The Kaelen manor had been scrubbed clean of Seraphina's memory. All traces of her art, her volatile temperament, and her breakdown had been surgically removed. The house now smelled faintly of disinfectant and new, expensive wool.
Lady Isolde Kaelen, the contingency heir, sat in Valen's vast private dining room, picking at a plate of cold pheasant. She was pale, intimidated by the sheer size of the room and the crushing silence maintained by Lady Anya Kaelen, who sat opposite her.
Anya was not eating. She was observing.
"You are here for one reason, Isolde," Anya stated, her voice sharp and low, every word a deliberate chisel strike. "You are clean. You are docile. You are not consumed by the Kaelen disease—the obsession with the self."
Isolde flinched. "I will do my duty, Aunt Anya. I will honor the alliance."
"Duty is insufficient," Anya snapped. "You will be a replacement. Cassian was consumed by his appetites; Seraphina by her mind. They both failed because they thought their individual desires mattered more than the longevity of the bloodline. They mistook privilege for safety."
Anya leaned forward, her eyes cold and predatory. "The market will not tolerate weakness, Isolde. And the Kaelen name is the market. You must present an exterior of absolute, unassailable purity, because you are now a walking contract."
She gestured toward the far wall, where a portrait of Valen, rigid and imposing, hung. "The alliance marriage to Lord Eamon's son is the final key to restoring our political weight. That boy represents the oldest land grants in the capital. You will secure that union, regardless of personal feeling."
"And if I fail?" Isolde asked, the question barely a whisper.
Anya smiled, a brief, chilling flash of teeth. "Failure is not a concept the Kaelen house entertains. Look at your cousins. Cassian is banished to the agri-colonies; Seraphina is exiled to the quiet country. They are not dead, but they are gone. They have been silenced. That is the Kaelen way of handling vulnerabilities."
Isolde finally understood the depth of the ruthlessness. The family's greatest fear was public humiliation, and their greatest punishment was erasure.
"You will be beautiful," Anya continued, picking up a heavy crystal glass. "You will be silent. And you will be an obedient vessel for the family's future. Any sign of weakness, any hint of the Kaelen disease, and you will join your cousins in the silence."
Isolde pushed her plate away, the cold pheasant suddenly nauseating. She had been brought into the eye of the storm, a pawn in a game of dynasty and vengeance she didn't understand. She had traded her quiet, overlooked existence for a golden cage and a perpetual threat.
She realized the irony: she was the perfect target precisely because she had no voice, no personal ambition. She was the clean canvas, ready to be painted with the Kaelen lie. And the woman who now controlled her life was utterly convinced that this brutal, enforced silence was the only thing that could save the family.