He then drew in the background around the figure, added delicate pen work over it, and finished the piece.

It took far longer than usual, because he put in every hint he knew, hoping someone would notice.

He reassured Riley one more time, then knocked three times on the door to signal he was done. The mercenary keeping watch outside unlocked it.

After Bellon stepped out, the mercenary locked the door again and held out a rough palm. The same as always, asking for the day’s manuscript to deliver to the client.

Bellon handed over the illustration tucked neatly in its envelope and prayed silently.

Please…… let the client not notice…… and let someone among Miss Riley’s people see it and understand.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Riley wrapped her arms around her knees and looked around the cold, dark space.

It was less a room than a grim underground cell.

The smell of moss soaked into the air was overwhelming.

“Where on earth is this place……?”

On the day she was supposed to hand over the final manuscript to Nina, Riley had her carriage stop at a quiet spot on the outskirts of the capital she had never visited before. She walked into the coffeehouse she had been told was the meeting place.

Inside, Nina had offered her a milk tea famous for its local honey, and Riley drank it without suspicion and lost consciousness shortly after.

She drifted in and out of awareness in fits and starts, and through it all she could feel a cargo wagon carrying her, moving without pause.

Then at some point she came to and found herself locked in a place like this.

At first she had no idea what was happening, but she soon learned that they were sending a painter in to draw her every day.

He had told her he was drawing to match the plot of some serialized novel, and when she asked Bellon about the content, the shock had hit her like a thunderbolt.

This is retaliation.

Without Bellon, she would have had no way to endure the fear.

A memory surfaced of being transported inside a large sack, and a cold voice asking the mercenaries a question.

‘The other woman has been properly dealt with?’

‘Yes, it’s done.’

It had clearly been about Nina, and Riley had been forced to clamp her own mouth shut to keep from screaming. A terror so overwhelming she could barely breathe had crashed over her.

Even now, remembering that moment, hot tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and spilled down both cheeks.

“Hic……”

Riley wiped her tears with both hands but could not stop crying.

If they had kidnapped both Nina and herself, this was clearly retaliation for the Daily Minerve’s articles.

Many powerful figures had lost their reputations after having their private lives and political corruption exposed. Most of them were prominent figures of considerable standing.

Unlike ordinary articles that sparked brief interest and were forgotten, Riley’s distinctive illustration style had burned itself into the public’s memory, been reprinted as posters, and even become material for creative works like stage plays.

She had heard that a few families, rendered incapable of recovery after royal tax investigations, had left the capital entirely.

But now it seemed one of them had struck back, publishing a serialized novel with her as the protagonist.

An eye for an eye.

She was being made to pay.

“Hic…… I went too far.”

Wiping tears that would not stop, Riley thought with bitter grief.

No matter how justified the exposés were, she should have left people a minimum of dignity…… She had held those nobles up to public ridicule for all to see.

They must have felt stripped bare in front of a crowd. She had even drawn Marquis Karan with his wig knocked off and scored a massive hit with it.

And whenever a noble’s child turned out to be a useless wastrel, the Daily Minerve had caricatured them without mercy. She had been at the sharpest edge of those attacks.

“Hic.”

Riley pressed her fists against her burning eyelids and felt the regret without end.

The thought that she had used her meager talent to torment people was deeply painful.

Miss Nina was right.

She had been swept up in the praise and the record-breaking circulation numbers and had wielded her pen like a weapon.

I swung my pen like a sword.

Her mother came to mind, and then Queen Dowager Marietta, both of them smiling and saying that Riley always drew only beautiful things, and looking at her work made them feel happy.

The tears she had barely held back poured out all over again.

Riley’s self-reproach kept going, reaching further and further back.

“And on top of everything, I didn’t even hesitate before leaking His Highness’s n*de, hic.”

The realization that her past actions had been terribly selfish and self-centered cut into her heart like a blade. At the same time, she missed Andrea desperately.

Is he looking for me right now?

Is he being threatened because of this? Is my situation making things harder for him?

Even as worry and fear threatened to overwhelm her into unconsciousness, she wanted to see Andrea.

She wanted to burrow back into those broad arms.

Come to think of it, he was always honest with me.

Even when he pretended to scold her, he had been consistently fond of her from the very beginning.

Looking back now, that had been love.

She had known it somewhere without knowing it, and had been presumptuous because of it.

The more she looked back, the more it seemed she had done nothing right, and only regret remained.

Hot tears surged to her stinging eyes.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Tallone, the most famous high-class courtesan in the capital.

A daily magazine bearing her name had been appearing across Tennetcy in sudden, scattered distributions.

Andrea held the serialized fiction column from that magazine open in his hands.

Alfonso, standing in attendance beside him, bit his own lip without realizing it.

Something beyond hostility, something close to killing intent, was quietly rising around his lord’s temples.

In the previous installment, His Highness had seen the female protagonist beaten and starved, and had finally lost his composure and begun to act recklessly.

He had pulled forces from within the royal knight order itself and organized them into search parties.

The king, who had little understanding of the situation, learned what was happening and flew into a rage.

Pulling central military forces that were supposed to protect the capital for the sake of a single unidentified missing person was simply not acceptable.

The atmosphere grew dangerous not only inside and outside the palace but across all of Tennetcy.

Alfonso had been urging Andrea to act more rationally, insisting this was surely a fabricated story designed to provoke them.

But this installment had crossed the line, exactly as the previous chapter’s preview had promised.

The story had progressed to the point where the powerful figure in the novel kidnapped the illustrator who had humiliated him, had her beaten and abused, and then had a n*de portrait of her painted and distributed across the capital.

It was a further coincidence, or perhaps deliberate, that the capital in the novel shared the actual capital’s name, Tennetcy.

This was an unmistakable threat and an act of mockery.

Alfonso was frightened of what was coming, but he held onto one last hope and offered it.

“……It doesn’t appear to be a genuine n*de portrait of Miss Riley.”

Andrea said nothing.

His eyes went so still they felt dangerous, and the attendants around him could not keep themselves from fidgeting.

The truth was that Andrea had noticed the moment he unfolded the illustration, without Alfonso needing to say a word.

The face in the drawing was Riley’s, exactly, but everything below the neck was full and rounded in the way of a well-fed opera singer or a high-class courtesan.

Having held her in his arms more than once, he could not have failed to notice.

Even so, he had no way of knowing where Riley was right now, or what was being done to her, and he could not maintain his composure.

The cowed expression on Riley’s face in the illustration was burning a black hole through his chest.

Already running on no sleep for days, a terrible regret was cutting cold and deep into the pit of his stomach.

This is all my fault.

Andrea reproached himself with brutal clarity.

Beyond his fear for Riley, the thought that he had been careless was driving him to the edge of madness.

I can lose my mind after I find Riley.

The days from the moment he had first brought her from her mother’s manor to now played out before him like a panorama.

She had been a child raised with care by her own mother, and then by his mother, Queen Marietta.

Even when he had kept Riley close as his attendant, he had never truly thought of her as a servant to be used.

Those soft, clear eyes that stirred something protective in him, that quick and endearing manner of moving, they had made it impossible not to give her a place in his heart.

Yes, it’s all my fault.

The thought crossed his mind that he would gladly give up the crown prince’s seat if it meant finding Riley.

The guilt pressing down on his chest twisted Andrea’s expression with pain.

But then, something caught his bloodshot gaze.

The background surrounding the female protagonist was slightly different from all the previous illustrations.

The backdrop, which had been bare to suggest a dark, dim underground cell, had a window added to it without warning, and beyond the window, an outdoor scene was visible.