The letter arrived with the evening courier, tucked among a bundle of trade reports and a formal request from the guild of carpenters in Elvenholm.
Gerhardt sorted through the correspondence as he always did, his spectacles perched on his nose, his hands steady from decades of practice.
Bills to approve.
Petitions to forward to the duke’s study.
A letter from Lady Lydia, which he set aside for Cassian’s personal attention.
At the bottom of the stack was an envelope of rough, cheap paper, the kind used by commoners who could afford nothing better.
The wax seal was plain, without a sigil.
Gerhardt turned it over and read the return address.
A village in the eastern foothills.
A name he had not seen in ten years.
His hands stopped being steady.
He sat down heavily in his chair, the envelope unopened before him.
The candle on his desk flickered, casting long shadows across the small office he had occupied for four decades.
Outside, the castle was settling into its evening quiet—the distant clang of the kitchen doors, the murmur of guards changing watch, the wind worrying at the shutters.
His thumb traced the edge of the coarse paper.
The name of the village stirred something old and buried.
He had received a letter from that place once before, years ago.
A letter he had burned.
A letter he had never told anyone about.
He did not know what this new envelope contained.
But he was afraid of it.
Slowly, he broke the seal.
The handwriting was not hers.
Someone else had written it—a neighbor, perhaps, or a village priest.
The words were few and blunt.
To the steward of Castle Elvenstone, Elise of Thornwood is dying.
She asks that you come.
She says there is a child.
She says you will understand.
Please hurry.
She does not have much time.
There was no signature.
Gerhardt read the letter twice.
Then a third time.
Then he folded it carefully, precisely, and placed it in the inner pocket of his coat.
He sat motionless for a long while, staring at the candle’s flame.
His mind went back ten years, to a winter morning and a young chambermaid walking out of the castle gates with nothing but a small bundle.
Elise had been barely nineteen, with dark hair and quiet hands.
The duke—Cassian’s father—had sent her away without ceremony when her pregnancy became impossible to hide.
Gerhardt had been the one to see her to the gate.
He had pressed a small pouch of coins into her hand, far too little, and she had thanked him with tears in her eyes.
Six months later, a letter had come.
She had given birth to a daughter.
She had named her Seraphina, after the duchess who had once shown her a moment of kindness before the duchess herself passed away.
The child was healthy.
Elise asked for nothing—only that someone at the castle know, in case something happened to her.
Gerhardt had burned that letter.
He had told no one.
The old duke would have seen the child as a threat, a bastard with a claim.
The old Cassian—the cold, arrogant wolf—would have seen her as an insult to the family name.
There had been no safe time to speak.
No right moment.
But Cassian had changed.
The child in Thornwood.
The cloak in the snow.
The quiet meals in the solar.
The way he spoke to servants as if they were people.
Gerhardt had watched it all.
The girl would be ten years old now.
Ten years of poverty.
Ten years of hiding.
Ten years of a secret that had slowly crushed the old steward from the inside.
He touched the pocket where the letter lay.
It was time.
The candle had burned down to a stub when Gerhardt finally rose from his chair.
His joints ached.
His eyes were dry.
He had not moved for nearly an hour.
He walked to the window and looked out at the night.
The moon was a sliver of silver above the mountains.
The snow had stopped falling.
The world was still.
Tomorrow, he would go to the duke.
He would stand before him and confess a secret he had kept for ten years.
He would watch Cassian’s face and wait for the anger, the cold fury, the dismissal that would end his decades of service.
Or perhaps—perhaps—he would see something else.
Something that gave him hope.
He touched the letter in his pocket once more.
It was still there.
Real.
Heavy as a stone.
“I cannot hide this any longer,” he whispered.
The wind answered.
The castle slept.
And Gerhardt waited for the dawn.