Chapter 8 - Adrian’s Part
The palace wanted one villain.
Helena.
Easy.
Clean.
Isabella refused.
“My husband laughed too.”
The council room went silent.
Adrian did not defend himself.
Isabella continued.
“My mother-in-law manipulated information. She did not control his mouth.”
Adrian looked down.
He had mocked Isabella’s food.
Her dresses.
Her breathing after stairs.
He had called her “my sleepy queen” in front of guests.
Once, when she refused dessert, he joked that at least she had finally learned restraint.
He remembered every sentence now.
At the time, each one felt small.
Together, they had built a prison.
That evening, he asked Isabella for ten minutes.
She allowed it.
“I was afraid after Julian’s birth,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Losing you.”
She stared.
He explained that the birth had terrified him. Nobody told him the truth afterward. Her changed body reminded him of the night everything almost disappeared.
So he turned fear into disgust.
He attacked the evidence of his own helplessness.
Isabella listened.
Then said:
“That explains you.”
He nodded.
“It doesn’t excuse me.”
“No.”
He apologized without asking forgiveness.
That mattered.
Before he left, Isabella said:
“Do not defend me because you want your wife back.”
He looked at her.
“Then why?”
“Because what happened was wrong.”
The next morning, private sketches of Isabella’s postpartum body appeared in newspapers.
Measurements.
Medical notes.
Cruel captions.
The packet carried Adrian’s royal seal.
The court exploded.
Adrian swore he had not sent it.
Isabella examined the mark.
“The lion is wrong.”
Two years earlier, Adrian had changed his seal.
This was the old version.
Someone had access to archived royal stationery.
Guards searched Helena’s office.
They found payment records to two journalists.
One had published mocking cartoons months earlier.
The humiliation had been cultivated outside the palace too.
Then Mara found the original sketchbook.
It belonged to Celeste.
Celeste saw one caption and went pale.
“That line is Helena’s.”
“What line?”
Celeste pointed.
THE GREAT MOTHER OF THE REALM.
May you like
“She said it while looking at Isabella during a fitting.”
And for the first time, they had a direct link from Helena to the public campaign.
