The Portrait of Pride · 26. May 2025

TPOP 53

Chapter 53

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Ha! Felix laughed loudly and squeezed his cock with his hand.

"I with the Hilde's whore?"

Apparently he had touched a nerve. Hugo didn't speak, his eyes fixed on the floor. In times like these, it was best to keep his mouth shut.

The fact that Diana Escalif didn't sell herself didn't mean much. The fact that she was from Hilde and had been hired by someone to seduce the Crown Prince was what mattered.

Prince Eisen's biological mother had approached the Emperor in exactly the same way: the damned mistress sowed the seeds of dissension in the imperial family that ultimately cost the Empress her life.

On the surface, she was a beautiful and good woman. The emperor laid eyes on her first, took her, and got her pregnant. The Empress had welcomed the pregnant woman with open arms. The following year, when the concubine gave birth to a son, The Empress gave him a place in the palace so that he could be like a brother to her own son.

Such was the nest. It was a strange mix of people, but outwardly it was united and peaceful. Felix grew up to be a very human boy in this cozy nest.

The concubine shattered it.

While the emperor was preoccupied with indulging in the concubine's body, an assassin infiltrated the palace and ripped out the Empress's heart. Despite a mountain of evidence pointing to the Count of Montaigne, who was the concubine’s ally, the emperor, who was deeply infatuated with his young mistress, sided with her.

From that moment on, Hilde's woman became a proper noun in Felix's mind. The only words he could think of for her were all the same. Garbage, trash.

Dirty things that need to be disposed of as soon as they were seen.

So Felix ripped out the concubine's heart the same way the assassin had slaughtered his mother, then dumped her body in the brothel where she'd been born and raised. The horrified pimps burned her body, and to this day, Eisen's mother was still officially listed as missing.

Hilde. The mere mention of the name made his eyes roll. Felix despised everything that resided in that disgusting place.

He laughed again.

"She was lying to me."

Diana had apparently burst into tears, saying she wasn't a whore. He believed her.

Nevertheless, it was hard to shake the feeling that, for once, Eisen had gotten the better of him, as her tearful face was deceptive.

Brushing his disheveled hair from his forehead, Felix kicked the table in front of him without mercy. The vases, paperweights, and miscellaneous objects on the table went flying everywhere.

He was not at all relieved. His eyes twinkled with amusement.

"It's been too long since I've killed a man."

"Your Highness!"

Hugo exclaimed, remembering the weapons that filled the four sides of the parlor.

"Shall we bring the maid back? How about you personally punish her?”

It would be a pity for the maid, but it was a hundred times better than having the Crown Prince going around the palace wielding his sword.

"Unless you want to be the first to die at my hands, get out."

"But we must finish the story, Your Highness, and you must calm down. We'll figure out what to do with the maid."

Dispose?

Felix's grip on the doorframe tightened, and he closed and opened his eyes.

"What do you want me to do with her? She had gone back to that cesspool of her own."

Diana went to where the others like her were gathered. She would go and live the life of a tramp that suited her. Throwing away a maid wasn’t a big deal.

But he felt dirty.

It was unbearably dirty. A different kind of unpleasantness clung to his whole body than the one he'd gotten from Eisen's trick.

If Diana stood in front of a brothel, bidders would swarm like bees to buy her. Perhaps she'd be sold to some rich minion or nobleman.

Who else would touch what he had touched? Who?

Just throw her away and be done with it, he realized, feeling more depressed than necessary. There must be a reason, a reason....

"The painting."

Felix suddenly muttered. He mulled over the words he had just spat out, as if they hadn't just popped out of his head.

"I didn't finish the painting."

Felix stormed out of the living room. The servants who had been diligently moving the belongings from the secluded Palace to the Main Palace stopped in unison and bowed their heads.

Without a glance to the right or left, Felix went straight outside to find his horse, followed closely by Hugo.

"Your Highness!"

He called anxiously, but the Crown Prince was already whipping his horse.

The hunting lodge looked the same as it had the previous week. No one had tidied it up without Felix's permission. The bedclothes were rumpled, the windows were open, and the living room table and paint-stained sofa were untouched.

Felix walked briskly through the living room to the window. A low cabinet in front of the window held the sketches he'd made during his stay.

He flipped through the sheets of paper. They showed the woman in various poses. Some had no bodies, some had no heads, and some were skeletal. The most recent ones were at the bottom.

He crumpled up a few of the poorer sketches, and there it was. The delicately detailed face of the maid. He had drawn it in front of that window the day she came out of the woods. He'd gotten caught up in lusting after her before he'd finished below the neck, and the sketch had remained unfinished.

It was the first drawing he was satisfied with: eyes filled with tears but eager to live, lips parted slightly, a tiny pucker between them. The lack of coloring didn't vividly portray Diana as she was that day. But the crude sketch took Felix there in an instant.

A rosy flush appeared on both cheeks of the woman in the sketch. Her eyelashes fluttered and a single, pent-up tear slid down her cheek. The pupils of her empty eyes filled with a light green color. The slender woman, unaccustomed to sexual stimulation, shuddered slightly.

"There is still work to be done."

Thunderclap's voice began to rise in pitch.

There was still so much unfinished business with Diana. Felix had no history of giving up on what he set out to do. And Diana was the first living model he'd found in 13 years.

The anger drained from Felix's face as he found a clear answer. The murderous intent that had been unnecessarily fierce subsided.

It didn’t have to be in the woman’s true form. Felix was determined to possess her in a way that was familiar to him. As always, he reconstructed the subject in his own way. And he put it in his gallery.

After that, he didn’t care what someone else did to Diana.

He heard Hugo and Arnold dismount from their horses. Felix clutched the sketch and opened his mouth.

"Diana’s slave deed, where is it?"

"I have it here."

Hugo, who had just opened the door to the cottage, approached breathlessly. The two papers that Prince Eisen had handed him, intent on getting under Felix's skin, lay on the side table.

Felix grabbed any pen that was rolling around and scratched roughly at the bottom of the deed. The unfamiliar name on the contract and the transfer deed of Diana’s rights was crossed out.

Felix wrote down his name next to it and signed it. The nib scratched the paper with such ferocity that the tip was torn.

"Take it and seal it, so no one can dispute it."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Take the woman to the main palace."

Play with her, use her and throw her away, only the master could do that. And he was Diana’s master. He had decided to do so, and there was no one in Karman who could object.

***

A carriage drove down a darkened road in the middle of the night, the moon high overhead.

The road out of the capital city of Liposa was bumpy and the ride was uncomfortable. The coachman glanced back over his lanky shoulder.

"Looks like you have caught the runaway slave, huh?"

There were two people in the back seat. A middle-aged man and a woman.

The man was obviously a drunk, drug-addled pimp, and the woman, well, she was a little hard to tell.

Her long, flowing dress gave away her gender, but her face was wrapped in a large wrapper. A thick rope was tied around her neck to keep it from slipping off.

If she was being led away like this, she was one of two things. A death row inmate or a slave.