Branded Possession
In the greenhouse garden of the Genoa Ducal Castle Annex, warm sunlight poured through the glass ceiling, and Ella sat upon Cayen's lap in a dress of white silk.
Only days ago she had been a bloodied scrap of a girl dying beside a slop bucket, and yet a faint vitality and luster had already begun to bloom across her skin—thanks to the finest herbal salves Cayen had personally procured, and the clean, careful meals he had provided.
"Mm..."
Cayen's long fingers combed slowly through Ella's softening hair. She buried her forehead against his broad chest and listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. The man's embrace was cool, and yet savagely safe—the only warmth an absolute being capable of reducing the world to ash had ever permitted to a single soul. Hers.
"How is your throat?"
Cayen lifted Ella's chin and gripped it roughly as he asked. She parted her lips a little, showing him. He rubbed her tender mouth with his thumb, confirming that the wounds inside were slowly beginning to close.
"Ah... nn."
A faint sound leaked from Ella's throat. It was not a perfect word, but it was unmistakably clearer and brighter than before.
"Good. Little by little, you ought to become able to call my name."
A strange twist entered Cayen's gaze. He slipped the shoulder strap of her dress down, and across her porcelain skin the red marks he had carved with his teeth the night before lay scattered like petals. He brushed each of those marks with his lips as he whispered low.
"The more your body is rebuilt, the less you will be able to leave my bedchamber. I will not allow any nobleman—anyone at all—to lay eyes on this beautiful jewel."
"Nn..."
Ella felt joy in that possessiveness instead, and wound her arms tightly around his neck. Being confined did not frighten her. To be reared and ruled beneath this man's hands was the only meaning her life possessed.
Just then, Cayen's personal knight entered the garden quietly and bowed his head.
"Your Grace. The annex you spoke of has been prepared."
Cayen's eyes cooled for a moment.
"And Roza's condition?"
"She has yet to regain her senses, Your Grace. Her mind was shattered completely by the previous Duke's torture. She still refuses all food and drink."
Cayen's gaze turned to Ella, nestled in his arms. Roza. A woman dragged into the previous Duke's cruel amusements and left with her mind utterly destroyed. He had intended to dispose of those blood-soaked remnants of the past—until he remembered how Ella, upon seeing Roza in the annex, had shed faint tears and taken the woman's hand as if begging him to save her.
"Ella."
He cupped her cheek.
"I have taken that woman in because you asked it of me. But remember this. My tenderness is reserved for you alone."
Ella nodded and nuzzled her cheek into his palm. Toward the man who had taken in another shattered victim like herself, the light of absolute affection and submission in her eyes twisted deeper still. As if satisfied, Cayen swallowed her red lips in a deep kiss.
"Come, my Ella. The nights of Genoa are long."
A secret, intoxicating paradise belonging to the two of them alone was blooming in the deep shadows of the ducal house.
In a darkened room whose windows were smothered by thick red curtains, the stench of rotting medicine mingled with a cloying perfume. Upon a bed in the corner, a woman huddled her wasted frame and trembled.
The woman whose body and mind had been utterly broken by the previous Duke's vicious sadism—Roza. Her entire body was mottled with torn whip marks and brands seared by fire. Her vacant eyes wandered the empty air, leaking only hollow moans.
"Eek...! D-don't hit me... I-I'm sorry..."
The mere sound of footsteps sent Roza clutching her head in a seizure of terror. The phantoms of the past were still flogging her soul.
The latch clicked. The door opened, and Cayen and Ella stepped inside.
Cayen looked down at the huddled woman with cold eyes. There was no wasted sentiment in that gaze—only the cool appraisal of a ruler who measured everything by efficiency.
"Her mind is completely gone. Leftover refuse from the previous Duke's vile appetites."
As he murmured it without feeling, Ella, standing beside him, gripped the hem of his coat tightly. She approached Roza slowly. This woman had been her own reflection not so long ago. A corner of her chest ached as if she were looking into a mirror. She quietly took Roza's wasted, trembling hand.
"Ah—aah! Get off! Get away...!"
Roza recoiled in horror and tried to wrench her hand free, but Ella did not flee. She pressed that hand to her own warm cheek.
It's all right. This place is no longer hell.
No voice came out, but Ella's cleansed gaze and warmth reached Roza all the same. The woman's crumpled eyes stopped their spasms for an instant and turned toward her—the scent of a deep wound that only the abused could recognize. A thick tear dropped from Roza's eye.
"Ah... uh... uh..."
Cayen watched the two women in silence. Then he caught Ella's shoulder and pulled her into his arms.
"I am taking this woman in because I accepted your request, Ella."
He whispered coldly against her ear.
"She will stay in this annex. I will assign her the finest physicians and attendants. But remember this. Whether this woman lives or dies depends entirely on how perfectly you remain my possession."
Ella nodded calmly. It was a natural price to offer the god who had saved her. She nuzzled her cheek against his chest in a gesture of deep submission.
And so Roza, who had been the previous Duke's blood-soaked tragedy, came to be sheltered in safety in the deep annex of the ducal house—beneath Cayen's secret dominion.
Three years passed.
Under Cayen's ruthless reason and efficient rule, House Genoa had been remade into the most powerful and prosperous territory in the empire. And in the deepest heart of the family—in the Duke's bedchamber, where the entry of outsiders was perfectly controlled—a single, lethal flower had come into bloom.
A whisper of silk. A thin red dress slipped to the marble floor.
The Ella of twenty-one who looked back from the mirror was no longer the bloodied girl of the black market. Hair the color of a night sky, dense as jet. Skin risen to a porcelain fullness. A body of elegant, intoxicating curves. She had the shape of a lady more perfect and more alluring than any noble daughter in the empire. And yet across her skin—along her collarbones, along the inner thighs—the red, bruise-dark bite marks Cayen had obsessively carved into her remained like medals.
"You have bloomed beautifully. My Ella."
Cayen came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her slender waist. His long fingers traced slowly down the smooth line of her spine. She trembled beneath that dominant touch and leaned deeply into his hard chest.
"Ah... yes, Your Grace..."
From a throat that once could not produce even a sound, a clear, sensual voice now unfurled, faint and trembling. The physicians and sorcerers Cayen had personally assigned had opened her speech at last. And yet the only sounds she could make were his name, and the moans she gave beneath him.
"Tell me. Whom do you belong to?"
He lifted her chin and roughly claimed her red mouth. A deep, wet kiss. Their tongues tangled, and a thread of clear saliva slipped from between her lips.
"Yours... I belong to Your Grace. To Cayen..."
Ella gasped for breath as she wound her arms around his neck.
"I will dress you as the finest woman in the empire. But you will not take a single step beyond the reach of my eyes, or the touch of my hands. The instant another man sets his gaze on your body, I will tear his eyes out."
Cayen lifted her and threw her onto the bed. Between her legs, spread across the soft covers, he drove his hard body in.
"Aah...!"
An overwhelming pleasure and pain drove into her. Ella cried out and clutched his broad shoulders. That man's obsessive, sadistic possessiveness was, to her, the most perfect salvation and love in the world.
With Cayen's low whisper, their chests pressed hotly together. Outside, the night was black as pitch. But in the deep of his arms, Ella was tasting, at last, a completeness of rest she had never once been allowed.
And yet beyond the secret paradise of the ducal house, in the empire's neutral city of gold and pleasure, a vast wind was gathering that would shake both their fates.
The southern empire. The sleepless neutral city they said the sun never set upon: Oraria.
Along its vast artificial canals, golden chandeliers rippled on the water. Gambling halls, the finest casinos, and merchant guilds crowded every bank. This city was a holy land of desire, where gold and power alone were law.
Inside a luxury carriage of black obsidian crossing Oraria's central canal, a stifled moan slipped out amid the faint sway of the moving wheels.
"Nn... ah, Your Grace..."
Upon the silk cushions, Ella writhed in Cayen's lap. The bodice of her thin violet silk dress had come half undone, and his hard fingers were climbing slowly along the smooth inside of her thigh.
"Look out the window, Ella."
He caught her chin and turned her face toward the carriage window, where the curtain had been drawn slightly aside. Beyond the glass, brilliant lights and a dense crowd streamed past.
"Ah—you mustn't... outside... they might... they might see..."
Ella trembled with shame and pleasure, clutching his shirt. Through a single pane of glass, the songs and laughter of the people outside drifted in—and yet the inside of this carriage was Cayen's private slaughterhouse, and his bedchamber.
"Let them look. If any man dares to covet you, I will tear out his eyes and throw them to the fish in the canal."
He bit down low on her ear, and with his other hand pressed insistently against her breast.
"Nn...! Ah—!"
Ella bit down hard on the back of her own hand so that no sound would leak outside. The corner of Cayen's mouth twisted in satisfaction.
The reason he had brought her to this glittering neutral city was simple. He had come to put in order the dealings of the merchant houses that circulated his family's vast fortune—and to show his possession, who for three years had been confined to the ducal bedchamber alone, the most magnificent spectacle the world could offer. Of course, only beneath his perfectly controlled shadow.
"I hear the ruler of Oraria has thrown a banquet in my honor."
Cayen swept the beads of sweat from her skin with his lips as he whispered low.
"A merchant magnate who holds gold and commerce in the palm of his hand, they say. Tonight, you will stand at my side as the finest woman in the empire."
"Please... let me stay only at Your Grace's side..."
Ella gasped and wound her arms around his neck. What stirred her was not the glittering foreign scenery, but only the heavy heat of the man who ruled her so obsessively.
The greatest palace in Oraria. The banquet hall of the Golden Mirror.
When Cayen appeared among the gold-plated columns, packed with glittering nobles and great magnates, a silence fell as if water had been dashed across the room. The Iron-Blooded Ruler. The Duke of Genoa. A black fur coat lay across his shoulders, and at his side stood a beautiful woman in a jeweled gown, her hair the color of a night sky—Ella, her arm linked through his.
"Who is that woman...?"
"Is that the one the Duke of Genoa has been keeping locked away?"
"She's unbelievably beautiful..."
Gazes of wonder and greed poured onto Ella from the assembled nobles. She pressed a hand to her trembling chest and pressed herself tightly to Cayen's side. When his cold eyes swept the hall once, not a soul dared look at her so openly again. They bowed their heads.
Then, from the high stairs at the center of the hall, a man descended slowly. A black uniform embroidered in lavish gold thread. An arrogant smile. A thick jewel ring on every finger. The true ruler of Oraria, and the magnate of the empire's greatest merchant house—Armand.
"Welcome to Oraria, Your Grace the Duke of Genoa."
Armand lifted a wine glass with a smooth smile. A man who believed money could rule the world. A ruthless merchant who had buried the past in which poverty had stolen what he held dear, and climbed to the highest seat by chasing gold and power alone.
"A lavish welcome, Armand."
Cayen accepted the wine glass without interest. A cool contest of will stretched taut between the two men, and the air of the hall drew tight.
It was in that instant.
Behind Cayen, among the ducal retainers who had accompanied the journey to Oraria, a woman in a deep-drawn hood passed by, pulling a cart. It was Roza, who had been sheltered in the annex. A breeze lifted, and in that sliver of a moment her hood slipped back.
The hand holding Armand's wine glass went rigid. His arrogant smile shattered completely in a single instant. The glass slipped from his fingers and burst against the floor. Red wine spread across the golden marble like blood.
Armand's eyes were shaking like a madman's. The woman pulling the cart—her body a map of scars, her vacant gaze wandering the empty air—was the lover he had been too poor to save in his youth. The girl who, by the time he had gathered enough money to return, had already been taken into the ducal house and vanished without a trace.
From Armand's lips a low sound leaked out, thick with disbelief, with a terrible despair and shock.
Cayen had watched every beat of it with cold eyes. A cool, mischievous curve touched his mouth as he drew Ella's waist in close.
In the golden city of Oraria, the great gears of tragedy and obsession had begun to turn once more.