The Destined Princess and the Hidden Knight

Chapter Fourteen

The strong scent of lilies hit me when I stepped into the structure. Raising my help, I started to look around. Fresh paint on big walls, pillars decorated with marigold flowers, there were a series of small lights wrapped around the staircase, not a lot right now. There were giggles and whispers, around me. More than a dozen gazes on me like I was something special, something to them. Like a good replacement. I chuckled inside, the irony of me being special was making me laugh but only on the inside. Outside my lips were sealed. I had no idea how they would clean it all up. Clean me all up. I glanced by my side, a group of girls was standing and observing me. I didn't have much meat on my body, I don't know if they would find anything fascinating to see. I just glared back, like an animal that was strange to me. 

I was barely able to see much from my right eye, which had gotten more swollen. 

Someone slapped me on my head and I turned back. 

"You are not any different than these. All of them were like you when they were brought here" one of the men who was accompanying me said. It didn't bother me. They would also have been scared and confused. I could see the big dark eye bags on their faces. Even when they have put too much white powder to cover it, I knew that they were all up during nights, waiting for their knights.

Knights who were giving them nightmares. 

"Go inside and clean" 

I stood there and didn't move. I wasn't even able to limp my hand up, how was I supposed to clean myself. Everything was hurting like hell. I shook my head and muttered, "Can't, the hand won't move" 

It was true. 

"Others would take care of it. You are a trophy, you would be rubbed and cleaned and in some hours, you would shine like new" 

I could hear men bursting into laughter at that remark. Yes, I was a thing now, a trophy. Maybe I have been a thing since I was born. A thing which learns how to make food, a thing which learns how to please people, a thing which would get married to a man and bear his kids, and then take care of them. 

Few women walked towards me and took me in by grabbing my shoulder, not caring that it was scratched and had bruises already, not caring that it might pain me more. 

When did it happen? When did the same gender start becoming enemies of each other and why? 

As they removed my clothes, I heard a combined gasp from them. I didn't even want to look at my body. I knew it would be all blue and red and have several scars, maybe forever now. I just stood there in front of them, like a thing. 

It took them a few hours to clean me, my hair, bandage my cuts, put something warm at my bruises and dress me up in a black dress. The dress was different than I had ever worn in my life. It was a blouse with buttons at the front and pants at the bottom. The eldest of the women sent others away and looked at me. 

She started to comb my hair and tie it up in a bun.

"I knew your mother" 

That was the first time I have heard someone talk about my mother. I looked in her direction and she shifted my head back to front. I raised my eyebrows in confusion at her in the mirror, where I could see her. She was standing behind me. Dressed in all black, her face was almost covered except her lips. 

"She was not like you"  something inside me broke, even though I hadn't seen her for years now and hated her for leaving me.

"She was brave" 

Wait, what does she mean brave? She ran away, she left me and my father when things went bad. How brave was she?

"She taught us all how to be brave. How to survive" 

"Ouch" I yelped a little as she tightened her hold on my hair and tied the bun. Not even a single hair was left hanging from anywhere. I looked at my reflection in the mirror, but what I saw was someone I didn't know. 

"Only you could do it"

There was a knock on the door and she yelled yes, walking away to open the door, not before putting a shawl above my head and covering my face again, just like her. 

What was it? I dressed as a girl from a brothel. Was I getting sold today, on my first day? Because I was covered in bruises all over that they dressed me in black instead of something light, also the reason to cover my face, to hide my swollen eyes. Whoever was going to come to me today, won't see much of me due to the black color attire. 

Suddenly I could feel an aura of something dark enter the room and I shivered. A man as high as the ceiling of the room was approaching me. I felt safe in my attire more than I had felt earlier when I walked into the structure. He was not much dressed but the reason could be so anyone near him would see the deep and fatal marks on his muscular arms and chest. He wore black pants and a heavy chain around his neck with a little key on it. 

I hope he wasn't the one who came for me. 

"Is the girl ready?" He looked at me and then the lady who had dressed me.

"Yes, almost sire, just one thing" She walked back to me and put her arms around tying a pedant in my neck, my mother's pendant. 

"Why is she wearing this hideous dress? She is supposed to please the royal" he barked at her but she didn't flinch unlike me, who almost jumped at my spot.

"Sire, the girl's body needs to be hidden as much as it can. She is not in proper shape" 

He grunted looking at her and then walked out. 

As he left the room, I felt that there was one more thing in the locket, other than my mother's pendant, it was a sharp tooth, hanging alongside, sharp enough to make a deep cut. 

I didn't know what was going on, but something felt off. What she had just said to me, why I was dressed like not a girl...nothing was the same as it looked.