The Runaway Princess

by Jupiter

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

An Unfortunate Engagement

 

Princess Thailah Reine Aguirre was engaged to a man she’d never met, and, as one can imagine, she was not happy about it.

          She had begged and pleaded with her father a thousand times over, but he stood firm as a rock. She would marry the prince of Albain and she would be happy about it.

          Thailah was not planning on doing either of those things.

           She had never wanted to marry anyway – so what if she was the heir to the throne? She could rule alone; there were no laws against it.

          But no, she had to marry the prince just to strengthen the alliance with Albain. She didn’t even know the man’s name, for crying out loud!

          For weeks, the only thing spoken about at the palace was the wedding. Servants bustled about, taking measurements and asking her opinion on the color of the reception napkins.

          Thailah had tried to get them to go away, but they wouldn’t leave, so she would always just blurt out the first thing that came to mind. She wanted blue napkins. The rings should be simple. Her favorite dress shape was trumpet.

          None of those things were true. But she didn't care if she had blue napkins or neon yellow napkins; she would be having a terrible time either way. What would it matter if she got what she wanted now?

          It was the night before the wedding and Thailah was running out of time. She couldn’t marry the Albainian prince, no matter what. She would never marry a man she didn’t truly love, much less someone she didn’t know whatsoever. She would rather die than marry him. Which, she thought, looking at the white trumpet dress hanging in the closet, very well may be what happens if I don’t show up to the ceremony tomorrow.

          She actually considered it for a minute. What if she just didn’t show up and faced whatever fatal consequences her father had cooked up? Nothing could be worse than an arranged marriage.

          Thailah shook the thought out of her head. While she wasn’t crazy about her wedding, she also wasn’t crazy about being killed by one of her father’s torture devices.

          You could run away, suggested the little voice in her head.

          Shut up, little voice, she thought back. Her father had tracking devices all over her, even one implanted in her foot.

          Thailah flopped onto her bed, which was a great feat considering that she was quite short and the bedframe was very tall. She would sort this all out in the morning.

          She was about to call a servant to prepare her for bed when she realized she couldn’t decide in the morning. The wedding was in the morning.

          A knock sounded at her door. Thailah leapt off the bed and opened it to find her father, who was holding a little jar of yellow powder.

          “Hello, Father,” she said, trying not to show how startled she was. Her father never spoke to her directly unless he wanted something.

          “Hello, my dear, sweet Thai,” he said in a sickly sweet voice, a suspiciously enormous smile on his face. “I just came to see how you were doing.”

          “What?” Her father never just came to see how she was doing. Some ulterior motive had to be behind him.

          “Well, I know you’re stressed about the wedding tomorrow, so I just came to, ah, see how you’re doing.”

          “I am doing fine, Father, other than the fact that you are forcing me to marry a man I neither love nor know.”

          His eyes grew steely and cold. “I have told you to shut up about that,” he hissed, leaning in close to Thailah’s face. “The Albainian prince is a wonderful man and an excellent family to align with.”

          “None of that changes the fact that I don’t know him,” Thailah said, looking at the jar of powder. What was in there? It looked like turmeric, but with her father, even the most ordinary-looking things were something else.

          “Your mother was married off to me. Look how that turned out! Now we have you, my sweet little Thai.” He moved his hand to bop Thailah on the nose but dropped his jar. It fell to the ground and shattered; the powder went everywhere.

          “Oh no!” he said, voice dripping with false regret. “I am so, so sorry, my Thailah. The powder is all over you. Oh dear, I am so sorry.”

          While her father’s acting job was very poor, he was right about one thing. The powder was all over her.

          Oh well. She had never liked that dress anyways.

          “I'll be fine, Father,” Thailah said with a sigh, eyelids beginning to feel heavy. “I'd really like it if I could have some privacy right now, though.”  

          “Of course. Anything for my Thailah. Get some rest; tomorrow’s the big day!”

          With every step her father took, Thailah felt sleepier and sleepier. She had been perfectly awake before, but she suddenly felt like she had to get to her bed or the floor would collapse.

          Brushing the powder off her dress, Thailah stumbled back to her bed and, without bothering to change, pulled the covers on top of her. As she began to fall asleep, she sniffed a bit of the powder and instantly closed her eyes. Why was she so tired?

          It hit her like a ton of bricks. Sleeping powder! Her father had purposely spilled sleeping powder on her so she would go to bed and quit plotting against her own wedding. Sleeping powder and the like was illegal, but that didn’t stop her father.

          Unfortunately, sleeping powder was effective for three hours, and the victim was usually asleep by then. Unless she went to the trouble of looking up and then making the opposing powder, she would just have to give in and sleep.

          She really would have to figure things out in the morning. 

 

 

Chapter Two

A Midnight Crisis

 

Many miles away, Prince Darian Rory Lundstromm was also having a crisis, which also involved him being engaged to someone he’d never met.

          It was also nighttime for Darian, but unlike his fiancée, he was not under the influence of sleeping powder and therefore still awake.

          Darian was on the balcony outside his room, curled up in a ball in his pajamas and, though he would never admit it, crying.

          Tears puddled up in his glasses; he took them off and set them beside him, making a mental note to not step on them. Vision now more blurred than it was with his streaky glasses, Darian took a deep breath and then screamed at the top of his lungs.

          The crown prince screaming would usually bring hordes of guards racing to his side, offering everything from bandages to disease treatment. However, all the guards were asleep except the two assigned to watch his room at night. They looked at Darian, then at each other, and silently turned away.

          Darian knew that would be a bad thing if he were actually in danger, but right now he was grateful that they left him alone.

          Sniffling, Darian wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his racecar pajamas. He didn’t care that they got wet. Heck, he wanted them to be wet. Maybe it’d ruin them.

          The pajamas had been a well-meaning gift from his paternal grandmother. However, it’d been a long time since his father was a teenager, and in that time, his grandmother seemed to have forgotten what nineteen-year-old boys liked. The pajamas had been an early wedding gift.

          Racecar pajamas. For a prince who was nineteen. As a wedding gift.

          Darian hated them.

          He wanted to throw them away or at least donate them, but his mother insisted he needed to wear them at least once. Darian figured that the night before his wedding was as good a time as any. Not much could make the day even worse, not even racecar pajamas.

          Why oh why did he have to marry some random princess that he’d never met? He didn’t even know her name. His father had told him when he announced the engagement, but Darian had tuned out everything past “arranged marriage.” He vaguely remembered that it started with a T, but that was all.

          “Why?” he whispered aloud, a salty tear dripping onto his tongue as he spoke.

          But he knew why. His mother had told him the same thing every time he asked. “It’ll strengthen our alliance. And besides,” she’d say, lowering her voice, “the Calacanan king is a tyrant. If we said no, he’d probably kill us all on the spot.”

          Darian had pointed out a dozen times that if they gave in to him, it just showed the king that his strategy was working and he could intimidate anyone into obeying him. But his parents always said something like, “Would you rather stand up to King Hyperion or be alive?” or “It’s too late for that now, Rian.”

          In truth, King Hyperion terrified Darian; he would never actually have the guts to stand up to him. He just hoped that his daughter, whoever she was, was a bit less aggressive.

          Wiping some more tears on his sleeve, Darian sat up and looked out at the Albainian hills. Even though it was a small country, there were plenty of places to hide. He could run away and live on his own or start somewhere new with a fake identity. Any of it was better than marrying a mystery princess.

          Oh, who was he kidding? He could never make it on his own. Besides, he’d be putting his family in the danger of King Hyperion’s wrath.

          But it doesn’t have to be forever, he thought. You can always come back and come up with some story if things aren’t working out.

          With a deep breath, Darian felt around the ground for his glasses, then jumped a little when something crashed into the bushes below. It took a couple seconds for him to comprehend that the thing was probably his glasses.

          Groaning, Darian stumbled blindly back to his room. He’d find the glasses when he left. His room was only on the second floor, so hopefully they weren’t broken or scratched.

          Only able to see faint blobs in the darkness, Darian grabbed what he was pretty sure was a bag and began to throw things in it. Without his glasses, he could only see blurred outlines of things and he hoped he was getting useful stuff.

          After packing his bag, Darian realized that he couldn’t just walk out his bedroom door. The guards would see and ask what he was doing. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the blankets off his bed and tied them together. He was pretty sure he knew what he was doing; he’d read a pamphlet about this a few years back.

          Walking back out onto his balcony with bag and blanket rope in hand, Darian crouched down and tied his homemade rope to the railing. Flinging the rope over the edge of the balcony, he put the bag on his shoulder, grabbed the rope, and slowly lowered himself down.

          He was about halfway down when he began to question the stability of his rope. A few seconds later, he fell several feet to the bushes below with a high-pitched scream, still tightly gripping the blanket.

          If only he’d questioned the rope sooner! The knot had come undone and he’d fallen all the way to the ground. At least the bush had broken his fall. Darian sighed and felt around for his glasses.

          Sliding them back on his face, he noticed a small crack in one lens. Oh well, there was nothing he could do about it now.

          Grabbing his bag and wrapping the blanket around his shoulders, Darian climbed out of the bush and set off on his own, tears dripping down his face.

          It wasn’t until about half an hour later that he remembered he was still in those stupid racecar pajamas.

          Taking a deep breath, Darian screamed one more time.

 

 

Chapter Three

A Hasty Plan

 

Thailah woke the next morning to a maid shaking her awake. “Your Highness, are you awake? You’ve got to get ready!”

          “For what?” Thailah mumbled, rolling over. Then she remembered.

          The wedding.

          “No,” she moaned, shoving her face into her pillow.

          “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but yes,” said the maid. “Go down for breakfast and then you must get dressed! We’re behind schedule already!”

          The maid quite literally pulled Thailah from her bed and guided her out the door and to the stairs. Thailah stumbled down them and into the dining room. She felt like a zombie.

          Thailah barely noticed the pancakes she ate or the makeup the maids put on her. She had no reaction when she was dressed in her trumpet wedding dress or laced into a pair of tall white heels. She was completely zoned out.

          “Your Highness, are you okay?” one of the maids asked as they filed out the room. Thailah snapped back to reality and nodded.

          “Alright then,” the maid said. “It’s time to g-”

          Her father’s deep voice drifted from around the corner. “Don’t take her yet! The prince is missing, presumably late. I will come get her in five minutes, sooner if we find the prince before then.”

          The maid shrugged. “I suppose he’ll come get you then.” She followed the other maids out of the room.

          After all the maids left, Thailah collapsed into a chair. With nothing but silence, it really hit her.

          This was happening.

          She was about to marry a man she’d never met.

          Thailah curled up and began to sob uncontrollably.

          Thailah considered herself pretty tough. She hadn’t cried in a long time. But this, being forced into a loveless marriage with all her freedom taken away, was enough to do it.

          She was vaguely aware that time was ticking by quickly, but nothing mattered anymore. Nothing except getting out of this.

          Getting out of this...

          Tears blurring her eyes, Thailah looked at her clock. Four minutes had passed; her father would be coming soon.

          Thailah leaped from her chair and ran around her room madly, throwing things into a purse. She had no idea what she was packing. Her mind was clouded by one thought: escape.

          Slinging the purse over her shoulder, Thailah busted through the French doors leading to her balcony. Looking down, Thailah barely recognized how far she was from the ground. She threw herself over the edge, hoping she wouldn’t hurt herself.

          Thailah’s fall was slightly softened by a bed of carnations, but she still hit the ground hard. She barely registered the pain; her brain was hung up on escape.

          Brushing carnation petals from her hair, Thailah charged down the road as fast as she could considering she was wearing heels and a fairly tight dress. She was about five minutes away from the palace when she remembered: her tracking chips!