The Glassmaker’s Bride

A Gothic Vampire Romance and Historical Fantasy Mystery in Renaissance Venice and Murano, where an Enchanted Mirror Reveals the Truth

By: Alex Alicea

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In late-summer 1589, Murano’s furnaces burn like small suns, and Lucia Valieri keeps her father’s craft alive in a world that would rather see a woman silent than skilled. Then a stranger arrives with a garnet ring that catches no light, paying a fortune for a mirror that must be delivered after dark. And the glass begins to do something it has never done before. It tells the truth.

Lucia knows the secret silvering the guild would kill to steal, a recipe “not written down” and “not safely” shared. Pulled into a powerful household and bound to a husband who carries an impossible absence, she discovers what the house keeps like an accounting: a ledger of brides who became stone or fire, and a blank line waiting for her ending.

Accursio is careful, controlled, and terrifyingly disciplined. He wants a mirror that “will not flatter.” He wants to see what remains when performance ends.
But Lucia’s body is changing, and the hunger wakes in her like heat in a gather of molten glass.

The enemy isn’t only supernatural. It’s political. Marco Contarini moves against Lucia through the state itself, petitioning the Council of Ten to confiscate her workshop, formulas, and inventory, and to remove her from Murano for “irregularities.” And when Lucia and Accursio stand before the masked council, the accusation is chillingly specific: their mirrors don’t just reflect faces. They reflect essence. “They speak.”

Meanwhile, Accursio teaches Lucia the only way to survive what she’s becoming: restraint, choice, and the brutal discipline of measured thirst.
In a city of masks and bargains, the most dangerous thing might be an honest mirror.

If you love gothic vampire romance wrapped in Renaissance Venice / Murano glassmaking, with court intrigue, slow burn tension, and an enchanted mirror that drags secrets into the light, The Glassmaker’s Bride is your next obsession.

Open the doors of the workshop. Step into the palazzo. And decide what you’ll become when the mirror refuses to lie.