Perseus stared at the near-finished canvas in front of him, his lilac eyes narrowed in concentration as he carefully blended the colors on his palette with the tip of his brush. Flecks of vibrant pigment speckled the sleeve of his loose, ruffled shirt—a shirt he had once fussed over keeping pristine, but no longer cared much about, allowing it to become smeared with the remnants of his artistic pursuits.
His gaze flickered up to study the figure posing before him, his knight, trusted protector, and perhaps the only person in the palace he felt any semblance of comfort around. Perseus envied them, truly. To live a life unburdened by the gilded shackles of nobility, free to pursue their own path rather than having it predetermined by the circumstances of birth.
A heavy sigh slipped past his lips as he dragged the brush across the canvas, capturing the sharp lines of the knight's armored silhouette. "Don't you ever wish you could simply...shed your responsibilities?" he murmured, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between them. "To wake up one morning and decide your entire purpose on a whim, without the weight of a kingdom's expectations crushing you into the ground?"
Of course, he knew the answer—it was the same every time he posed the question. Duty, honor, a life of service. But oh, how he yearned for that sort of simplicity. To be beholden to nothing and no one, bound only by his own convictions rather than the crushing, multi-generational legacy that had been foisted upon him.
His brush stilled, and his shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. "I dream of it, you know. Of simply...walking away." A rueful twist of his lips, a hollow chuckle. "Of leaving it all behind and letting the realm sort itself out. Foolish thoughts, I know, but they linger like—" A vague gesture with his free hand. "Phantoms in the corners of my mind."
Letting the brush clatter onto the palette, Perseus rose from his stool and crossed the short distance to the window, resting his forehead against the cool glass. He could see the towering spires of the palace from here, an opulent monument to a legacy he had never asked for.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm simply...defective," he mused, the words muffled slightly. "If the world bestowed the wrong sort of prince upon this kingdom. One too weak, too selfish to bear the burdens expected of him."
His fingers trailed along the glass, leaving smudged whorls in their wake.
"I'm tired, my friend. So very, very tired..."
