Chapter 1: The Bloodied Kimono
The mud sucked at Leila’s worn cloth shoes, a cold, clinging kiss with every step. The potato field was a vast, brown quilt stitched with ragged green threads of weed, sodden from the morning’s rain. Each tuber she pulled from the earth was a victory, a small, dirty promise of another night without the hollow ache in her little brother’s belly.
A heavy thud and a sharp, bitten-off curse froze her.
It came from the bamboo thicket marking the field’s eastern edge. Not an animal sound. A human one, laced with pain. Her father’s warnings echoed in her skull: Bandits. Deserters. Worse. You hear anything, you run. You don’t look.
She should run.
But another sound came—a wet, ragged gasp. The sound a man makes when he’s trying not to scream.
Her feet moved before her mind could stop them, carrying her toward the rustling stalks. She pushed a fan of broad leaves aside.
And the world narrowed.
A man was half-sprawled in the trench between the field and the thicket, one hand pressed to his side. He was enormous, even folded in pain, his shoulders straining the exquisite dark blue silk of a kosode ripped wide open. The fabric was slashed, and through the tear, a deep gash welled blood, dark and insistent. But it was his face that stopped her breath.
He was like no one she’d ever seen. Angles and planes, harsh and unyielding. His hair, black as a crow’s wing, was disheveled, fallen across a forehead sheened with sweat. And his eyes—they snapped open and fixed on her. They were a pale, chilling silver, like winter river ice. Predatory. Even wounded, they held a terrifying, appraising sharpness.
“You,” he growled, the word a rough command. “Come here.”
Every instinct shrieked. Japanese. The word was a cold stone in her stomach. The stories from Shanghai whispered through the village—cruelty, conquest, a machine of relentless power. This man, in his fine, torn silk, was part of that. He was the danger her father meant.
Yet the blood seeped through his fingers, dripping into the mud, becoming part of the same earth that grew her potatoes. It was just blood. A life, leaking out.
He watched her, those silver eyes missing nothing—her fear, her hesitation, the way her hands trembled. A cynical smirk twisted his lips. “Or run, little mouse. See how far you get.”
The disdain in his voice did it. It melted her paralysis into a shaky, defiant motion. She took a step forward, then another. Kneeling in the mud, arm’s length away, she avoided his gaze and focused on the wound. It was ugly, deep. He needed a bandage.
She had nothing. No clean cloth, no medicine. Just her own clothes.
Without a word, she grabbed the sleeve of her rough-spun tunic, found a weak seam at the shoulder, and pulled. The fabric tore with a dull rip. She folded the strip of plain cloth into a pad.
“Move your hand,” she said, her voice a thin reed.
He looked amused, but he lifted his blood-slick hand. She pressed the pad hard against the gash. He didn’t flinch, but a muscle jumped in his jaw. She could feel the heat of his skin, the firm, terrifying solidity of the muscle beneath. Working quickly, she wrapped the long tail of cloth around his torso, pulling it tight to secure the pad. Her fingers fumbled, brushing against the bare skin of his back. It was like touching marble warmed by the sun.
He was studying her face, her downcast eyes, the way her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Why?” he asked, his voice closer now. He had leaned in.
She tied off the knot, her job done. “A life is a life.”
A snort. “Naïve.”
The word was a slap. She shoved back from him, scrambling to her feet, mud coating her knees. The fear came roaring back, twice as strong. She had touched a tiger. She met his eyes for a split second—that chilling silver held a spark of something darkly intrigued—and then she broke.
She ran. She flew across the potato field, her basket forgotten, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird. She didn’t stop until the thatched roofs of her village swallowed her, until she was safe inside her family’s one-room hut, clutching her trembling hands to her chest.
She could still smell him. Blood, iron and salt, and beneath it, something else—sandalwood and power.
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The next morning, the world ended with the sound of engines.
Trucks, growling and brutal, ground to a halt in the village square. Boots, dozens of them, hit the dirt in perfect, ominous unison. Black-uniformed Japanese soldiers fanned out, their bayonets glinting under the pale sun. Families were dragged from their homes, crying, shoved into a terrified huddle in the center of the square.
Leila was among them, pressed between her weeping mother and her stoic, gray-faced father. The officer, a man with a thin mustache, barked questions in harsh Japanese. No one understood. A soldier backhanded Old Man Feng for his silence.
Then, a late-arriving car, sleek and black, purred into the square. A chauffeur leapt out to open the rear door.
A tall man in a immaculate, Western-style charcoal gray suit and overcoat emerged. He moved with a lethal, easy grace, surveying the scene as if inspecting livestock. His gaze was winter river ice.
Leila’s blood turned to frost.
It was him. The man from the field. No trace of pain or vulnerability now. Only absolute, chilling authority. The Japanese officer snapped to attention, bowing deeply.
Ron’s eyes swept the cowering villagers. They passed over Leila once, then snapped back. He stilled. Recognition flared in that silver gaze, followed by a possession so instant and complete it stole the air from her lungs.
He pointed a single, gloved finger directly at her.
Two soldiers strode forward, cutting through the crowd. Her father lunged, but a rifle butt sent him crumpling to the dirt. Her mother wailed. Rough hands closed around Leila’s thin arms, dragging her forward. She stumbled, her legs useless, until she was forced to stand alone before him in the churned dust.
He looked down at her. He was a mountain, a god of this new, terrible world. He smelled of fine wool and that same faint sandalwood.
“Your name,” he said. His voice was calm, conversational, yet it carried across the silent square.
Tears blurred her vision. She tasted salt on her lips. She opened her mouth, but only a sob came out.
“Your name,” he repeated, softer, a deadly whisper meant only for her.
“Leila,” she choked out, the sound barely audible.
A slow, satisfied smile touched his lips. He turned his head a fraction toward the officer. “This village is under my protection. No reprisals. The family is unharmed.” His eyes returned to her, drinking in her terror. “This one comes with me.”
He didn’t ask. He stated a fact.
As he turned back toward the car, his driver holding the door, he paused. He spoke over his shoulder, the words settling over her like a chain.
“You said a life is a life, Leila. You saved mine.” He glanced at her weeping mother, at her father struggling to rise. “Now, I own yours.”
The soldiers released her arms. It was the only instruction she needed. To stay was to court death for everyone she loved. To go was a different kind of death.
She took one last look at her family, at the dirt of her home, then turned and followed the monster to his car. She did not look back.
In the pristine leather interior, smelling of power and polish, he did not look at her. He watched the ravaged countryside roll by.
“You will learn, Leila,” he said, finally, as Shanghai’s jagged skyline pierced the horizon. “You will learn to serve me in all things.”
Outside, the first distant thump of artillery shelling began, a dull heartbeat for a dying world. Inside the car, there was only silence, and the overwhelming scent of his will. Her hands, lying numb in her lap, were still faintly stained with the reddish-brown mud from the field.
And his blood.