Blood Rain Upon the Golden City

When a wineglass shattered across the floor of Oraria's grand central banquet hall, staining the golden marble with red wine like spilled blood, every noble and merchant in the room stopped breathing at once.

The arrogant smile had vanished completely from the face of Armand — the empire's greatest merchant magnate, the man said to hold even the Emperor in the palm of his gold-lined hand.

Armand's trembling gaze had locked, transfixed, on the figure behind Cayen: a scarred woman in a deep, tattered hood, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hauling a ducal cart as she passed. Roza.

His first love, stolen by the Genoa family's blood-soaked slave hunters because he had been too powerless as a boy. The name that had driven him mad when, by the time he had amassed enough gold to buy the world, even her corpse could no longer be found. And now Roza was alive, moving, right before his eyes — covered head to toe in whip marks and brands, her gaze vacant, reduced to playing the part of Cayen's menial servant.

Veins surged at Armand's throat. The sapphire ring on his finger creaked as if it might split in his fist.

Cayen watched that raw despair with cool, appraising eyes, then drew Ella's slender waist tightly against his chest. Caught between the murderous killing intent pouring off Armand and Cayen's arrogant heat, Ella gasped and clutched at the fabric of his shirt.

Without so much as glancing at the shattered glass, Cayen murmured into Armand's ear.

"Is the reunion so grand it warrants breaking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a glass, Magnate Armand?"

Armand clenched his teeth, trying to compose his voice, but what leaked from his crushed throat was a sound thick with blood.

"...Duke Genoa. That woman passing behind you. Who is she?"

The corner of Cayen's mouth curved into a wicked, cruel arc.

"A servant of my house. Leftover scraps the previous Duke liked to amuse himself with. Why? Is she some beast you happen to know?"

Armand's reason stretched taut, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ready to snap at the blatant provocation. He wanted nothing more than to unleash his guards and snatch Roza back that instant — but what lived in Cayen's eyes was not mere aristocratic arrogance. It was the iron-blooded control of a man who could drown the entire empire in blood.

Armand crushed down on his burning heart and forced a twisted smile onto his lips.

"Scraps, you say... His Grace Duke Genoa certainly collects some precious possessions. In that case, allow me to propose a wager."

Cayen rested his chin on his hand, looking down at Armand with idle interest. Armand pulled the jeweled ring from his finger and tossed it onto the central banquet table.

"Half of Oraria's commercial rights. Ten million gold of my own fortune. And my life. I will stake it all on a gamble with His Grace — a wager to the death."

The banquet hall rippled with shock. Ten million gold and half of Oraria's trade — a sum astronomical enough to shake the empire's entire treasury. Cayen's black eyes kindled with a cold fire.

"The stakes are large enough to amuse me. What is it you want?"

Armand's gaze stabbed, blood-red, toward Roza's receding back.

At Armand's chilling declaration, Ella buried her face against Cayen's chest and trembled. But Cayen seized her chin roughly, kissed her as if to devour her lips, then turned a contemptuous laugh on Armand.

And so, in the golden city of Oraria, a brutal game of life and death began: a mad magnate desperate to save one woman, and an absolute duke determined to keep what was his.

Leaving the banquet behind, Cayen returned to the private ducal chambers of the Golden Crown — Oraria's most opulent residence. The moment the door shut, he shoved Ella roughly against the floor-to-ceiling glass.

Beyond that wall of windows, Oraria's night sky bloomed with lavish fireworks, and the golden ripples of the canals poured in.

"Ah...! Y-Your Grace...!"

Ella gasped, trapped between the cold glass at her back and the man's overwhelming frame. Cayen flung the fur coat from his shoulders to the floor and, without hesitation, tore open the bodice of her violet silk dress with his fingers.

The silk split with a whisper. Beneath Oraria's glittering lights, Ella's porcelain skin was laid bare — along with the red bite marks Cayen had left upon it. His gaze had been honed to a razor's edge since the confrontation with Armand, his sadistic, obsessive possessiveness swollen to the brink of explosion.

"That rat Armand has his sights on your life."

His long fingers traced down the smooth line of her collarbone, then seized her breast roughly.

"Hnh...! Ah, aah...!"

Ella threw her head back as pain bloomed into a strange, unfamiliar pleasure. The glittering cityscape beyond the glass — the knowledge that anyone looking up might see her in this shameless state — sent a violent shame shuddering through her entire body.

Cayen lifted one of her legs and wrapped it around his waist, pressing his body flush against hers.

"Look, Ella. This is the City of Gold you stand in. The tens of thousands breathing down there, Armand who covets you — all of them are insects to be crushed beneath my boot."

He bit roughly at her ear, and with his other hand reached deep into her tender flesh.

"Anh...! Haah, Your Grace...! It hurts, ah—!"

Ella cried out, moaning as she clutched Cayen's dark brown hair. With every sound that tore from her, their ragged breath fogged white against the glass. Cayen drove into her harder, as if savoring those sharp, electric moans.

At that cold, devastating confession, Ella felt climax rising from the depths of her chest and wrapped her arms around Cayen's neck. This twisted, dangerous obsession directed at her — it was the only sanctuary she had in the world.

"M-my life, my body — all of it belongs to Your Grace... I will go to no one else...!"

At her confession, Cayen's mouth twisted in dark satisfaction. He swallowed her flushed lips and filled her entire body with his heat. Outside, Armand's schemes and the blood-soaked conspiracies of the golden city were gathering like a storm — but here, before this secret, sensual pane of glass, there existed only their private, sadistic paradise.

Cayen did not release her until the night had grown deep. And Ella, crying out with her whole body the joy of a possession who had been saved, surrendered to the dominion of that long night.

Oraria's night never sleeps. But the shadows behind that glittering sleeplessness were always thick, and always damp.

Over the outer walls of the Golden Crown, where canal waters lapped softly, dozens of black silhouettes began to scale the stone like spiders. They were the elite of the Black Scorpion, the empire's premier assassination guild — hired by Armand.

Their purpose was singular: take Duke Genoa's head, and deliver the scarred woman he had brought — Roza — and the Duke's personal possession, Ella, to Armand's feet. Promised half of Oraria's commercial empire, the assassins' eyes glittered with vicious greed and killing intent.

They melted the window bars in silence, infiltrated the estate, and crept toward the master's bedchamber. The well-oiled, heavy bedroom door eased open a sliver with the faintest creak. The assassins' leader reversed his grip on a poisoned dagger, about to launch himself into the dark — and that was the moment.

"For a pack of rats, you make a rather noisy entrance."

A low, dry voice unfurled from the darkness. In an instant, the chandelier blazed to life with a light that seared the eyes. The assassins startled, raising their weapons — then sucked in a breath at the sight before them.

A sofa of the finest velvet sat in the center of the room. Upon it, Duke Genoa — Cayen — lounged with his legs crossed, wearing nothing but a thin shirt, a cigar dangling lazily from his lips. And behind his massive frame, Ella trembled, her face buried against the broad plane of his back. Cayen's black coat was all that covered her, hanging precariously, and one of his hands gripped her bare thigh with the authority of a man claiming what was his.

"D-Duke Genoa...!"

"Trash sent by Armand, I take it. To shove vermin like this into my chambers — even Oraria's great magnate seems to be running out of capital."

Cayen flicked the cigar, its tip still glowing red, onto the carpet and crushed it slowly beneath his heel.

"Kill him! He's alone anyway!"

The leader roared and charged, dagger flashing. But Cayen did not even rise from his seat. He slowly withdrew the hand that had been stroking Ella's thigh and brought it to his hip.

A chilling metallic rasp — and a silver gun barrel flashed.

Two dry, consecutive shots tore through Oraria's night. A hole punched clean through the leaping leader's forehead. Dark brain matter and fresh blood sprayed across the far wall.

"Guh...!"

Starting with that corpse that had fallen without even a scream, Cayen's personal knights poured in from every corner of the estate like ghosts. The stealth assassination transformed, in an instant, into a one-sided slaughter.

A wet slice. A heavy thrust. Horrific screams filled the mansion as limbs were severed and viscera spilled. The red carpet grew thicker, wetter, soaked in the blood they shed.

"AAAAH!"

Ella trembled at the blood-soaked massacre unfolding before her eyes, yet she clung to Cayen's back and did not let go. No hell in the world, however cruel, was more terrifying than leaving this man's side.

"Ella. Close your eyes. I won't have the blood of this refuse staining them."

With one hand, Cayen reloaded the pistol with casual indifference. With the other, he gently covered Ella's eyes. In the very heart of a slaughter, a tenderness reserved for his woman alone — viciously contradictory, and deeply unsettling.

"Y-Your Grace..."

Blinded, Ella clung to Cayen's cold warmth alone, amid the thick scent of blood stabbing her nostrils and the death-screams battering her ears.

Within minutes, a grotesque silence settled over the bedroom. Dozens of assassins lay scattered across the floor, reduced to chunks of meat. Only one — the assassins' vice-captain, barely clinging to life — crawled on severed stumps to Cayen's feet.

"S-spare... spare me, Your Grace...! W-we were only following a contract...!"

Cayen rose slowly from the sofa. He tapped the blood-soaked vice-captain's cheek with the toe of his leather boot, looking down with ice in his eyes.

"Go tell your master."

Cayen's boot crushed the man's jaw. Bone crumpled. The man foamed at the mouth. Not a flicker of emotion crossed Cayen's gaze.

Cayen kicked the man hard in the chest and flung him out.

When the bloody cleanup was done, Cayen flicked the blood from his gloves and turned. He found Ella's clear, frightened eyes looking up at him from where she huddled. Absolute violence. And a predator's obsession, unleashed solely to protect her. Rather than fear, a strange rapture rose in Ella, and she reached both arms toward him.

Cayen withdrew his bloodied hand and stroked her cheek with the clean back of the other.

"This glittering city nearly stained itself with your blood."

"...But Your Grace is here. You will protect me."

Ella pressed her lips to his palm, whispering in a breathless voice. Cayen's eyes ignited with a deep, sensual heat. Without hesitation, he scooped her up and laid her — almost threw her — onto the clean center of the bed, where no blood had reached.

A brutal overture, staged in the heart of the City of Gold. And a ducal night dense and destructive enough to drown out the stench of blood began, once more, to consume Ella's entire body.

The corridor beyond still thrummed with dismembered corpses and the reek of blood — but the moment the thick bedroom door shut, every sound of that hell was sealed away completely. Only the two of them remained, their breathing grown ragged, filling the lavish chamber.

Cayen tore open the blood-spattered buttons of his shirt as if ripping them off in irritation. From the hard, carved muscle of his chest, the feral heat of the slaughter he had just committed radiated in waves. Thrown onto the center of the bed, Ella exhaled a heated breath and gazed up, transfixed, at that overwhelming male body.

"Were you afraid?"

Cayen asked quietly as he crawled onto the bed. His knee parted her slender legs and settled between them. Ella slowly shook her head. Her white arms coiled around his neck like a serpent.

"Your Grace... you killed them for me."

By any ordinary measure of the world, it was a mad answer. Dozens of men had been reduced to meat before her eyes, and yet what lived in Ella's gaze was not terror but absolute relief — and a blind, devoted love. The only god who would hide her and protect her from a world that had come to kill her.

Cayen's mouth twisted darkly. That abnormal submission, that blindness, whipped his sadistic possessiveness into a frenzy.

"That's right. I am the only one who may take your breath. I will not let any other vermin so much as touch a single strand of your hair."

Cayen's mouth seized Ella's red lips roughly.

"Mmph...! Nngh, haah...!"

It was no mere kiss. It was a predator's kiss — ravaging every tender membrane of her mouth, tangling their saliva, seeking to control even her breath without remainder. Ella thrashed, suffocating, yet she never pushed him away — only dug her nails into his hard shoulders.

Cayen's long fingers stripped away the coat hanging precariously over her body, then tore her thin undergarments as well. Beneath Oraria's lavish moonlight, Ella's naked body was fully revealed, the faint traces of old wounds still visible upon her skin. Like a beast claiming its prey, Cayen sank his teeth hard into the scar another house had left on her collarbone.

"Aah! It hurts... hnh, aah!"

"It hurts? You'd know what real pain is if your throat were cut like those bastards dying out there."

Cayen licked slowly, thickly, up the blood welling at her collarbone, whispering with cruelty. A strange pleasure surged in with the pain, and Ella's back arched like a bow. Her body had already been thoroughly remade to receive even the pain Cayen inflicted as love, as salvation.

His cold hand seized her breast roughly; the other plunged without mercy into the place that was growing wet for him.

"Hngh! Don't, Your Grace... ah, it's too — too deep...!"

"Tighten around me, Ella. Prove to me that you're alive."

Without hesitation, Cayen drove his hot, hard desire into her depths. At the moment of joining, a suppressed, animal moan tore from both their mouths. The extreme adrenaline of a blood-soaked slaughter made their coupling far more destructive, far more primal, than usual.

The obscene, wet slap of flesh against flesh tore through the night air. Cayen pinned both her wrists above her head with one hand and drove his hips like a beast, merciless.

"Ah! Aah! Cay— Cayen...! Aaaah!"

The bed shook as if it would break. From Ella's mouth came cries she could not even string together. In the waves of pleasure, her reason burned white and away.

The iron cage of the black market that had abused her. The memories of horrific beatings. Every fragment of that hell was melting perfectly, turning to ash, in the overwhelming heat of the man now driving through her.

"Cry. Cling to me and cry yourself to pieces beneath me."

Cayen licked the tears pooling at her eyes and pressed even more relentlessly against her most sensitive place. In his black eyes, a dark and terrible ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠attachment flickered — the will to destroy the entire world if that was what it took to bind this woman to his bed forever.

Beneath Oraria's golden night sky, the Duke's complete dominion — smeared in blood and lust — bound even the last fragment of Ella's soul.