Chapter 3: The Binding

Seraphine’s existence had become a tapestry woven with threads of insatiable desire and raw emotional vulnerability, each encounter with Draven binding her tighter to his will while unraveling the fragile armor around her heart. The weeks following their initial meeting at the Midnight Masque had blurred into months, her days and nights consumed by a dual existence. By day, she painted with a fervor that bordered on obsession, her studio in the Rue des Ombres a chaotic shrine to her art. Canvases lined the walls, their surfaces alive with vibrant, erotic images—entwined bodies frozen in moments of near-climax, faces etched with longing and despair, their eyes glowing with an unholy light that mirrored Draven’s crimson gaze. Her works fetched fortunes from Velmont’s elite, who were drawn to the dark magic pulsing through each stroke, sensing the torment and ecstasy captured in the paint. Yet each brushstroke was a confession of her own fractured soul, a mirror to the loneliness she could no longer hide. By night, she surrendered to Draven in hidden rendezvous that pushed her to the brink of physical and emotional collapse—abandoned chapels where the echoes of her moans mingled with her whispered fears, misty graveyards where the chill of the air heightened her sensitivity and her dread, and opulent beds in his sprawling manor where silk sheets tangled around her writhing limbs, her body trained to the edge of ecstasy, her heart laid bare in the aftermath.

Draven had become both her muse and her captor, his presence a constant pull on her senses and her soul. In their stolen moments, he revealed fragments of his past, each revelation a thread that wove them closer together, yet deepened her fear of being consumed by it. Born in 1423, he had been a warrior, turned during a plague that swept through his homeland, his humanity stripped away in a ritual of blood and shadow. He spoke of centuries wandering the earth, searching for an equal, his voice low and resonant as he teased her body, each word punctuated by a touch that brought her to the edge but denied release. “I’ve seen empires rise and fall,” he murmured one night, his fingers tracing the curve of her hip, “but none have held me as you do.” His confessions stirred something in Seraphine—a flicker of hope that he might see her as more than a thrall, but also a terror that she was merely a fleeting obsession, destined to be discarded like so many before her. In her, he saw potential—a thrall who could become his eternal companion, bound through the exquisite torment of edging and the raw intimacy of shared vulnerabilities. But the cost of such a bond weighed heavily on her, each encounter leaving her heart more exposed, her soul more fragile.

Their encounters grew increasingly intense, each one a deliberate art form designed to amplify both physical tension and emotional exposure. One night, in the heart of Draven’s manor, he led her to a grand chamber hidden behind a tapestry of woven midnight. The room was a cathedral of decadence, its walls draped in black velvet that absorbed the flickering light of a dozen candelabras, their flames casting shadows that danced like specters across the polished obsidian floor. A massive canopy bed dominated the space, its posts carved with serpentine figures, their eyes inlaid with rubies that seemed to watch her. Above the bed, a silk rope hung from a gilded ring, its purpose both ominous and thrilling. Draven’s eyes, those twin rubies that had haunted her since their first meeting, held her captive as he guided her beneath the rope, his gaze stripping her bare before his hands even touched her.