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The prince is nearly swept away as soon as he enters the ballroom. A riot of color and sound slams into him and it is all he can do not to stumble on his tired feet. Everywhere he looks is a stranger clad in finery and a mask, dancing, drinking, chattering away.
The day’s many consecutive audiences with visiting nobility have left him with a bone-deep weariness. He is thankful that the king has chosen to host a masquerade ball, and as such, the prince can hide his deeply furrowed brow and dark eyebags behind a tasteful mask—a maroon colombina with small horns that curl upwards from his brow.
He is still required to wear his family’s symbols, not to mention the golden circlet in his hair, so the masquerade does not afford him the anonymity it does others. As he slowly makes his way through the crowd to the refreshments, the glittering sea of partygoers yields before His Majesty. He feels untouchable, and very alone.
Downing some unnecessarily sweet and bubbly beverage, the prince sulks intently about the trade agreements and other correspondence undoubtedly languishing on his desk. He is so lost in thought that when a gloved hand extends into his field of view he nearly jumps. Looking up, he is met with an almost carefree grin and a beaked mask in deep navy that obscures even the eyes. Taking in the stranger’s swept-back hair and sunny smile, something nudges at the back of his mind.
“Care for a dance, Your Majesty?” the stranger says warmly. Behind him, the partygoers whisper feverishly. At first, the prince is taken aback by the brazen encroachment on his royal bubble, but he senses no ill intent from the man standing before him.
The prince is not at complete ease, however, with the air of mystery that hangs about the stranger like a cloak. “Why do you hide even your eyes?” he asks.
Strangely enough, the man seems momentarily flustered by the question. “My eyes are, ah, a little too memorable for an event like this,” he replies, which raises more questions than it answers. After a moment of quiet deliberation, the prince relinquishes his drink and takes the proffered hand in his own.
If he thought the stranger was warm before, the simple act of accepting a dance seems to set something in him alight. Despite being clad in deep blues and blacks, the man at his elbow radiates light and warmth as he leads the prince to the dance floor.
They fall into starting positions, the strings strike up something bright and elegant, and then they’re off. Together they weave across the room as the music swells and tambourines ring out jovially. The prince can barely tell which of them is the lead and which is the follow, and he doubts it matters. It takes all his concentration to match the stranger step for step, and his preoccupations are steadily wiped from his mind with each beat of the dance. Together they twirl and dip and catch with each swell of the strings. They swish across the ballroom, melting in with the crowd, and the anonymity of the masquerade finally washes over the prince himself. He hardly even notices his partner changing direction, slipping out of dance form, tugging at his wrist and pulling him into the hall, until he is pressed into an alcove and a curtain is drawn about them both.
The prince nearly lashes out at the stranger in his sudden confusion, but the man raises a finger to his lips as the heavy boots of a guard pass by. The footfalls retreat, and then he’s being led out into the garden and behind a trellis of climbing roses.
He pulls his cape about him against the night chill and looks to the stranger in bewilderment, gasps when he sees the man untying his mask and letting it fall to the ground. He can’t help but move closer, searching for a reason.
He finds it. The stranger had not been lying; his eyes are indeed memorable. As the prince looks into those eyes, deep brown with a ring of blue, he remembers. In them he sees summer mornings with stolen pastries, autumn afternoons with wooden swords, and winter nights by the hearth with fairy tales. He sees spring days spent like tonight, hiding in the bushes breathless with laughter as some bumbling guard goes by. He remembers a parting, and a promise made through tears.
“Oh,” he breathes, as the seasons flicker through his mind. “You came back.”
“Yes,” says the stranger-no-longer, “I did.”
