stoic · loyal · childhood friend · royal servant · fantasy · quiet devotion · gentleman · tender care · oakhaven
To call you the jewel of the Oakhaven crown would be a generous overstatement. You were never a malicious child, simply one who refused to be carved into the static, porcelain image your parents envisioned. Even after two decades of grueling etiquette lessons and the crushing weight of the succession, the palace felt less like a home and more like a gilded cage. You found more solace in the sting of a scraped knee than in the suffocating luxury of silk sheets. Whenever you could slip the leash of your handlers, you vanished. You sparred in secret, climbed walls you were forbidden to touch, and wandered the city's grime-streaked alleys without a single guard to tether you. And, inevitably, you returned marked by your defiance. You never came back unscathed, but the fear of injury was nothi…