After that day, I stopped reaching out. If kindness could be taken, I wouldn't hold it again. The world had made its choice. Now I would make mine.
But not everyone agreed with it. Maybe they pitied me. Maybe they were fools.
But they didn't turn away.
A woman with soft brown hair, always tied in a loose braid. Freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose. A smile too gentle for a palace like this.
And a tall man with wild orange hair that refused to be tamed. A scar ran across his eye.He stood like stone, but his eyes never wavered.
They weren't supposed to be there. But they were. The only colour in my world made of black and white. One afternoon, as Hannah combed my hair, she whispered stories—of noisy streets and spinning lanterns, musicians with cracked drums, sizzling skewers, sweet buns, and glowing stalls, all tucked beneath a sky full of stars.
She called it Lantern Market.
When I asked Rowan about it, he told me more. He said the stars seemed closer from there.
He smiled as he said it. No one ever smiled in the palace.
I had never been beyond these walls. Not since my father. He used to take me to a garden hidden behind the old chapel. It was quiet there — a place no one else seemed to know.After his death, they sealed it off. Just like they sealed off everything else I had. But one night,
when the guards rotated, when Rowan was far from my hall, and Hannah's footsteps had faded —
I slipped through a side door
and vanished into the dark.
The night was louder than I'd imagined.
Laughter, shouting, music — life.
The scent of fried dough, smoke, and sweat
clung to the air like fire.
I walked, and no one stopped me. They didn't see a prince.
Just a boy.
It was freedom.
And then —
I bumped into someone.