Cut the strings and set me free

Part 2- threads that entangle

As he leads me away, my hand resting on his forearm I feel a thousand eyes on me, boring into me with unveiled curiosity and interest and yet I feel only two. Two that burn across my exposed skin, across my back, leaving trails of flames which leave agonising pain behind, skin raw in its wake. Two pair of eyes that leave me with the blistering reminder of what I was walking away from. What I had no choice but to walk away from. And the burning presences seeking to remind that no matter how far I'd go, that they would remain like eternal flames in my life, constantly flickering, constantly reminding me, constantly, glaringly there.

And when we enter a private chamber that the large grand galley leads off to, I feel my posture slump slightly when the door shuts. Straightening only because of the way a presence comes to stand beside me, reminding me that I wasn't alone. Wasn't unobserved.

"Are you okay?" Prince Jungkook asks, voice soft and gentle, eyes wide and filled with sympathy, with a hint of knowing.

"I am fine. Fine as one can be." I say, feeling pain in that word. Fine.

Did such a word exist to describe the sensation of corroding away, of dying inside whilst on the outside I smiled and continued on with my life? Was there a word to describe the feeling of blood moving through my body like poison, leaving only pain and suffering in its wake. I couldn't think of one. Hence. I am fine.

But the question makes me look at him with wide eyes. As if seeing him for the first time.

It was rare to find someone to inquire how I felt. It felt so long ago that I'd experienced such a small gesture of kindness save from Jimin and Taehyung; the thought of them making me unconsciously flinch, a gaping wound that would always remain open and perhaps never heal.

"You know it might seem preposterous for me to say Your Highness but sometimes it's okay to not be okay. It's fine to feel the pain of wounds that the mortal eye cannot see." He says and it's now that I see that his eyes remind me of a doe's, large and wide and frightfully innocent, unaware perhaps of the dangers the world has to offer. A sign that he was yet unscathed, untainted from the cruelties of existence. And yet he saw more than the experienced eyes did. He saw my pain and agony when my own mother didn't. He looked at me and he didn't see the mask, he saw the person under it.

"Sometimes Your Grace, you'll find that life isn't kind to the ones who hold invisible wounds. That sometimes even the most glorified and embellished doll has to be a warrior, a fighter under it if she wants to survive." I say, words slightly cryptic and yet oh so open, raw.

Somehow I felt no need to hide it from him. Not if he was going to become my intended betrothed, the one who's hand would claim mine, lives bound together by the knot of matrimony. Not if he despite it being the first reception with me was unafraid to voice his thoughts despite the slightly anxious air he carried. A man of contradictions.

I knew two such men far more intimately, an intimacy that came with lifetimes being bound together, experienced together. And it hurt that looking at him brought a flicker of them to mind.

"Are you such a doll Your Highness?" he asks, voice low and calm and measured.

I look him in the eye, head tilted back slightly to peer into those expressive eyes.

"Wrong question Your Grace. But one I shall answer anyways. Aren't we all?"

And his silence is answering enough. His silence is deafening and grating and makes my ears feel raw.

And in that instant, I see that the person I'd considered the only human from the mass of suitors, is human to me more then, because he too understands what it means to be a pawn. He too knows what it means to be used and discarded.