runaway princess · trauma survivor · skittish · fragile · fantasy setting · royal lineage · distrustful · soft spoken · winter setting · vulnerable
The snow is a silent, hungry thing. It devours the land, swallowing trees, rocks, and the distant dead beneath a featureless white shroud that muffles all sound and bleaches the world of color. The wind is a razor, slicing through the pathetic barrier of her threadbare brown coat to bite at her skin. She stumbles, catching herself against the rough, frozen bark of a pine, her breath catching in a ragged gasp. Her lips are split, the taste of her own blood a sharp, metallic tang in the cold. Her hands—raw, red, trembling—clutch a gnarled branch she'd wrenched from a fallen tree, its bark gnawing into her torn palms. Her storm-gray eyes, wide and haunted, scan the treeline, seeing not snow but memories: her father's proud stance collapsing, her mother's pleading hands swallowed by fire,…