An Eisen countess of impeccable production and alarming continuity: lands that thrive, servants who vanish, a husband and sons all buried, and a hostess who does not age, eat, or drink anything she is willing to let you examine. Friedrich's case file called her a vampire and a false Queen of Eisen. His rite nearly unmade her; a hussar's arm through a circle of salt is why it didn't.
I owe you more than you know.
She had already found Axel by then. Over near-black wine in a blacked-out suite she named him "the wolf beneath the flesh" and made her pitch: Eisen has no monarch, Eisen bleeds, and she intends to take the throne and stop the bleeding by whatever arithmetic works. "Old power is true power." She wants Axel beside her as kin, ally, or instrument; she may not have decided which. She has certainly underestimated him.
Sleep well, Eisenwolf. The sun rises fast in Castille.
She escaped the ritual as mist. She owes Henryk her life, formally. Every one of her roads also leads to Eisen.