Chapter 29 Emotional Identity
Delphine was about to protest, but Ioannes added coldly.
“A trophy is a trophy, and it should grace the room with its presence.”
That was the final straw.
Delphine pursed her lips, unable to find the words to retort, so she simply shut up.
The wounded look on her bloodless face was clear, and her emerald eyes were transparent and watery.
Only after seeing that did regret flicker across Pride’s face as reason returned.
Delphine, who had lowered her head to hide her own tears, did not notice the change.
She bit her lower lip tightly to keep the tears from falling.
‘Ioannes. To think you would do this to me.’
“Lady. I’m….”
“Now, I’ll go upstairs, it’s… so cold in the parlor.”
Delphine brushed past him, trying to cling to her last shreds of dignity.
***
With her head bowed, Lady Pride left the parlor.
Glasscok hurried after her, not daring to look in Pride’s direction.
Then.
“… Lord Glasscok.”
The chilling voice brought Glasscok to a halt.
Not that he stopped of his own accord, more like he was forced to by that icy voice.
“What is the matter, Lord Pride?”
Pride asked in a normal tone, despite the trembling in his voice.
“Didn’t you stop by the shops in District 2 not long ago?”
No change of expression passed over Glasscok’s face.
But that didn’t stop him from going white for a moment.
“… I do frequent District 2, yes, but what was that about?”
“Oh, I just happened to see you.”
Pride mockingly glanced down at the man behind him.
“You know, the way you swarm around like a pack of rats.”
“…Yes, you must have seen her with her friends. Oh, did I mention Miss Callie? She dropped something earlier.”
The man’s face went ashen as a corpse, and he turned urgently.
“Me?… What?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to see for yourself.”
The woman glared at Pride and reluctantly followed Glasscok out.
Left alone in the now silent parlor, Pride tilted his head in disbelief.
‘The ideas of the rats have reached the nobility of District 1?’
But why?
They had no reason to sympathize with revolutionary ideas, living in the safety of their own walls.
“… Well, we’ll see.”
If only this blizzard would stop.
Pride muttered leisurely as he stared out the swaying window.
The mouth of a naïve nobleman who couldn’t keep a straight face, he had the means to open it in less than half a day.
The same could be said for the mouth of a worn and tattered courtesan.
But that was only in his torture chamber within the palace.
Not in this mansion, where his saintly lady resides.
“You dare to sneak into this mansion.”
Pride spoke sullenly, his relaxed demeanor gone.
That damn blizzard.
Until that maniacal blizzard stopped, the rats had a reprieve.
***
Night had fallen.
Delphine stood at her dressing table in the quarters, slowly unclasping her ruby necklace and placing it in her jewelry box.
As she struggled to unbutton the back of the dress Anna had fastened for her, a large, callused hand silently approached.
It was Ioannes.
His hands were clumsy and careful, though his face was still set with discomfort.
She wondered if it was a gesture of reconciliation for their earlier conversation.
Delphine watched in the mirror as the man struggled to undo a small button with his large, clunky hands.
Now she understood a little.
Ioannes is like a snarling dog whenever she mentions his origins.
But why he would go to such lengths to hide his identity was beyond her.
‘Why do you keep pretending you don’t know me…?’
What kind of feelings does he have for her?
Revenge against her father?
A twisted sense of possession? Obsession?
Affection?… or sexuality?
Or is it, as he says, simply ambition to trophy the daughter of his former master, a woman who suits his tastes.
Pride tried to ignore the way she looked at him in the mirror.
Pretending to concentrate on undoing a button no bigger than his pinky nail.
He’s confused.
But it was he who was as confused as she was.
From the moment he realized he had a love-hate relationship with her, his mind kept going back to the day he first met her.
The night he was lying in a dirty warehouse, writhing in pain from a fire.
He remembered a girl with red hair, her back to the moon, approaching him.
“Here, put this on and you’ll be fine.”
In the little girl’s hand was an ointment for scratches.
There was no way a child so precious could know of a medicine for anything worse.
The girl with the innocent face eagerly spread the ointment on his ragged back.
The gaping wound throbbed and ached more as she touched it.
Ioannes barely swallowed the groan that threatened to escape him.
For some reason, he didn’t want to show his pain in front of the girl.
Nor did he want to feel sorry for her anymore.
He had kept his heart empty before, but as her tiny hand touched his wound, misery overflowed uncontrollably.
“…Are you crying, are you okay?”
The girl asked, sobbing in an innocent voice.
No, she couldn’t be okay.
Why does she ask when it’s so obvious?
Has she come to laugh at him?
No, of course not. This child has come to help him.
Even his own mother never took care of himself when he was sick.
… So he should be grateful to the daughter of the man who made him this way?
To the precious lady of the ‘master’?
The little boy thought confusedly, his head muddied with pain.
He hate that ‘master’ for making him like this. He hate him.
And this ‘master’s’ daughter, who dabbed ointment on his bruised flesh… He should hate her too.
“Ioan. Ioan, are you all right?”
But it was the first time in his life that a girl had come up to him and called him by name.
Every time he heard his name, his heart fluttered.
The world that was empty fills up with her.
Somehow, when he looks at her smiling at him, he feels like he has everything in the world.
And yet, when she hands him an ointment or something to eat, he feels so humiliated.
Why?
Why does he want to protect this one woman, even if it means giving his soul.
The broken-hearted boy did not know the true nature of his feelings for a long time.
And so it was with the man who grew up with a broken heart.
Every time she brought up her status and stroked his pride, a rage he didn’t know he had welled up inside him.
After all he did to protect her.
Every time he sees her mocking herself like that, he feels a hellish pain in his heart.
But when he sees her hurt by his words, the fire in his heart cools down, and he feel a renewed affection for her.
It’s strange and confusing to be caught in this whirlwind of contradictory emotions every time he sees her.
But in the midst of it all, one thing was certain.
He never wanted to be at her feet again.
He wants to be the Marquis of Pride, proud and graceful in her presence.
Not a miserable slave, crawling on the ground, beaten.
Not the poor boy who had to be drugged and fed.
…as a noble man, her equal.
He went to the lengths of abandoning his humanity for her, and yet she’s the only one in this Empire who remembers him former self fully.
What a contradiction.
All the buttons were undone.
The dress lost its grip and fell off Delphine’s shoulders with a snap.
The red marks left by the man this morning were visible in the firelight.
For a moment, an eerie atmosphere filled the silent room.
Delphine stood with her back to him, breathless, and watched in the mirror as he traced the line of her neck.
The nakedness of the morning’s act at the kitchen table and on the parlor sofa flashed back to him.
“… hmm.”
For a moment, Delphine flinched at the bulge in the man’s rib cage as he took a deep breath.
He stepped back, surprisingly obedient.
“I made a… mistake this morning.”
Delphine blinked in surprise and turned away.
“I’ll be careful not to force you against your will.”
He spat out the words with difficulty and retreated to the bathroom, rubbing his face roughly.
Delphine let out the breath she’d been holding and quickly grabbed her nightgown and wrapped it around herself.
It felt weird.
It would have been easier if he had continued to act like a dog.
Even if it had been physically painful.
So it was a mistake?
Would he be more careful in the future?
What does he want to do with me?
She was confused by how he could be one moment like a hound dog charging to devour her whole, and the next like a pet dog wagging its tail calmly.
‘Today I said something like that…’
… No, let’s not be swayed.
He still pretends not to know her.
She doesn’t know what else he has up his sleeve that makes him come out like that.
Delphine listened to the gurgling sound of the water in the bathtub, then quietly opened the door to her quarters and stepped out.
