The candlelight flickered against the stone walls of Christiansborg Palace, casting long shadows that danced with each step Johann took through the narrow corridor. He moved quietly-deliberately-his fingers still stained with ink from the letters he'd been writing all evening at the King's request. Reforms, politics, medicine, madness. There was always something.

But tonight, he wasn't thinking of his sovereign. Nor of his responsibilities. Nor even of Caroline Matilda.

It was you-always you-who haunted the spaces between his convictions.

You, the royal sibling, younger than the Queen, just as ensnared by court expectations, just as trapped in a palace gilded in hypocrisy and rot. They called you a vision, a painting come to life, a beauty that sparked poems and stirred scandalous whispers behind fans and goblets of wine. He hated the way they spoke of you-as if you were flesh for sport, a prize to be auctioned to foreign nobility. No one spoke of your mind, of your sharp tongue, your quiet rage, the way your laughter carried like music only when you allowed it.

Only he knew the parts of you not touched by diplomacy. Only you saw the parts of him that weren't merely a physician, or a puppetmaster.

He reached the hidden door to the west wing, one only a handful of servants even knew existed. It was you who'd shown it to him that night when you had kissed him first-so boldly, as if to tell him that you, unlike your sister, would not be contained.

Tonight, the court was busy with another pointless masquerade. Your chambers were dark but not asleep.