The rain in Batavia always reminded Julian of something very different: the falling snow in The Hague. Inside his stifling palace room, Julian closed his eyes and was instantly dragged back to that night—the night he discovered that his family tree was built upon a pile of lies.
Julian stood before the iron safe in his uncle's library. With trembling fingers, he opened the brown folder marked "Dissertation: East Indies Affairs." However, as he turned the first page, he didn't find just one name. There were two birth records held together by a rusted silver clip.
The first name was Adrian. But on the second sheet, there was the name of a baby girl born two years later: Anne Marie.
Julian's blood seemed to stop flowing. His father hadn't just left one child behind; he had left a small family. He stared at the additional notes written in sharp black ink: "Subject two, Anne Marie. Possesses strong physical resemblance to the Van de Berg line. Public recognition risk is very high. Recommended to be placed under church care or separated from her brother if necessary."
A rage he had never felt before burned in Julian's chest. His uncle and father treated human beings like pawns on a chessboard. They didn't see Adrian as a brother or Anne Marie as a niece; they only saw "risks" to be managed.
Julian thought of the grand paintings in his palace corridors—the royal family looking holy and perfect. As it turned out, that perfection was paid for by the exile of two souls to the edge of the world.
"I must find them both," Julian whispered that night amidst the snowstorm. "Not to bring them back to this prison, but to ensure Friedrich never touches them."
Julian closed the safe and stepped out into the frozen night. He carried the weight of a secret about a brother who might hate him, and a little sister who might not even know she possessed royal blood. As his steamboat left the port of Rotterdam for the East, Julian knew that his mission in Batavia was to save what remained of his family's true honor.