The Dark King's Bride (19 page)

             
What in the world is going on here?! I am just wanting to marry Daniel, but one thing after another is happening.

             
Lifting her head, Lily remained sitting on the floor as she found an additional ten men from the town to be stepping inside of the broken side doors on both sides of the ballroom. The visual of the amount of her father’s men increasing made her even more nervous and on edge about the whole thing.

             
“It seems like you have underestimated me, Daniel.” Radcliff said. He spoke in a coy tone to match the growing smirk on his face. “I have brought an army with me tonight to take your royal court and you down in the blink of an eye.”

             
Lily couldn’t let her father and his team do this to Daniel and those that were there to witness their wedding to one another. She wouldn’t allow the visual of him lying on the ground with his head severed and her father standing over him enter her mind. She would not let him die if it could be helped.

             
“You poor…poor…pathetic human.” Daniel’s voice started to harbor a growl underneath the surface of his firm tone. “It really makes me sad to see you actually believing you can destroy beings that have existed for far longer than you have been alive, and possess the ability to strike you down with very little effort.”

             
Getting to her feet, she made her way to Daniel’s side, and turned her eyes in her father’s direction shortly before her voice escaped from her lips.

             
“Father,” Lily said, “this is not the time nor the place for you to assert any type of power over the situation.” Although her voice trembled with nervousness and fear, she spoke to him in a growing brave tone that moved throughout her body. “Why can’t you leave me to be with Daniel?”

             
“He is a monster, Lily!” Shouting to his daughter, Radcliff narrowed his eyes on her from where he stood during the conversation with her. The tone of anger in his voice matched his facial expressions due to her standing with his enemy and not beside him. “Daniel is not a great man or a hero-“

             
“You know what, father…”

             
“What?”

             
Finding her body to be experiencing a new found confidence and strength, Lily drew in a breath of air, and moved a step towards him as the words flooded from her mouth.

             
“Sometimes…a great man or a hero are not the best choices for a husband, father, lover or king. Sometimes…it is best…to have a monster for a husband, father, lover…and king.”

             
She didn’t pull her eyes away from her father’s direction, but she could sense Daniel becoming overwhelmed with admiration for her standing up in the face of the man who gave her life on his own behalf. With her attention focused on Radcliff, Lily noticed a flame of rage starting to engulf him. Her body moved backwards, quickly, with the help of Daniel’s strong right arm moving around her midsection. She glanced to the face of her husband before looking in the direction of her father to find him wielding his sword with deadly intent. The look on his face sent chills rolling up and down her spine while the answer she received from him startled her right to the very core of her being.

             
“You have chosen your fate, Lily…and your fate…is death.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

             
That is it…I will not stand by and allow the woman I have searched so long for to have her life cut down before she has the chance to live it as my queen and wife!

             
Fueled by unbridled rage that had started to burn inside of him the moment his eyes witnessed Lily’s father attempt to strike her down in a fit of blind anger, Daniel moved her behind his tall physique, and spoke with a thunderous tone that would put the fear of god in any man, woman, or small child.

             
“That is to be the fate of every mortal man that chooses to side with you this very night, Radcliff!” Daniel shouted, showing no fear or kindness in his firm voice towards those who would dare defy his wish to marry the peasant girl. “Anyone that wishes to steal the life of this region’s queen and my wife…will die either by blade…or by bite!”

             
“You are nothing but evil!” Radcliff exclaimed. Pointing his sword in his direction, he maintained his stance while barking at him. “I have seen what lies deep within your eyes.”

             
“And what have you seen?”

             
“I have seen nothing but corruption, evil…and the devil in your gaze every time I have come here to pay my respects to you!”

             
“The only devil that is in this room tonight…is you, Radcliff.”

             
Despite being engaged in an argument with him, Daniel sensed two men coming towards where Lily was nestled behind him for her own safety. The monster in him growled its way out of his mouth from the fact that the mortal men didn’t care to try to take the life of his love with him standing right there. He moved at a speed that seemed to be nothing but a blur, wrapped his hands around each of their necks, and snapped them like a twig. His eyes watched them fall to the floor atop each other before he moved his attention towards his wife and his new father-in-law.

             
“Impossible…” Radcliff whispered out of fear from what his eyes, as well as the eyes of his men, had just witnessed in a short amount of time. “There is no way that you could have done that so easily! There are no vampires alive who can move that-“

             
“Quickly?” Chuckling out his simple question, he stepped over the two dead men, and moved up to where Lily stood. His right arm reached to where her back was, and pulled her towards him, bringing her front side to press against a side of his tall physique. Keeping his attention solely on his target, Daniel eased the chuckle away from his tone, and spoke in a more firm, serious tone. “For those of you who have come here tonight to commit an ill act…This is your last chance to leave my home before it is too late for you, and your fate is the one that befell the men on the ground behind me.”

             
Secretly, he hoped that Lily’s father and his men would take his offer, and leave before things got more violent. Daniel didn’t want to end someone’s life that night, but he was prepared to do so if it meant keeping the woman he cared for with all of his being safe and sound.

             
Standing his ground, Daniel watched Radcliff motion to his men that were by the side doors, and had them come over in his direction, putting on the façade that they would be leaving. He looked into the mind of the mortals’ leader, and saw only one thing there: Destruction to all of the vampires and his wife that night.

             
“Lily...” he whispered, underneath his breath, towards her while he kept his focus on her father, “When I give you the command…you are to get your mother, go to my personal chambers, and await for me there.”

             
“I don’t want to leave you, my lord.” Lily’s voice trembled with dread the moment he asked her to leave when he gave her the order to do. Standing close to him, she continued to speak to him in a soft, gentle whisper. “Is there nothing I can do?”

             
“I am afraid so, my lady”

             
“Perhaps I can do something to help-“

             
“There is no other choice, and the only options are the ones I have mentioned to you.”

             
Within the blink of an eye, Daniel witnessed the rest of Radcliff’s men drawing their weapons from their hips with the same determination that was there in their leader’s eyes. He cast glances to the other vampires, giving them a silent signal, before he narrowed his eyes in the direction of his target. His mouth drew in a breath of air, and released the very command from his lips that he had told his new wife to be ready for in the form of a heated whisper.

             
“Take your mother out of her, Lily, and wait for me in my room.”

*                            *                            *

              The moment she caught wind of what he whispered to her, Lily made a move towards her mother’s direction. She grabbed onto one of Marigold’s hands, and begun to help her stand up.

             
“Get her!”

             
Lily jerked her attention in the direction of where she heard her father’s voice after she had her mother to stand with her, and found him to be looking at her the very same way he had been in her dream she had earlier that morning with a sword pointed towards her.

             
“Get the vampire queen!” Radcliff screamed out at his daughter, as well as his men, in a tone of desperation and rage. “Get her before she gets away!”

             
Her heart nearly stopped at seeing what she assumed to be the dream she had to be coming to life at that very moment in time. The one thing she didn’t want to happen that night was doing just the opposite.

             
“You will do nothing to my wife and queen!”

             
The thunderous growl in Daniel’s voice roaring out of his mouth caused her to move her attention from her father towards the vampire that she planned on marrying that night. Once she had changed her focus, Lily widened her gaze from witnessing Daniel, her lover, to be taking on the form of a massive cloud of vampire bats, appearing to be one solid black mass.

             
Oh my…god!

             
She stood in a brief moment of shock upon witnessing the true power Daniel had nestled within him. In all of her life, Lily had never assumed it was possible for a vampire to do what he was clearly capable of doing.

             
Lost in the brief moment, she only managed to come back once her ears picked up on the sounds of Radcliff screaming out a battle cry with his men while the vampire guests in the room made their own war screams. Lily looked towards the room, and found the vampires meeting the mortals head on in a battle to end all battles.

             
I have to get my mother and me out of here before we get hurt during this battle. At least I can do that if I can’t protect my husband at the moment.

             
She tightened her hand that was holding onto the one of her mother’s she had taken in order to assist her in getting up, and had her moving with her in the direction of the altar at a quickened pace.

             
“Hurry, mother!” Lily exclaimed towards her, wanting her to hurry and keep up with the pace she was moving at. “We need to get up to the archway, and out of harm’s way for a few moments.”

             
“Where are you taking me to, Lily?!” Marigold asked, shouting to her daughter as they moved at a fast pace, with her voice not hiding the fear she possessed inside of herself.

             
“I am taking us behind the arch as a means of protection from being harmed by this battle.” Moving them behind the structure, she had her mother to squat down and reside behind one of the tall, wide legs of the arch, completely, while her own body was still out in the open. Her eyes focus remained on her mother’s face as she spoke to her in a more soft tone from the one she had been using with her. “We will need to remain here until there is a break in the defenses, and then I will be able to get us out of here to a much safer spot.”

             
“Is there no other choice, Lily? Can we not get out another way?”

             
Lily moved her gaze in the direction of where the mortal men were fighting with the vampire guests, and found that the only main exit for them was to go through the door there fighting in front of since the broken side doors to the ballroom had vampires and humans fighting one another in front of them.

             
“I am afraid so, mother.” She pulled her eyes away from the fray, and focused them upon Marigold. Lily did her best to keep her voice from causing anymore distress in her mother, but couldn’t hide all of it. “The entrance is blocked off by all this fighting, and all of the broken glass doors have people fighting their entrance ways.”