STAY 1 meter away

8 - Personal KNIGHT

[WARNING AHEAD...]

*BLAAAG*

I blotted awake to the sudden sound of my opened door, revealing my father with a murderous glint in his eyes.

"D-Dad?"

He hold my chin and smile but it doesn't hide the wild look he have.

"My daughter. Come to father, I want to show you something."

Tears starts to form at the corner of my eyes.

My daughter? This is the first time he called me his daughter with a hint of emotion.

I quickly stop the tears from falling and smile widely at him. Yet, I never know this day will completely crush my hope.

He bring me to his office with a secret room inside.

Slowly, slowly we walk way down to the stairs. Opening a red door, my expression change to fear.

There, a woman was bound by chains hanging her body. Her clothes tattered with blood. Her one eye missing. Left side of her cheeks peeled off. Full of wounds and bruises like she was whip a lot of times.

What shocked me is her identity. I know this person. She is my nanny.

A shiver run all the way my back when I heard a whisper of a devil.

"Prove to me that you deserve to be my heiress. That woman, she is our enemy spy."

A gun was place in my hand, he guide it towards the woman's direction.

"Kill her."

Tears fall from my eyes without abandon when the room was filled with her pleas. My hand starts to shake.

"I-I can't."

"But my daughter, you don't have any choice. If you won't, I'll replace you with a stranger. A person who can do everything I want them to do."

I felt like being stab in the knife. I just slowly close my eyes and with that, a sound of gun suddenly echoed inside the room but then gone.

When I open my eyes, my nanny was already dead. My knees buckle and I fall on the ground. He look at me with his towering height. His eyes sharp and dark like a black ink.

"Tommorow you'll leave to start your military training and only come back here, if you are deserving enough to be my successor."

His last words stirred my being swallowing my soul to hell.

---

I opened my eyes and realized.

"Wicked Dream."

It is not just a dream though.

I rose up in my feet. Taking a bath, I closed the door with a BANG.

"MY LADY?!"

"MY LADY OPEN THE DOOR!"

I don't need maids to touch my body everywhere. I mean, why do I need some maids, when I can bath myself?

"MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER, COME TO PAPA!"

I was not prepared when my body suddenly lifted in the air, being twirl around.

My dad becomes clingy, too clingy day by day.

"MY GRACE?"

His other 2 knights look at their master with shock faces.

Yeah, yeah. Now you know he's childish.

He put me down but hugging me very tightly, crushing my bones and sticking his face to my cheek like a lovesick puppy.

The knights was aggrieved, worrying about my being.

Don't worry knights, my father can't kill me just by this. My body is a pillar of strength.

"My daughter, who else knows about your secret?"

Father, it is my maid Anna and the coachman.

But seeing his face look like a person ready to kill.

"No one aside from you father."

He smile.

"Good, I don't want my daughter to be accused of using sorcery. It's taboo."

I won't drag my father in the mud.

"George."

My father's knight, George was now my personal knight. He swear his loyalty to me and feel like he have a debt to pay.

A knight's code is to be loyal to their master. Failing this code of loyalty can destroy their dignity as a knight.

My father allowed me to punished him.

George beg me not to banished him in his service. I forgive him and give a condition to offer his loyalty to me, he happily accepted.

He reported some information to me before I ordered him to do some things.

Dawn came.

I eyed this two people in front of me.

Anna and the Coachman.