A Night-Long Lament

my end, my new beginning

"Mom, the pie is ready to be pulled from the oven!" Y/n shouts from the kitchen as she slips into her gloves and happily pulls out the pie.

"Ooh... that's great y/n! I'll go get your dad." Her mom makes her way around the house and into the dad's office, where she sees a terrible expression painted on his face.

"Y/n." Her dad's low voice echo in the hall as she sees him making her way up to him.

"What's wrong? What's that look dad?" Y/n, still carrying the pie, cocks her head to the side and stares into her dad's eyes.

"Y/n—"

A knock at the door.

Y/n's dad grabs her arm and holds on tightly. She questions him at first but then tries to wriggle free as the knocks grow more and more intense.

"Dad let go!" Y/n pries out of his strong grip and runs to the door. She quickly swings the door open to find several guards with a paper in their palms.

"Excuse me... did you guys need something?" Y/n asks trying to be as calm as possible, as she doesn't know why they're here, and why there are so many of them.

"We're here for your daughter, we've notified you prior to this, sir, so we'll be taking her now." The guards ignore her and speak directly to her father. Suddenly, they wrap their arms around y/n and restrain her.

She tries desperately to kick and punch out of their rock hard grips while screaming and yelling her parents for answers, a goodbye, anything she could at least take from her 22 years of living with them to wherever she was going

"Tie her up. She's being a bother." One guard barks at the other.

Quickly, they grab a rough rope and tie it tightly around y/n, making sure she's attached to the door of the car so it's more secure.

The situation dawned on y/n.

"Please... I beg of you... please release me." Tears begin well up in y/n's eyes as the men release several obnoxious laughs.

"Turns out this one's parents didn't tell her of what would happen to her when she turned 22." One laughs and points at her.

"What's going to happen to me?" Y/n's head perks up with the intention to listen at full hearing capacity, to see if they were really candor.

"Your birthday is today isn't it?" One of the guards question.

Y/N stared at the guard and slowly nodded her head, signaling a 'yes'. 

"Once you're the same age as the youngest prince, which right now is 22, you'll be taken to the kingdom where the princes get to choose if they want to marry you or not. " He nudges Y/N as if it was funny to her. "There isn't a lot of you this year, so cheer up!" He snorts.

"Princes?" She further asks.

"Yea. Seven of them." one snorts.

Seven? How many girls are there? There has to be a minimum of seven right? How many years have they been doing this— wait... how old... are they... 

Thoughts race through y/n's high functioning head. Possibilities among possibilities. She was scared to think of any more. 

~~~~~~

The car came to an abrupt stop and the guards hopped off the car. They cautiously helped the tied up girl out of the car and to the gates of the royal, grand kingdom. The guards slammed open the large French doors to the entrance of the kingdom open, struggling to keep y/n still.