Chapter Text
She placed her crown down on her bedside delicately as if the gold wire was made of glass. The staple of royalty glistened in the cold moonlight as it shone through the princess’ opened balcony. Maven O’Farah, second princess to the kingdom of O’Farah sighed, her breath creating steam when the warm exhale met the cold evening air.
O’Farah was always frigid, even moreso after dusk. The Kingdom was located in the northern mountains and although on a coastline it was always covered in snow.
Maven awoke close to midnight, long after her civilians had coveted in for the night, with a dream in the forefront of her mind. She was leaving, tonight, and nothing was going to stop her.
Slowly, she rose out of her queen-sized bed and stretched, her joints popping along her spine. Her bright red hair was tangled around the side of her head, maroon strands intertwined to form a gracious knot. She groaned as her blue eyes found her reflection in her vanity mirror, Maven always did have bedhead.
The princess tiptoed around her marble-tiled room as she stuck a brush into her rat's nest of hair where it stuck all while shrugging off her white nightgown revealing even paler skin. O'Farah rarely was exposed to much sunlight, causing most of its inhabitants to keep pale.
Graciously opening her walk-in closet door she held the handle up for it to not squeak in the silent evening air. She pulled out various outfits and set them down on her bed, the majority dresses or skirts. While O'Farah may be cold, its residents grew used to its frigid year-long winter temperatures, allowing them to wear many different articles of clothing.
As her blue eyes grazed along her various options she smiled at one in particular. The cream and red dress was made out of silk with many layers. It was a wrap-around dress used for training, breathable and beautiful, the perfect combination. She made sure to grab a matching pair of shorts to go with it, as she knew the silk would probably fly up once and a while.
Pulling the fabric over her arms Maven tied a ribbon in an O'Faran Knot at the front of her dress securely. She huffed as she sat down at her vanity and looked into its mirror for what would hopefully be one of the last times. Her eyes trailed around her messy hair to her rounded jawline down to her exposed collarbone. She carried a kind of cold beauty native to O'Farah, with the delicacy of a princess. Bright red locks paired with sharp sapphire eyes and pale white skin, she was pretty through and through. At least, that's what she was told to think.
Maven O'Farah was told to think many things such as that the outside world was dangerous and filled with monsters and equally as horrible men. Horror stories taught to her as only a child flooded through her mind, the fear-mongering only slightly causing goosebumps to rise on her arms.
She could acknowledge that they were only stories conjured up to scare her as a little girl but she truly didn't know what the outside world was like, in all her fifteen years Maven had never stepped foot outside the walls of her kingdom.
The redhead had made up her mind about this long ago, she did not want to rule this kingdom. Maven wanted to leave and live her life for all it was worth, away from here.
But there was only one way to step down from being O'Farah's heir, to find the first-born child. Her older sister Siliin, the rightful heir to the throne, left their kingdom at fifteen and never returned.
As if it was a game of chase, Siliin left only one clue to her whereabouts, the address to this year's Hunter exam. It was not dated to the year she left, no, it was for this year, the year Maven would turn fifteen, the age Siliin was when she left.
It was as if Siliin was tempting her, calling out to her like in the games of Come and Find they played so many times when they were young.
Her sister said one thing to her the night she left, "If you really don't want the throne, prove it, and find me." She smirked, testing the games on her sister's psyche.
Now, four years later, Maven was getting ready for this year's Hunter Exam, where she would hopefully find her sister and drag her lulling, teasing body back home. She had no clue what she would encounter when she got there nor where she would go afterward but one thing Maven O'Farah, princess of O'Farah, did know was that she wouldn't stop until she found the rightful heir to the throne.