Nighttime had fallen upon Saint-Germain-en-Laye hours ago. Its chilling darkness gave an eerie feeling to its ancient cemetery. It was almost a cliche with how a light fog permeated the place, as footsteps crunched falling leaves, recoiling into future dust. Gabrielle's eyes did not wander from their focal point, which was the tomb she had come to visit. The vampire was holding a large bouquet of purple chrysanthemum, as it was the regal color her mother deserved. Once a woman of incredible power, Athenais de Montespan had been rejected and vilified, dying on her own, and even betrayed by one of the many children she had had with the one who had named himself the Sun King. How ironic and fitting it was that it was her vampire daughter, creature of the night, who had given honor to an outstanding woman since then. History had wanted that her half-brother died of normal death. Gabby smiled to herself, for "nature" had definitely been helped in that case.

She walked up to the Montespan family tomb in a far corner of the cemetery. A number of well-known French people had been buried here in the last century, few having given thought about the Montespan family buying a place of eternal rest there in the early nineteenth century. After all, the great and hated Marquise had died over a century ago. Yet, Gabrielle had then retrieved her mother's remains from the Poitiers convent where she had been buried with no honor. It mattered not what history would know about her mother's remains locations. She, and other descendants who mattered, knew.

Coming to a halt, she stopped in front of the beautiful stone secular monument. She treasured both her British and her French heritage, but the pregnant secularism, the laicite, so dear to French people in the last centuries, definitely suited her soul.

Climbing down the stone stairs after opening the creaking door, she lit the torches from their wall holders. She still holding the flowers, she looked at the different names inscribed. Bright eyes stopped upon her mother's. Too manipulative, too beautiful, too proud, too cunning, too much of a free thinker, they said. Given how the French court had vilified her, Gabrielle was infinitely proud she was not a Sun King's bastard. A grim smile passed on her lips. Oh, her mother did not have one single love and fell hard for a British ambassador, who also had a devious pride in having conceived a child with the Sun King's favorite. Bloody kings, always thinking they could get away with everything....

With reverence, she placed the bouquet in its dedicated spot, before her pale fingers brushed some dust from nameplate.