The World Cannot Know

Chapter 59

Prince Sebastian

The corridors of the palace were colder than I remembered.

Not cold in temperature—but in memory. Every torchlit archway echoed with ghosts. My footsteps were careful, silent, like I was trespassing in a place that once belonged to me.

Hector walked beside me, every movement sharp and calculated, eyes scanning ahead for signs of guards. The passage to the nursery was one of the less patrolled wings, tucked beyond the old chapel and lined with worn murals of saints and kings who hadn't mattered in decades.

Still, I felt the weight of every footfall. Each turn of the corridor brought me closer to the son I'd barely held.

Louie.

I hadn't even been there when he was born. I'd left—chasing shadows, chasing Matthew, chasing my own damn name. And now, all that remained of legacy and bloodline was a child asleep in a tower, unaware that men plotted to end him before he could speak the word "throne."

We stopped just outside the nursery.

The guards at the door were slumped unconscious—Hector's doing. His work was always clean. No blood. No noise. Just absence.

"You're sure you want to do this?" he asked me quietly.

I looked at the door. The wood looked the same as it always had—white oak, carved with lilies and doves. A child's door. And beyond it, my son.

"I can't protect him from inside this castle," I said. "Not with Gregory circling like a vulture."

Hector didn't argue. He simply nodded and stepped back.

I pushed the door open.

The nursery was quiet. Pale moonlight cut across the floor in silver streaks. The fire had been banked to embers, warm enough to keep the chill at bay. A nursemaid lay curled on the floor beside the cradle, sound asleep thanks to the powder in her wine.

And there he was.

Louie.

He was bigger than I remembered—no longer the fragile newborn I'd glimpsed through a haze of duty and chaos, but a child already growing into himself. Stronger. Rounder in the cheeks. His legs had lengthened, and his fingers curled with purpose as they twitched in sleep.

His hair—dark and soft—curled behind his ears just like his. Just like Matthew's.

The resemblance struck me so sharply it left me unsteady. That same slight tilt to the mouth. The shape of his nose. The faintest suggestion of mischief, even in rest.

I stepped forward, heart clawing at my ribs.

For a moment, I could barely breathe.

I knelt beside the cradle, slowly, like a man approaching something sacred. My fingers hovered, then brushed gently across his forehead.

His eyes fluttered open.

Not afraid. Just curious.

Brown—not quite mine, not quite Katharina's—but unmistakably familiar. Matthew's brown.

There it was again. That unshakable echo.

"Hello, little one," I whispered, voice catching.

He didn't cry. Just stared, the tiniest furrow forming between his brows—an echo of my own scowl when I was deep in thought, but the way he held it... it was Matthew through and through.

"I've missed too much already," I whispered. "But I'm here now."

His hand reached up clumsily, tiny fingers brushing my collar like an anchor.