The Prince

Raiona

Growing up, your mother told you fairy tales and spoke of love like it was magic. With the blankets held up to your chin, you had dreamt of one day having a love you could call your own.

Admittedly, you were swayed by the way your mother stared off into the distance. The way her eyes glistened as she talked about the king. The way her hands rose to her lips when she talked of her first kiss. The way you could hear her heart race against her ribs in the silence as she reminisced her wedding day.

You desired more than anything to have the same. To have a love as powerful as your predecessors and be able to sit at the foot of your daughters bed and tell a similar story. But you had one fatal flaw to your childish desires; you were already betrothed. That was the thing about being born into privilege, you had specific obligations that being an arranged marriage.

And thus, your dreams would never come true. Love had already been mapped out for you. Carved out of the stars and laid bare into your hands. You were given no other choice, but to accept the hand of a young prince, just as lost as you.

Little did you know.

"Princess," With one hand holding the dirty white apron of her dress, and the other, holding up the linen coif sitting loosely on her head, Marlene breathlessly shouts in chase. "Please child, stop this instant!"

The weather was gorgeous, but enough anger had pulsed through your body for you not to notice. The sun had flared early light across the land as you ran through fields of wild daisies. Mud slipped through the cracks of your fingers as you chased after your brothers; cackles of laughter fell from their mischievous lips as you slung mud to and fro. You weren't the most polite or lady-like princess, but you held your own.

It would've been a typical day too in the Valais Kingdom if decades of peace between neighbouring kingdoms had stayed at peace; if Yoongi didn't do absolutely anything to piss you off; and if you weren't obligated to make the journey to Raiona.

Maintaining peace between kingdoms was nearing impossibility with the fragility of a nearing winter, and alas, events of the week had unfolded to dangerous new heights and your father had rushed afar to aid allied forces. You were only 17 and the affairs of the military were thankfully never apart of your obligations as princess. Seokjin had taken up his role as crown prince in the King's absence and was the reassuring presence the people needed.

You were sure a riot would follow anytime now.

To deescalate the tension of a potential war, Seokjin had pushed forward your engagement to Prince Jimin as a strategy designed to distract the people. As soon as word had broken out, it was all anyone could talk about and all you could think about.

You had butterflies in your stomach all night at the thought of finally seeing the famous young prince. Prince Jimin was known for being both magnanimous and handsome, you were excited to say in the least, but those butterflies had almost instantly ceased and left to die in the bottom of your stomach when you found out who would be taking you to Raiona instead of your ladies-in-attending.

The godawful baroness with a hurtful tongue and pungent aroma of flaxseed and death. You'd do almost anything not to spend a single minute in her presence, even if it meant ruining your velvet gown and your ruby laced hair snood and your manicured fingernails.

You'd do it.

"Come here you two brats!" you scream, running after your older brothers. They were supposed to be in the great hall learning how to dance for their eventual courting ritual for a wife but had found a greater source of entertainment in annoying you. "Stop running from me and face me like the men you two half-wits should be!"