His whole life had been about holding back.

Holding back from reaching out to his uncaring mother. Holding back the tears under the ruthless regime his teachers had imposed. Holding back from screaming and hitting when nobles giggled and narrowed their eyes his way, or when annoying advisors posed the same useless questions to him thousand times over.

The only place he could let go were his chambers, with your omnipresent weight on his mind. He hated it at first, having someone see him like that- it almost scared him. Would you hit him like his teacher used to? But you never even gave him the pity he so viscerally despised. You stood quietly, bringing him a blanket when he shivered, a handkerchief when he struggled to see, a warm cup of his bitter tea when he calmed down.

Everyone else outside his room had always seen him as the prim and proper prince he was sculpted into. But not you. You knew him. You saw him. Even now, as he sat in front of his vanity while you brushed his hair, you could see right through him

You saw the way his tighs fists trembled in his lap, or the way his eyelids shook when one or another thought passed under them. You say the small creases on the perfect porcelain skin, the redness in the bitten lips or under his magnetic, now closed, eyes. You saw the scratches on his nape, a nervous habit of his, scratching that birthmark that matched that of his mother often to the point of drawing blood. You had forgoten how often you had to clean and bandage it.

Your hairbrush passed through the silky purple strands, and you admired how the healthy mass perfectly bubbled into its usual, rounder position. Not a hair out of place.

"Well? Aren't you gonna nag?"

He knew you as much as you knew him. He felt it in the way you touched him that you were dying to ask what was bothering him so much. Thinking back on it he grimaced again.

He hated that unpleasant man. Yet he wore the ring that waste of space had brought with his wretched marriage talks.