The prince laid in his ornate bed, a quiet sigh escaping his parched lips.
On the overly ornate nightstand his drink sat, untouched. The pearls of condensation caught glimpses of light before sliding away into obscurity.
A cigarette lay limp in his mouth, flowing streams of beautiful smoke to the rafters. The ash clung to it, defying gravity and his ever steady death-march, clinging to the moment.
The old clock in the hallway, given to him by his grandfather - a great king of men - chimed the arrival of 5am, and the on-coming dawn.
From her room down the hall, where she only recently had taken to sleeping away the cold nights, Anette played the violin. The tender, heartless notes danced through the halls of their mansion.
Slowly, with shaking a shaking hand, he through the cigarette into a dark corner of his room. This entire place could burn down, he thought to himself, and not a person would notice.
The music stopped.
His sweat-soaked hair fell around Alain, alone in his bed made for a king. Scattered around the floor were old books, the binding bent and pages yellowed with age - remnants of a life not lived. He was to be a writer, once. Praises were heaped upon him, heavier than his father's crown. Unfinished manuscripts haunted his study. On the wall of his bedroom chamber hung a beautiful portrait - Anette, standing beneath the falling cherry blossoms of his family's estate. He painted it himself, a lifetime ago.
Through his window the first light of dawn crept in, shining its brilliance upon the despondence within.
He didn't love her, he realized. He realized that he realized this far too late. He didn't love her, and maybe never did.
Anette was beautiful - even more beautiful than when they first met. Her eyes carried every beautiful shade, the crystal blue of the ocean he took her to when they were still courting. The green of the forest that surrounded their mansion. The brown of the earth from which their love once sprang. And, whenever they spoke of love, the red from her eyes breaking into tears.
She was always graceful. When they first met she was a dancer. She never gained fame or fortune from her profession, the two things she valued above all else, but she glided with every movement, a song more beautiful than any symphony ever composed.
He never loved her, he thought. He loved who he painted, who he wrote of - most often in words too toothsome to be adored by the literary world. Anette was beautiful, but nothing else. She did not read, nor listen to anything he would consider as music. She did not enjoy the cinema, except for the insipid movies he disdained. She was everything he was not.
He did not love her, he realized too late. He did not come to this conclusion until after he had been with her for years, stealing away her best years, after he beauty had begun to fade, after her grace had started to decline -- after her love for him, if it ever truly existed at all, and dried up and died.
He did not love her, he realized, until he had fallen in love with her, far too late.
The cold dawn crept in through his window, lighting the falling cherry blossoms, dancing in the invisible breeze.
Alain closed his eyes and slept.
