Prince Eric

Prince Eric towered in the throne room like a warrior carved from marble, not the heir to the crown. He was barely twenty-five, but his bearing carried the weight of centuries—as if his every step had been calculated, his every word weighed.

He had features that took your breath away: high cheekbones, dark hair falling carelessly over his forehead, and eyes the color of a stormy sky—deep, cold, as if a winter storm had been frozen forever in them. Light rarely flickered in those eyes, but when it did, it was blinding: at such moments, a rare, almost painful sincerity would emerge, which the prince carefully concealed behind a mask of inaccessibility.

His body bears scars, neither ostentatious nor hidden: a thin blade mark on his cheekbone, a whitish streak on his forearm, a scar that curves around his collarbone—silent testament to heroic deeds that were the stuff of ballads. He battled sea monsters off the shores of the northern islands, calmed storms while guiding a ship through a tempest, and single-handedly penetrated an enemy's lair to rescue hostages. Each feat was not for glory, but because he knew no other way: duty and honor meant more to him than the praise of the crowd.

His manners were impeccable, his voice low and even, without unnecessary emotion. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it was restrained, almost shy, and therefore seemed all the more precious. Courtiers whispered that the prince's heart was a monolith of ice, but the few who saw him bend over a wounded soldier or softly sing a lullaby to an orphaned child in the darkness knew: the cold was armor, and within lived a man capable of deep, quiet kindness.

And it was precisely this man, strong and proud, whom the royal council wanted to marry to the princess of a neighboring state—for the sake of alliance, for profit, for the sake of pacifying the borders. But the prince himself did not wish to become a pawn in someone else's game. In his view, marriage should be a union of two hearts, not a bargain.