His chin wobbled.

“I was just trying to be what you wanted.”

A single candle on the table in front of him illuminated a large painting hanging on the wall. The eyes of the painting stared back at him. Unmoving.

Prince Charming VI swallowed painfully and let out a sigh. Then he blinked down at the crown that lay, weighty, in his hands. The cold metal of the crown was not warming fast enough to his body temperature. He hated how his teeth, his nose, his eyes warped across its glossy surface. It made him look less man, more monstrous. Less royal, more like a creature dragged from hell.

Charming did not place the crown on his head where it would fit snugly against his porcelain brow. Instead, he set it with a kind of reverence where it belonged, back on the low table in front of the painting.

The painting depicted one of Charming’s ancestors, the man who had settled this great, green land, astride a horse, holding aloft a single sparkling slipper.

_King Charming Seeks The Perfect Fit _the inscription below the painting read.

Charming VI stared at the gold lettering. He wanted to scream at how unfair life was, that all his life he had been pressed into a mold. He had pretended he was fitted for kingdom, for royalty, for ruling. He had preened at parties, scoffed at peasants, kept his gorgeous curls pale and perfect, and grinned at every woman who passed. He was the paragon of everything his parents and royal attendants desired.

He was porcelain fit to break.

And now, under the strain of the day’s events, he was going to.

It was the Day of Choosing. He had been fitted for new clothes in the weeks before, and now the expensive purple fabric strained against his skin, painfully stiff in its newness.

The morning inched forward as lady after eligible lady was presented to him. His collar was hot and everything itched and besides, he didn’t even want to be there. It made for some very rude comments that slipped out, almost against his will. Many an eye turned disdainful at the prince’s complete lack of courtesy. He heard the unapproving whispers gather around the room.

Finally, the procession of women had ebbed, but by then the day had waxed well into afternoon. He had to be re-powdered and re-adjusted. The attendants shoved him into different clothes and sent him off to the feast, which was equally disastrous.

Hundreds of eyes on him. Hundreds of mouths muttering things they thought he couldn’t hear. He picked at his food, mood growing more and more sour, until he had an accident that involved several plates of food flying across the room to smash into the wall. The servants tripped over themselves trying to clean it up and a swell of gasps and barely contained laughter surged throughout the Great Hall.

And then came get another apparel change, this time into ballroom attire. He was shoved off to make merriment. But his feet betrayed him and more spectacle followed.

So here he was, dripping wet, curls plastered to his forehead, and burgundy rivulets of wine snaking under his collar.

He touched his fingertips to the crown one final time.

“I’m just not cut out for this,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Then he took the candle in his right hand, held the flame to a corner of the canvas, and watched the fire lick up the sides of the painting.

Some wax dripped down onto the crown, sizzling lightly as it met the cool surface.

“Your Highness!” a shout rang out.

A thunderbolt of panic arced through the young prince. He dropped the candle and bolted, leaving the flame to devour the painting that would have determined his destiny.