The King's Concubine

Chapter 14

I am corrupted. I am the evil of Orphen’s creation. I have left my lover to die by the hands of the king. I am now infiltrating my own village in the hopes of destroying my own mother before her evil plans come to fruition. I deserve my new curse.

Why am I seeing visions and unable to speak them? Why do I see the world in destruction, the new Dragon King taking hold? My mother is wrong. What she foresees is wrong. I want to tell Orphen, I want to tell him that my mother is forcing something to happen that will destroy this very continent. Please, Orphen, ask me what I see. Please Orphen, look at me.

My heart is fluttering. Every time his hand touches my arm, or goes around my waist, I feel this giddy feeling of a teenager in love. This feeling is strong, stronger than what I felt for Hanzori…

Poor Hanzori.

“Don’t look at the blood,” Orphen said to Serena softly. “Don’t even think of him. He’s not worth it.”

“I know,” Serena said calmly.

They walked together in an awkward silence that filled the gap between them. The void that circled them was sucking in all of the energy and tension. This was officially the first time they were alone without some ulterior motive. He was not there to try to seduce her, he was not trying to divine some mysticism from her; he was simply there to help her. He wanted to save her, to save this world, and for what?

“Serena, what do you see?” Orphen asked slowly, afraid of the answer he would receive.

Serena wished the sides of her lips could turn in that sort of smile that conveyed how glad she was he asked her that question. She, like all visionaries in stories, in the midst of a vision, would appear completely blank though her emotions would run high. “I see blackness and the descent of madness,” why was she speaking like that? She squeezed her eyes shut, as tight as she could, and still it looked like she was only calmly closing her eyes to convey the further messages of doom. “Lena’s convictions will ruin this continent before the day is through, and few will be saved.” The horror of what she just said wrapped around her body. She wished she could shout, she wished she could say more, but her lips fell closed, her tongue ran silent. There was more, he had asked her, why could she not tell him the rest?

“Is there any way around this?” Orphen asked, his voice shaking. Was this why he was fighting for this world? Because it could mean the death of more than just a nation, of a village, but of an entire continent with the population of the world upon it?

“No.” There was more. Orphen, ask her more!

He did not. He just shuddered slightly and stopped walking, suddenly frightened to find what lies within the village. He could see the little huts and houses through the trees, he could even hear the echoes of Lena’s screams echoing off of the water, vibrating through it. The entire forest was feeling the pain of the visionary.

“We will wait for Nicholas to join us,” Orphen stated.

“It will make no difference.” She said this, only because it directly pertained to Orphen himself.

“It will, whether you can see it or not.” She knew he was convincing himself of this; that it was for her own soul and safety that he wished for the entire backup he could muster. Even if he brought his army from the castle it would not be enough. The final blow would be a death blow, it would come quickly and strike through directly. Those who survived would be forever changed. Those who did not survive would suffer through the demons of the underworlds, the gates of those demons opening even as Serena stood on the ground directly above one pinnacle of their helm. She glanced at her feet unconsciously. Everything seemed clearer to her, her visions constant, and still she could not speak.

Orphen caught her glimpsing at the ground. He took her hand in his own and instead of inquiring of what she saw, perhaps he knew it best not to know the visions she had of the underground, he told her sweets words, or as sweet as he could ever speak, “I promise you when this is over I will make up the awful things I have done to you, I will cherish you, I will… I will not change, but you I will treat with the respect you deserve.”

Serena cocked her head to the side and tried to convey the raising of an eyebrow, though her face remained blank. “Orphen, you have years of making up to do to me.”

Orphen smiled at her, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against hers. His black hair fell into her eyes, her blonde hair falling back and away from their bodies. “At least I know you still have a personality.”

“Is that why you said that to me, Your Majesty?” Serena asked, his lips and breath so close to her own. For some odd reason she itched to kiss him, to melt below him.

“Yes… and no,” he admitted. He kept moving forward. Serena closed her eyes and allowed it to happen. She allowed her lips to be taken by a man who had forced her into his bed, who had manipulated her since the beginning, but a man she was bound to for the rest of their unnatural lives. She allowed his lips to roam over hers and unlike the first time he had ever pushed his lips to hers she felt the warmth spread through her body, the heat strobe out to every nerve-ending.

“You two are stalling.” Serena guiltily pulled away from Orphen, without a flicker of the blush she felt should have been burning her cheeks.

Orphen turned to the high king casually. “Who knows what our luck will be in River Forest,” he proclaimed, “I wanted to make sure she knew how I truly felt.”

“Mortals and their need to love,” Nicholas snapped and pushed passed them.

Serena watched him move deeper in the forest. Orphen took her hand and leaned over to her, whispering in her ear, “I know he loves, he has three sons and a daughter, all by a woman he had been with nearly forever before she died last year.”

“How do you kill a vampire?” Serena asked, genuinely curious. She knew a simple stake, perhaps even a beheading, would not kill a creature as great as Nicholas. Was his wife nowhere near the greatness of the high king in powers? Was she easily killed by some accident around the household?

“You probably do not want to know the answer to that question,” Orphen said hoarsely, as if even the memory frightened him. Serena pulled away from him slightly, afraid of seeing what was in his mind if she touched him at that moment. Anything that could scare Orphen terrified her.

They followed the high king further. They could see the village, they were in the village, and Serena’s heart would not stop pounding. She wanted to pull on Orphen, to inform him her body was warning them, and she could not. During a vision she was incapable of informing him in any way unless it directly pertained to him, and at the moment it did not. It pertained to Lena’s hut.

She did not need to warn him or the high king. They stopped abruptly and looked up, staring at the sky that now was black though a slight bit of sun should have still shined over them. It was not black because of complete darkness, it was black with bodies covering the skies, large bodies with extensions growing from them, wings, tails, spikes, all shapes and sizes and colors.

One alighted and Serena’s heart nearly stopped as the largest dragon, the dragon known as the dragon king, landed casually on Lena’s cottage, keeping his body lightly lifted by the winds of time they controlled so as not to crush the very simple home. The dragon looked down on Orphen, Serena, and even Nicholas, and gave off a scowling sort of smile.

“This,” he said in the deep rumbling voice that resonated from the three chambered heart, not from vocal chords long since unused unless screaming at the skies, “my friends, is the end.”