Lily stepped outside of the castle, her home. She wore a black hooded cloak over her blue-green dress that draped down to her ankles. The cloak was just long enough to cover the entirety of the dress.
When Lily made it out the front gates, she held onto the sides of her hood so she could look around without removing the hood from covering her head. No one seemed to be around. No one was following her. She couldn’t help but smirk at how slick she had been.
She had guards and the castle had security for a reason. It shouldn’t have been this easy for her to simply sneak out of her home. Oh, well. She couldn’t complain and didn’t want to dwell on it anymore before someone found out.
Lily broke off into a run away from the castle. She had left a note on her pillow stating that she had left, but she didn’t say why she had left. She didn’t even mention where she was going or when she’ll be back. She just stated that she would be back in due time.
The princess knew there was trouble brewing between her father’s kingdom and a neighboring one. Of course, that neighboring kingdom happened to be the home of her future husband.
It was an arranged marriage that was set up ever since she and Tyler were born. He was exactly one month older than her and the kings and queens took that as a sign to be fate.
Lily and Tyler were rescheduled to have regular play dates with each other when they were growing up. Neither one of them thought anything of it as they enjoyed one another’s company and they had a lot of fun together. Tyler had a younger sister to play with when they were stuck in the castle all day, but Lily was an only child. She had no one but Tyler to talk to.
They didn’t find out that they were arranged to be marriage, and how that was the plan ever since they were born, until they both turned 16-years-old. Lily had read stories where the princess doesn’t want to marry the prince or the prince doesn’t want to marry the princess. Her parents had read those same stories and she could tell they were worried when they revealed that she was to be married to Tyler.
She was excited, of course. She hadn’t realized it until she found out that she was getting married to him, but she loved Tyler. They got along so well with one another and they had even discussed the future together. Tyler had expressed his plans for his kingdom when he would be ruler and Lily thought of what she would do whenever she became queen. They had already decided to create an alliance between the two kingdoms. Neither Lily nor Tyler could imagine a world where they weren’t together as co-existing rulers of their respected kingdoms. They never wanted to fight with each other.
As Lily slowed her run into a casual walking pace, she huffed and puffed trying to catch her breath. She took off her hood taking in her surroundings. It was in the middle of the night so if anyone was going to be out it would be bandits and thieves. However, she remained on the main path where there were lights along the way. She had a feeling she would be fine.
The walk to Tyler’s castle was a few hours. If Lily kept up a good pace, and ran every once in a while, she figured she should make it by early morning. Depending on how long she was with Tyler, she should have been back at her own castle by the following night.
Lily had overheard her father talking to Tyler’s father the last time they were over the castle. They had gotten into a fight. Not a squabble where they fought over who had the biggest horse, but there was a real problem between the two kingdoms. It had something to do with money, something Lily still hadn’t fully understood about running a kingdom.
Tyler’s father had stormed out and taken him with him. Lily was left alone.
Later on that night, Lily’s father came into her bedroom and told her there was trouble, but he didn’t go into too much detail. Or maybe he did and she just hadn’t been paying attention. All she heard him say was,
“The wedding’s off.”
Lily couldn’t focus on anything else her father had said to her after he broke such terrible news to her. She should have been happy. Now she was free to choose who she wanted for a husband. The problem was, she wanted to choose Tyler and she was sure that he felt the same way.
She had tried to reason with her father. She had a feeling that whatever they were arguing over would blow over. A solution would present itself soon enough. Her father had only shook his head at her being naïve. This problem was too big to fix and they would just have to find another kingdom to alliance with on account she couldn’t rule her home kingdom without a husband.
Lily had immediately decided to go visit Tyler after she heard this news. It was that night that she had snuck out of her castle. She had to see what Tyler was going to say about all of this. She had a feeling, that between the two of them, they would be able to fix any problems the kingdoms were having.
“Addie?”
Addie jumped and looked up suddenly realizing she was in the break room of her work.
“Your break ended ten minutes ago.”
“Oh,” Addie closed her reading book and put it back into her bag. She sighed, standing up and stretching. She wanted to read more of her book, but she still had three more hours of her day job. Lily and Tyler were going to have to wait until she was off the clock.
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