The King's Concubine

Chapter 11

Orphen was not fast enough. He was distracted by the people in the trees above him, his mind focusing on how to escape with their lives. He heard the sound of the dagger flying too late, he saw Serena’s reaction one second before it struck her, directly through the center of her chest, so far in that all that remained out of her body was the handle. Serena never even felt it go in. The moment it struck her body went into shock. Now she stared down at the handle in her body, her hands shaking as she reached towards it.

“No!” the king shouted, slapping Serena’s hands down, watching blood pour down her body as her heart pumped it too quickly out of the opening her mother had made. “If you take it out you will bleed to death,” he explained to her, pulling her into his arms.

She opened her mouth, gasping, to say something, but no words came out. The dagger had punctured her lungs, she was dying swiftly, and yet so slowly. She was crying, tears slowly glistening in the afternoon sun that filtered through the trees and the king found it unfair that the sun should shine while Serena lay there, dying, her own mother’s dagger the weapon that would destroy her.

He found himself caring that she was dying, and not for the reasons that he had thought he would. She had been a piece of his life from the very beginning, from the day that her mother had offered her in her wake. Serena, always innocent, always taking the pain, always smiling and calming down the nobles as they came to fight with Orphen, physically or verbally, Serena had been the girl he could depend on. And their last moments together, he had torn her apart, emotionally, physically, all for a hatred of a woman who had bore her. He had not realized how callous Lena could be, but now he knew only one thing, he must destroy her.

Serena gave up her fight, her eyes slowly closing, long dark lashes brushing over her rosy cheeks that were now pale as her blood stained the rivers of River Forest. Orphen placed her gently within the waters, knowing he could do nothing now to save her, and his heart beat with anger and hatred, the only thing that motivated him to stand and turn to Lena, his sword already drawn and ready.

“I made you who you are,” Lena reminded him as he stepped closer to her. “If it was not for me you would not be king.”

Orphen stood, leaving the pale frame of Serena in the waters at his feet. He would mourn her properly when there was time, but at that moment the only thing he could do was escape. He was a great swordsman, but with hundreds of creatures with arrows and bows pointed at him he knew that he would lose.

“Foolish elf,” Lena sneered. She stepped through the rivers a bit closer, her confidence restored with the death of her daughter. “It seems you have nowhere to run or hide now.”

“Do I look like I am running?” the king asked of the only people in the country he did not control, and he vowed if he returned to the castle he would change all of that.

Lena smiled and stepped a bit closer. “It seems you are a bit tense, darling,” Lena explained, but her eyes were not on him. They were on the dagger, the gemmed exquisite piece that she had just used to kill her daughter with barely a second deliberation.

“It seems someone else is tenser than I,” Orphen pointed out, following her gaze to the dagger. He watched the dagger for any signs of something more than it was. It was beautiful, so intricately crafted that Lena most likely had is specially made, but this woman was a visionary, and that it had been used as the weapon to kill her daughter he now had to wonder about what the dagger truly meant.

“You misunderstand, I just do not want to lose the gems that are in the hilt of that dagger,” Lena explained.

What Orphen could not see that everyone else in the River Forest could see was what the dagger was draining away slowly. Serena’s soul, the eternal part of her, was not going to just disappear into the worlds that the elves believed in after death, her soul was wrapping around the dagger, almost as if it were being sucked into the vortex of one of those gems. He could not see the faces of the souls lost in the gems, or that Serena’s soul was taking up the very last gem of that dagger.
“The gems mean more to you than your own daughter’s life?” Orphen asked cruelly.

“My daughter means much to me, your highness,” she spat equally as brutal.

It was not lost on the elven king that the woman had used the present tense for her daughter. He watched carefully, the woman’s hand still extended towards the dagger, her fingers itching to grasp around it. Orphen moved to grab Serena’s body, to lift it into his arms and ignore the visionary whose anger he was arousing.

“Do no move,” Lena demanded. “I will let them kill you, your highness; they are itching to do so.”

“They are going to either way,” the king said, his head held high. “I prefer to die with your daughter in my arms, since it is I that brought her to this fate, not her own lack of respect for you, her mother.”

The arrows aimed on him, hundreds of mixes of animals and humans, turning their bows to direct right upon him. Which one was aimed for his heart? He was gentle pulling Serena’s body into his arms, pulling her close to his chest and holding her. He did not know how he was going to survive this mess, but he was a king, he was used to surviving. He had taken his throne by force; he would keep his own life by the same force.

Orphen shifted, his eyes darting over the entire river forest that was in his view. He knew he had to rely on someone he could not see, someone who had always been in the background, though he hated to do it. He closed his eyes and prayed.

Not one of the arrows or weapons that were thrusted, shot, or sprung at him struck their mark. The lion in the winter, the man standing in the shadows, watching over them, stepped out of the shadows, his power surging around the dead body of a lovely girl and the king of a crumbling kingdom. The tall man, a vampire just by the looks of him, stepped into the surging circle of protection and looked down to King Orphen.

“Why did you come?” Orphen asked, hating to feel weak, and appear thus so in front of this man.

“It is my responsibility to protect that that is mine,” the man said in a husky voice. “You two belong to me, as does everything in River Forest, your kingdom, and many of the kingdoms in the following areas.”

“Nicholas,” Lena snarled. “So good to see you.”

“It should not be,” the proud vampire said, standing tall and glancing at the creatures who had suddenly all taken collective steps away from the threat in front of them. “I have not come to bring you peace, but place my claim on this land. This land, that is mine, and this kind’s, and has been dominated by you long enough.”

“I have the protection of the demon king,” Lena snarled again, her face contorted with hatred for the stronger man. “He has promised me this land.”

“This land, this barrier between his land and mine, is mine, and I will claim it, with or without your help you murderess visionary,” Nicholas growled in a lion’s roar. “You are a visionary, you should have known I was coming, but you can not, you old sea hag, for you can not see those who claim darkness as their cloaks.”

“You are running out of time to save my daughter.” Lena cocked an eyebrow upward, hoping that was just the right button to push to make him see that his talk was of nonsense.

“Lena, I hate to disappoint you, but I did not come to save the life of your daughter, I came to save the life of a king, which I have done.” The cold ice in Nicholas’s voice sent shivers down Orphen’s spine and he looked up to the king, wishing to protest. The protest would have gone unnoticed. The king had not been here for Orphen, despite what he said. He was here for war, and war was what he would soon have.

“You are not going to save her?”

Orphen bristled. Something in the woman’s voice told him something that he had not even realized. She had murdered her daughter with the intent to kill, but had she realized that the king of kings had waited in the shadows? Had she sensed his presence from the beginning and only been waiting for his appearance.

“No, ma’am,” he told her calmly.

“She’s running out of time,” Lena hissed.

“I know your plans sea hag.” It did not go unnoticed that it was the second time that Nicholas had called Lena such a thing. “I know what weapon you killed her with and why you wish for me to save her. I will not do so.”

“Of course you won’t,” hissed Lena, “because you do not know how to. I know your daughter can bring her back. Princess Paige could bring her back to this world.”

“Paige is not at the castle currently,” Nicholas said calmly. “Come, Orphen, bring your lover’s body so we can give her a proper burial.”

Orphen stood, his limbs shaking. Did he feel Serena’s loss so deeply that he was shaking? Yes, and no. The presence of this man, no, vampire was frightening. It was consuming in all visages. Darkness shrouded him though he stood in the light of day that glimmered through the trees, the entire forest had gone silent with his presence, and his dark eyes saw nothing and everything all at the same time. This was a man that no one would want to fight with, that no living person would ever think to go up against, and who else wanted to go against him but the Demon King?

“Lena, your plan has failed,” Nicholas announced. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but there is no turning back now. Either you relinquish the hold on this River Forest to me, or there will be war.”

Lena snarled, looking one last time at the limp body of her daughter, the daughter she had murdered. “Let there be war,” she hissed.

“So be it.”