Chapter Eighteen


... 5 years later ...


"Check!" – cried Robert and attacked his mother's king with his knight.

Queen Helena smiled contentedly.

"Did you just sacrifice your best piece for an empty threat?" – she asked provocatively and captured her son's knight.

Prince Liam was sick, so Princess Eleanor played alone at the other side of the table with the fallen chess pieces.

"Here you are, darling." – Helena turned to her daughter. – "I got a horse for your queen. Now you can put her in a carriage or take her out riding."

"Thanks, Mom." – the little girl said happily and grabbed the white horse figure.

The Queen turned her attention back to the chess board, but her assistant burst into the room.

"I hope it's important, Rachel. I'm with the children." – Helena remarked without looking at the other woman.

"We have a problem." – Rachel answered the unasked question and handed the photocopy of a newspaper cover to the Queen.

She looked at it and almost screamed when she saw the Daily Mirror's headline:

"ROYAL AFFAIR. – Magic mirror in my hand who's cheating at the Buckingham?"

Eleanor ran over to them and tried to acquire the paper, but Rachel held it over her head so she couldn't reach it.

"What is it? What is it?" – the Princess asked impatiently because she had an instinctive interest in all the things they wanted to hide from her.

"Nothing." – her mother replied. – "I have to go."

Eleanor didn't take this news so well.

"No! You promised that you would stay until six!" – she screamed and she burst out crying.

She didn't understand why she bothered to learn how to read the clock if her mother just fooled her. She ran around the room, kicking the furniture and throwing chess pieces at everyone.

"Finish your tantrum, Eleanor or I won't tell a bedtime story tonight." – the Queen warned her daughter in a threatening voice.

However, the Princess didn't listen to her.

"You are a liar! Daddy never lies. I hate you!" – she shouted.

"Your father is not here so suck it up, Princess." – Helena replied scornfully.

She exchanged a meaningful look with her son who nodded in agreement. The Queen knew that she could always trust Robert to take care of his sister. He was able to work wonders when it came to calm her down.


"I can make a list of the best child psychiatrists in the country." – Rachel offered after they left the children's playroom.

Queen Helena could have killed her assistant with her eyes as she spoke to her:

"If I want to crush her spirit, I can do it without a shrink. Suggest something like this again and it will cost you your head. Understood?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, Your Majesty." – Rachel mumbled and gulped.

Helena nodded and focused her thoughts on their more urgent problem.

"What do we know about the article?" – she asked straightforwardly.

"It will be published tomorrow without names, but..." – the assistant started, but the Queen interrupted her.

"Magic mirror in my hand… It's the Evil Queen from Snow White. They are obviously talking about me. Who is their source?"

Rachel hesitated before she answered.

"Someone inside the Palace who allegedly promised them more details by the end of the week."


Helena didn't need much time to figure out, who was behind the scandalous article. She suspected that it had something to do with Cyrus and his new love interest, but she has never thought that he could go this far.

"You son of a bitch!" – she shouted as she stormed into her brother-in-law's room. – "What the hell were you thinking?"

Prince Cyrus didn't bother to get out of his chair as he replied:

"I see you got my message."

"Why?" – the Queen asked in shock.

Cyrus finally turned to her with a sneer.

"You lied to me. You promised that you would talk to Simon about Roger and me, but you never did."

Helena looked at him with sympathy. She really felt sorry, but she couldn't help him.

"You wish the impossible, Cyrus, you know that. Even I can't ask him for such favour." – she sighed.

"But I'm in love with him! And Roger loves me too!" – her brother-in-law cried out painfully.

The Queen got embarrassed by this genuine and unexpected confession.

"I'm sorry… but we have to put the monarchy first. You can't have an official relationship with a man. It must remain a secret." – she said softly, avoiding Cyrus' gaze. Then she added: – "I didn't talk to Simon because he would say the same."

Her brother-in-law realized that she was right, but he already made up his mind.

"The article will be published one way or another. You can convince Simon to give his blessing to my affair or yours will be on the front page."

Queen Helena's eyes widened in shock.

"I don't understand. Why do you punish me? Ruining my life, my family, it will get you nowhere." – she protested indignantly.

Cyrus shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't care. If I were you, I would hurry. The clock is ticking…" – he remarked with ease and gave Helena a triumphant smile.


Despite her earlier threat, Helena did check on her children before their bedtime. Due to Liam's illness, Eleanor temporary moved to Robert's room and now they had a slumber party. The Queen couldn't help herself appreciating the irony that they watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when she got to their room.

"Where are you in the film?" – she asked the children and sat down at the edge of the bed.

"The Huntsman returned to the Queen with the heart, who thinks that it belongs to Snow White, but in fact there is a pig heart in the box." – her son replied willingly.

Eleanor was still angry with their mother and decided to ignore her presence. Robert, however, was too curious about what could have been the bad news, which made her mother practically run out of the room. So taking advantage of the unexpected situation, he gently asked her about it.

"Did you take care of the problem?" – he said, emphasizing the last word.

"What problem?" – Helena asked back in mock surprise.

Her son rolled his eyes and answered without words:

"We don't lie to each other, Mom."

The Queen sighed and pulled closer to Robert.

"Not yet." – she whispered in his ears, then she added: – "But I'll figure something out."

"As always." – Prince Robert remarked reassuringly.

His mother gave him a dim smile.

"As always." – she repeated, but this time she wasn't so sure about it.

Robert could see that she was in trouble, but he knew that it would be pointless to ask any more questions. Though she was always honest to him, it didn't mean that she shared everything with him.


The King returned three days later from his official trip and Helena didn't manage to come up with any reliable solution by then. She had ideas about threatening the editors of the newspaper or trying to pay them off, but she knew that it would be useless. Cyrus would go to another newspaper. There was no way that she could grant her brother-in-law his wish so she had no choice but to tell the truth to her husband. As much as she wanted to delay this moment, Helena knew that she couldn't waste any more time. She took a deep breath and went to look for him, silently praying not to find him with the children.

Not much to her surprise, he was in the kitchen, talking to his new maid friend. The King never made a secret of this hobby, he was proud that he cared about his people inside and outside the Palace walls. In the beginning, the Queen didn't mind it too much until these conversations were about insignificant things. However, thanks to the excellent spy work of the Silent Marys, Helena recently found out that sometimes her husband shared more information with those girls – they were always girls – than with his own wife. During the past year, it became a bad habit of hers to stand in the doorway and listen to them for a few minutes before she made her presence known.

She was about to do the same this time as well, when Snow White came to her mind.

"What if she just puts someone else's heart in the box?"

And suddenly, it was like the universe was sending a message to her. Helena noticed a camera on the windowsill, left there by the photographer who came to take pictures of the Palace Gardens. At the same time, Simon stood up from his chair to hug the poor kitchen girl who had her birthday or her dead mother's birthday or something like that. The Queen knew that it was now or never. She grabbed the camera and captured the moment as the King of England wrapped his arms around a common maid.


"I hope you didn't start looking for a new job just yet." – Queen Helena greeted her assistant the next morning and handed over a newspaper to her.

It showed a picture of King Simon with one of their maids and there was a headline below with large letters: THE KING'S MAIDSTRESS

Rachel looked from the cover to the Queen in surprise.

"I'm going to rot in hell for this." – Helena remarked objectively.

Her assistant was still in shock, but she managed to regain her composure.

"You did it for the monarchy." – she said with ease.

Queen Helena let out a bitter laugh.

"The monarchy, of course. Even if it was the truth, it wouldn't justify this." – she remarked sarcastically, then she added. – "Now get rid of it and remove every copy from the Palace before my children see it."