The Blood King's Love

Four

Valon has always been a strong country, partly thanks to the gigantic amount of land it owns and partly thanks to its centuries-long line of long-living male rulers that love to invest in their military. Therefore, it's been a target of many attacks by foreigners seeking to takeover the country.

The previous ruler before the Blood King was King Diedrich. He was a bit older than his predecessors when he took the throne, and perhaps that made him the wisest. Diedrich was a kind man, who didn't wish for violence unless it was absolutely needed. He wanted euqality for everyone. The people in the capital and the kingdom of Valon had good and prosperous lives, but villages like mine were a bit farther away and less fortunate. Thus they were pitied and didn't have much free will to do as they pleased like the higher class did. Diedrich would go out to these towns and cities and help them grow. The people of the kingdom thought him foolish, but we peasants loved him.

Then, about twelve years ago, King Diedrich was assassinated.

No one ever found out who did it, and the country's people didn't exactly know how to function without their king. Some, mostly the higher class in the capital, were happy for this very reason, because with the cowardly and foolish Diedrich gone, the country could finally get somewhere. They could get a younger, fresher ruler who was more capable, and who wouldn't pay so much mind to the poor and listen to their wishes instead. The peasants, however, missed him dearly. How would they get by without kind old Diedrich to protect them? He was a one-of-a-kind man, and whoever his successor would be, there's no way the poor would be cared for like that ever again.

Meanwhile, news had gotten around to the other countries that Valon had lost it's ruler. They began to advance. Something had to be done to protect the land, and fast.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a King was crowned. No one knew who it could be, since Diedrich had no sons--he had no wife, and although it was rumored that he had had a romance with a woman villager from a small town, no one knew any details of the relationship. The new king's identity had been hidden by authorities, but he was much younger than the ruler prior. There were a lot of rumors as to how and why he was crowned, one of them being that he had been some sort of test child trained by the army in secret, or that he was the bastard son of Diedrich, but nothing was proven. He had an inauguration speech, but it was so especially brief and simple that even toddlers had it memorized. Many questions were raised. Was someone this young really capable enough to lead the army into battle? Was he wise enough to keep the economy balanced at the same time? Was he capable of leading a whole country, whoever he was?

Before his first week after being crowned had finished, the young man, sixteen at the time, had a chance to prove himself. There were nations advancing to attempt to take over the weakened country. The army had to protect their country, now under a different leader. But for some reason, the new king didn't use the usual army made of the soldiers appointed by Diedrich. He personalized his own army, with soldiers of his choice, and the size of his militia turned out to be about half the size of the regular recruits. When they headed off into battle, everyone thought they were screwed.

They were wrong.
Oh, were they wrong.

The first battle they had fought, every foreign man on Valon land had been slaughtered, cut into pieces and left to rot in the blazing sun. Not one of the king's men had been killed.

The second battle wasn't as brutal, and not all of the foreigners died. But this was on purpose; the Valon army wanted information. So they took hostages, not letting a single one free. The king ordered them all to be tortured if they refused to spill. They were skinned and burned, and they all fed up. Even the ones who seemed the most loyal.

This happened a few more times, until the opposing countries learned that they had no chance and backed off.

Never had the Valon army been so prosperous. They had alien information to use against enemies, and they were all so brutal and ruthless that no one even dreamed of standing in their way. But the King was the most horrifying of all; he executed so many people in the following eleven years he ruled, he even did them himself. After all, he was glorious on the battlefield. He liked to show it off.

Then there was the other thing about the King that made him someone to be feared: there was a rumor that the King kept a sample of each one of his victim's blood. No one knows why, or where, or how. But some people claim that after a long day at the palace, at night, they can see dry blood on the King's fingertips.

It's safe to doubt that anyone would want to get on the bad side of someone like that. Now, Valon was one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. If anything, everyone wanted to be on its good side. Many kingdoms brought their most beautiful princesses to the Blood King (as he was now referred to) for marriage, to join the two nations together. Who wouldn't want to be allies with the most powerful country in the world? But the Blood King always turned them down, without an exact reason.

The ruler has reigned over Valon for almost eleven years, and none of his ruling ways resembled the ways of Diedrich. He seldom left the palace unless it was for an occasion. He barely paid any attention to the cities outsides the capital, let alone villages like mine. We had never been in that bad of a financial or social or economic situation before. We were falling apart, and no one could do anything about it.

I remember my father was always badgering my mother about how they needed to leave the country if the Blood King remained in reign. That's how I learned all these things; from him. He despised the Blood King and would talk about changing the country, bringing it back to the days of Diedrich.
One day he left, when I was around fifteen, and I never saw him again. Mother wouldn't talk to me about it.

Four years after my father's disappearance leads us to present time. The Blood King had added more land to Valon territory, refused alliance proposals, basically doing his job. Puberty was putting it's finishing touches on me, and I was expected to marry sometime in that year or the next.

Through the paper, and through messengers on horses, we heard news of attacks on towns far away from the capital. Each town was entirely wiped out and all their citizens were murdered. The reason being was that there were illegal aliens among us, or spies, or rebels, whichever it was. I didn't care or think about it much. Things like that seem so small when I look back at them now, to the point where I can't remember them.

Then it happened.
They came to us.
Why did they do it to us.
Why did they do this to me.
How.
How could that terrible man do this to me

Whenever I imagined the Blood King when I was younger, I always thought of an older man, bald, a long beard soaked in blood, lion-like fangs and fingernails, an all-around horrifyingly ugly man.

From what I know now, the Blood King is tall, strong and no doubt a handsome man, in his late twenties or such. But perhaps that makes him even more terrifying. His eyes paralyze me with the fear that something bad is going to happen to me. He lifted me with one hand by my throat like nothing. He viciously dug his hands into my wound then called it a day, and something tells me that's just the start of what he can do. Did he leave me alive to torture me? 

I start to shiver.
I'm scared of him.
Oh god, he terrifies me.
I shouldn't have yelled at him before he left. I shouldn't have tried to escape. I should've just let myself rot in my village that day.

And I'm crying. I had been weeping for a while, but this hits me too hard. I'm hopeless. What am I doing here? I miss my mother. I miss my home. I feel so alone and empty. I'm nothing now, to anyone. I don't know what to do. My thigh wound throbs. I have a headache. I start sobbing, since now the guard has been removed and no one is around to watch me as of now.

I hate everything.

I sing songs my mother used to sing to me before I went to bed, and although my voice is wobbly because I cried, I rock myself to sleep with the melody.