in anger.
Rightful anger, I admit.
God and the Virgin will judge us, and all I have left is repentance and the hope that my discovery won’t go to waste.
Everything is prepared, the cellars are stocked, the barrels too, and the workers have received instructions on how to add everything necessary. I swear by all that’s still holy in my soul, this essence will be a grand success at the next world exhibition. The application has already been sent.
All that’s left for you and our child is to return and accept this belated gift as an apology for all the wrong I’ve done against love—the feeling I’ve worshipped my entire life.
Don’t forgive me, I don’t deserve it. Just accept this as a gift. And be happy.
P.S. Who better than me to know that you, my angel, are not suited to the mundane aspects of life, management, or trade.
Just hire a reliable manager, preferably a Hungarian, definitely educated and with experience working with Tokay essences.
But I implore you—don’t let him or anyone else get their hands on the research journals. And give orders only verbally. I’ve left all instructions for every scenario—both favorable and unfavorable years.
All the suppliers’ addresses are in a separate notebook labeled ‘Suppliers.’
My diary, where I’ve recorded every day without you and my thoughts on what happened between us and why, along with my deep remorse and belated apologies, I’ll also place there—in the cellar, next to this year’s elixir.
Forgive me if you can, and farewell.
P.P.S. Be sure to let both the bride and groom drink the elixir at our daughter’s wedding.
Do you remember when you read me that passage from Tristan and Isolde? I can still hear your voice and know by heart why the tragedy happened—you can’t drink it with a third person, so pour the rest into the fire.
I’m drinking the elixir to you now, lonely and worn out by long separation, with hope for a reunion in a better world. And for our descendants to be happy, even if we couldn’t be. May my eternal love and all higher powers protect you…”
He set down the fountain pen, sealed the letter—not the first, as he sent them at every opportunity. He dispatched them with anyone heading to the station, hoping one would reach its recipient in the chaos of a war of all against all.
The revolution rolled across the steppe like waves of high and low tide.
The old aristocrat took another sip from his glass, toasting his beloved. The thick, deep-red liquid pleasantly warmed and sweetened this lonely evening, one in an endless string of such evenings. Tomorrow, the letter would be taken to the railway and handed over to a mail car, if any still existed.
Pray? He was a sinner; there was no point. Believe? He wanted to, but couldn’t. Hope—that’s all he had left.
The needle stabbed his heart again, painfully.
He stared into the red liquid, illuminated by the faint glow of the fireplace. Here in the steppe, trees were scarce. Firewood had to be used sparingly. Though, if he thought about it, the district doctor hadn’t given him enough time to bother freezing in hopes of making it to spring.
Another sip, sweet as the memory of a girl in a white dress on the polished floor of the governor’s ballroom. Such beauty and purity had never existed before and never would again. That attentive gaze and the baseless certainty that this very grown-up, flawed handsome man wouldn’t hurt her.
A baseless, futile certainty...
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and the door swung open with the careless kick of a soldier’s boot.
“Well, maybe this is for the best. Shame I didn’t order more wood for the fire; I wouldn’t be freezing before I die,” he muttered with a wry smile to himself. But the commissar in a cap with a shiny clerk’s visor took it personally.
The men who barged into the study were drunk—either on young wine from a smashed barrel or on the impunity and sense of power over human life.
“In the name of the Revolution, the People demand the keys to the real cellar with the real wine. Not this sour swill,” the commissar barked, staring into the old man’s faded eyes, while the old man gazed back at the commissar’s gleaming, slightly crossed ones.
Neither wanted to look away. But the commissar blinked first and flew into a rage.
“Shut up, you bourgeois scum…” he hissed with hatred. And he had reasons to hate this old man, though the old man couldn’t recognize his enemy. He had never once in his life seen that fiery revolutionary, that student who stole his happiness and ruined his angel.
But that man still hated him fiercely. For no reason and for every reason. He and his kind had done something down south, where the emperor of this country lived. And now rivers of blood flowed in attempts to piece back together what had fallen apart. In this blood, everything dear to the gray-haired eccentric was drowning.
No, not drowning. They were drowning it—these commissars in round glasses and pointed helmets.
Not with their own hands, but with the hands of the uneducated and the wronged.
The old man wanted to tell this upstart, momentarily lifted by a bloody wave, that this was finally insulting—he was an aristocrat of an ancient lineage, not a bourgeois.
But he didn’t get the chance. A pistol aimed vaguely in his direction jerked, as the commissar meant to clench his fingers into a fist and deliver a fiery speech to everyone, then interrogate the old man properly in private about truly important matters.
A bullet, fired aimlessly, found a heart tired of living. The old man slumped back in his chair, finally at rest from bitter remorse and constant pain.
The commissar shrugged and ordered his men to find the keys and interrogate the servant about the cellars with aged wine.
The search began. Papers that didn’t answer their questions were tossed into the fireplace. Within minutes, the fire blazed merrily, fed to its fill. No one thought to extinguish it before leaving the study. The drunken revolutionaries found no clues to the wine cellar’s location, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have recognized them. Only the commissar among them was literate. He carefully folded the envelope sealed with a ring bearing a world-famous monogram and removed the signet from the dead man’s hand. He tucked everything into the bottomless pockets of his commissar’s coat and ordered everyone not to waste time on trifles. Tomorrow, they could interrogate the peasants. They all worked at the winery. They knew everything.
His men were drunk, angry, but also exhausted. So they stumbled downstairs, once again smearing mud from their boots onto the parquet and carpets on the staircase. They fell asleep wherever they could, as there was no fireplace down there, but it was still warmer than outside.
And they all burned, along with the ancient house, reduced to nothing but a smoldering ruin. At least, that’s what the peasants told the commissar when he returned the next day from brigade headquarters.
For some reason, the commissar wasn’t surprised. But he interrogated everyone who had worked at the winery, recording everything in a notebook with a calico cover in his beautiful, clerk-like handwriting, complete with vignettes and flourishes.
It was thanks to that extraordinarily beautiful handwriting and literacy that he quickly rose from a mere clerk-deserter to his current position. And then even higher. Later, he conveniently received a bullet wound to the leg and was discharged. By miracle or skill, he survived purges and denunciations, dying in deep old age, leaving behind grandchildren and one particularly sharp-witted great-grandson. That great-grandson one day found the letter, the signet, and the calico notebook with the interrogation records. He recalled family stories and put two and two together.
The unfaithful beauty also received one of the letters but couldn’t make use of the will.
Who knows if she ever regretted what she’d done or if she was content to have escaped the old, unloved man. But the letter and the story of the cellar with a treasure, whose value grew each year, were passed down through generations. As was the recognition of her daughter as the heir to a title. And the letter that would confirm the right to inheritance, should the treasure ever be found.
The couple currently holding the letter and the family legend weren’t very wealthy. But they hoped to change that soon. They decided now was the time to search. These days, there’s a rule of law; no one would seize the treasure or execute them for ancient ties to the eccentric old man.
Their child, though no one could know this, was the spitting image of her great-great-grandmother in her youth… Which meant a beauty so utterly out of step with modern times that it both drew in and repelled her peers. And she had the same character as her ancestor. She believed only in marriage for love, as had been the creed of the women in her family for generations.
That summer, she was working in France as a caregiver for a very old man. His granddaughter had hired her, too busy to care for him herself. The middle-aged woman was kind-hearted, chatty, and not overly demanding. Everything changed when the old man unexpectedly passed away in his sleep. And wouldn’t you know it—it happened right when the girl had taken half a day off to go into town.
The granddaughter could have accused the girl of causing her grandfather’s death. Prison was a real possibility in that case. Or a massive fine. But the kind-hearted, plump woman didn’t press charges. Instead, she asked for something small in return, something not difficult to do at all. But it had to be kept secret from everyone.
I’m thrilled to welcome you, my amazing readers, to the pages of this new story. The beginning is sad, but a happy ending awaits. The next chapter will introduce our main characters, who desperately need a change of scenery and a fresh start.
They don’t yet know about any treasures, love solving mysteries, and aren’t afraid of cruel or cunning enemies. In fact, they’re not afraid of anything.
And that’s exactly their mistake. Because when you’re searching for a recipe for love or kissing a frog to turn it into a prince, you should be a little scared—at least for show )
Well, let’s see what comes of it. We’ll solve puzzles and hunt for recipes alongside our heroes.
See you in the comments )