Running away

Taleyah grabbed her father's sword. She wasn't going down without a fight. The beasts might have made a deal with her father but she wasn't going down without a fight.

She was a human being who deserved the right to her freedom. No one was going to snatch that away from her. All her life, she had trained to be able to protect herself.

Staring up to the sky, her eyes like daggers daring the beasts to dare try to take her away from her home. The flying palace hovered over the palace of Ember giving her goosebumps.

From the story her father told her, the beasts weren't so simple. They all have immense power and move at the speed of lightning. The fight with the strength of ten thousand despite being only five in number.

This made them a force to be reckoned with. She was only human. Taleyah averted her eyes from the sky and looked onto the bed where there was a bag already packed with all of her things.

There was no way that she was going to become a slave to the monsters that called the flying palace a home. Either she fights to the death or flees from Ember to a place where they could never find her.

Taleyah took a moment and let her kind wonder. How hideous the beasts must look, they hadn't shown their faces in public ever. It must be because they are too ashamed of how they look.

An image formed in her head of what they could look like. She cringed at the image and shook her head.

"I won't become a slave," she voiced out and walked away from the window.

Taleyah grabbed her bag and headed for the door. Each stride heavier than the last, she was running away from the kingdom to get away from the cruel fate that her father had sentenced her to before she was born.

But her heart was weighed down with thoughts of the consequences of her decision. There was denying that the beasts of the flying palace will feel cheated when they realise that she ran away.

She could only imagine what price the kingdom and her family would have to pay for her decision. Taleyah could see Ember burning to ashes and her father the king falling.

It was inevitable that her running away was going to bring about the downfall of Ember. Taleyah's feet froze on the ground. Seeing an image of her younger brother covered in blood and lifeless on the ground made her heart skitter in fear.

The princess almost dropped her bag and ran back to her room. Yet, the image of being turned into dinner with the beasts that wanted her gave her the courage to move forward.

Moving at a steady pace, she walked through the shadows avoiding the eyes of all that lingered in the corridors of the palace.

Taleyah held one hope in her heart, having to leave the palace without alerting anyone. She didn't want anyone to see her, or to be reminded of her duties as a princess.

She had not made the promise to give up her freedom to the beasts. That choice was made for her, and she wasn't going to stand for it.

With her father's sword in hand, she moved stealthily around the secret passage to reach the backyard of the palace.

"I need to prepare a meal for princess Taleyah," she heard a female voice say as she stepped behind the well-tended flower bushes.

"Something sweet I hope," a male voice sounded after a few moments.

"The sweetest, the masters are not in a good mood. She will need it if she is to face her new husbands," the female voice uttered.

Taleyah's face went pale. From the sound of the conversation she ran into, she realized the plan that the beasts had for her. They wished to make her their bride.

Her anger burnt her skin, it was despicable how ugly and ferocious beasts like the ones her father made a deal with thought. The fact that they were delusional enough to think that she would become their bride made her blood boil.

She quickly moved away from the two people. Finding her way through the back entrance, she released a sigh of relief. Relieved to be going far away from the deal and the beasts.

The flower that Taleyah had dropped early that morning, from the flying palace started glowing. It glowed in red light, and the shade of the light kept growing darker and darker with each step that Taleyah took away from the palace.

Unknown to Taleyah, she kept moving, not daring to look back. Freedom was awaiting her on the other end of the border of Ember. The sooner she reached her destination the better it would be for her.

****

Inside the flying palace, a figure stood by a window of a freezing cold room. Dressed in a black suit and a white coat, he looked out the window in a calm composed manner.

The light from the flower shown in his sight caused him to frown. His lips curled up into a wicked smirk as he watched the shade of the light thicken.

"She is running away," he uttered. Each word spoken by him caused the temperature in the room to decrease and the frost to thicken. "You were wrong about her, I'm displeased," he added.

"My apologies," another man, dressed in blue stepped out from the shadows and stood behind the man in white. "She will pay for disappointing you," the man vowed.

The smirk on the man's face dropped. His face is expressionless. He turned away from the window, his coat fluttered in the room before he vanished.

The ice in the room faded away the moment he was gone. The room returned to normal as though he hadn't been there.

The man in blue walked over to the window and stared at the light from the flower they sent for her. "You shouldn't have done this, Taleyah," he spoke with a hint of pain in his voice.

The fate that awaited the girl was going to be worse after the stunt that she has pulled. He could see the cracks of her heart that would be visible in her eyes in the times to come.

"Let's bring you, home princess," he uttered masking the emotions that displayed on his face before.