Chapter 7 - The Replacement Queen
Adrian read the recommendation twice.
“Another wife.”
Nobody answered.
Isabella did not cry.
She was too tired.
Helena had not only judged her body for becoming larger.
She had judged it for becoming politically inconvenient.
One heir was not enough for people obsessed with succession.
Miriam remembered Helena standing beside Isabella’s bed the morning after Julian’s birth.
Her first question had not been:
Will she recover?
It had been:
Can she carry again?
That memory changed everything.
The inquiry called Graves back.
Under pressure, he admitted Helena paid him to minimize Isabella’s condition in reports intended for Adrian.
He also helped build the fitness review.
He denied deliberately worsening Isabella’s childbirth.
The delayed medication that night, he claimed, was a medical judgment.
Maybe negligent.
Not proven intentional.
Isabella insisted the inquiry say exactly that.
Truth did not need exaggeration.
Then Hugo Mert, the missing palace secretary, was found at his brother’s farm.
He brought copies of every order he had altered.
Dr. Vale’s diet plan.
Rest instructions.
Medical summaries.
Hugo admitted Helena dictated the changes.
“Why?” Adrian asked.
Hugo swallowed.
“She said if you saw the queen as injured, you would protect her.”
“And if I saw her as lazy?”
“You would distance yourself.”
Adrian looked sick.
That was exactly what happened.
Hugo produced a draft proclamation.
QUEEN ISABELLA TEMPORARILY WITHDRAWN DUE TO PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL INCAPACITY.
Helena would control Julian’s household.
The king would later be advised to consider “dynastic alternatives.”
Isabella stared at the page.
The plan was not to remove her in one dramatic act.
It was to make everyone accept her disappearance little by little.
One meal.
One insult.
One canceled event.
One medical lie.
Then Adrian saw a name listed beneath possible future court appointments.
Lady Celeste Harrow.
He looked at her across the hearing room.
Celeste shook her head.
“I never knew.”
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For once, Isabella believed her.
Helena had planned everyone’s future without telling any of them.
