TPOP 73

Chapter 73

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8. The Product of Deception

The Count of Montaigne's estate, Espian.

Summer sunlight streamed into the splendid living room. The air was thick with the fragrant scent of medicinal herbs.

Eisen inhaled the herbal aroma as he looked down upon the Count's mansion. A gardener was pouring a watering can over the grassy patches exposed to the hot sun. The peaceful, leisurely scene eased his headache.

His chronic migraines had worsened since attending the Emperor's birthday banquet at the Imperial Palace last month.

After being humiliated before dozens of nobles in front of the Crown Prince that day, Eisen had lain sick for days with severe headaches. Closing his eyes only made the face of the man who had crushed him reappear, unbearable to endure.

The Crown Prince. Felix. His half-brother. The artist who abandoned the world. A devil in angel's clothing.

Eisen had never been strong since childhood. He was small in stature, with slender limbs, and frequently ill. He didn't suffer from any major chronic illness, but with his half-brother as the benchmark, he always lived with an inferiority complex. His half-brother had been extraordinary since boyhood, and not just ordinarily so.

When they first met as children, he thought he was facing an angel. Had his hair been silver or gold, he might truly have believed it. As they grew up together and the boy began to shed his childish ways, envy gradually took root.

Tall stature, broad shoulders, a sturdy build. His youthful features gradually faded into a more refined face, with features perfectly proportioned and harmonized. As if that weren't enough, the heavens had also bestowed Felix with innate talent.

Indeed, the legitimate heir was different. Comparing himself, an illegitimate child, to the Crown Prince was simply impossible. Even their mothers differed in stature. 

The Empress was a woman like the mother earth, embracing them with a benevolent smile, while Eisen's mother was preoccupied with pleasing the Emperor, her deep perfume scent and crinkling smile ever-present.

Born from different wombs, it was an insurmountable gap. Eisen envied and resented his half-brother, who seemed sculpted by the gods themselves.

Yet, he also admired him.

Eisen could never keep quiet before Felix's paintings. His portraits were sometimes grotesque, sometimes sublime.

Young Eisen felt fear and awe before the canvas taller than himself. A desire to enter that canvas welled up within him.

"Can't you paint our family too, Brother? Paint me too!"

"All right. If that's what you want."

"Can Mother be in it too?"

"Ask your mother about that first."

Felix must have cherished his half-brother. Eisen still vividly remembered the smile he often showed him and his gentle tone. The Empress was also an extremely kind and gentle person; he loved it even more that her smile and manner of speaking mirrored his brother's perfectly.

Looking back now, it seems it was all just imitation. Eisen snorted coldly.

But he was certain: not a single grain of falsehood was mixed into his work. Felix never put lies into his paintings. It wasn't a matter of character, but of pride.

Anyone who had seen the official portraits of the royal family could tell. How much devotion and affection the painter poured into creating this work.

But that painting no longer existed in this world. On the day disaster struck the imperial family, Felix himself tore it to shreds and burned it.

On the day the painting vanished and the benevolent Empress's face could never be seen again, Eisen was in the main palace. Hidden behind thick curtains, he watched his brother's back. He was covered in blood. Before the dead empress, wrapped in linen, his brother painted. It was a very dark and grotesque painting.

On the canvas, atop the linen, a crimson mass rose. From the distance, he couldn't see exactly what it was, but he knew it was no ordinary painting. The man wildly applying brushstrokes to the canvas was already half-mad.

Thinking back now, that red mass was a heart. Freshly torn from a human body, the very source of life force.

Where was that painting now?

"This tea is excellent for boosting energy and relaxing muscles. Drink it all up."

Besides Eisen, another person was in the living room. The owner of this mansion, Count Montagne, personally poured and offered the tea.

"The moment is near. It would be disastrous if you were to harm yourself."

The moment referred to the operation planned to coincide with the passing of the Emperor, who had been hovering between life and death since early spring. It was also the climax of a plan built over years, involving countless spies and sacrifices.

Eisen stared blankly at the reddish medicinal tea.

"Count."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"That painting sent to this mansion by someone whose identity remains unknown. The one depicting the spies planted in the secondary palace. If it was indeed painted by my brother..."

The Count faltered. Eisen murmured, unconcerned.

"It seems unlikely he painted only one or two such pictures. His obsession with painting was immense from the start. He couldn't have lived for over ten years without ever picking up a brush."

"That may be so. Why are you suddenly curious about such things?"

"If he painted countless works, I wonder where they're all kept now."

Eisen lifted his teacup to his lips, continuing to reminisce about the past. Felix rarely discarded any of his paintings. Even pieces he personally tossed into the trash were often retrieved later, so the servants never threw away any paper or canvas he'd marked, collecting them all meticulously.

Finished paintings would have been treasured all the more.

"The world is still deceived by him, Count. I don't think we can kill him by ordinary means. Even if our plan succeeds."

Eisen's goal wasn't merely to cut off Felix’s breath. His ultimate aim was to sever Felix's political and social life entirely. The people of Karman must draw red lines through his name, hurl stones and eggs at his grave, spewing contempt and scorn. Only then would the Asthean Imperial House finally draw the curtain on its 500-year history.

"Before the main event, it might be better to strike a fatal blow from another direction."

"We are spreading rumors about the Hilde whore..."

"That alone is insufficient."

Felix had taken that whore back. The owner of the brothel, bereft of his woman, had begged and pleaded his way back to this mansion, revealing the truth.

"The entire world must clearly understand just how cruel he is."

There must be a separate space dedicated to Felix's paintings. The location was most likely the secondary palace.

"If I recall correctly, I heard there's a place in the secondary palace where servants are strictly forbidden from entering."

"That's correct. There's a space the servants call the 'painting room,' and inside that, there's another door. Only the head maidservant, the head valet, and a handful of guard knights are permitted to enter."

"Getting inside there is the priority, then."

"Among the spies currently infiltrating the secondary palace, there is a servant who has gained the head valet's trust. I will arrange for him to find out what lies within the Painting Room."

"Good. If what's inside is what I suspect..."

The grotesque painting he had seen in his youth came vividly to mind. If Felix had captured the final moments of all the spies who threatened him in such a manner on canvas. If such paintings were not just one or two...

Eisen laughed silently.

The day those paintings were revealed to the world, Felix Asthean’s noble mask would shatter into pieces.

***

Diana's foot wasn't healing well. The wound was deep, but more fundamentally, it couldn't heal properly. The patient herself had absolutely no will to recover.

Seeing the blood-soaked foot, the attending physician removed his glasses and rubbed his brow. The fresh bandage applied this morning had already lost most of its original color.

"Miss Diana. This is becoming problematic. I clearly warned you not to walk carelessly until the stitches were removed, didn't I? And not just once, but several times."

There was no response from the woman slumped listlessly in the armchair. It had been a week now that the doctor had been parroting the same warnings to the speechless woman before him.