Chapter 38
He had acted for Felix’s sake, but it had certainly been troublesome.
As Abel made his way from the conference hall to the annex, he encountered several guests who approached him while pretending it was merely by chance.
However, thanks to the holy knights and priests escorting him, Abel never actually had to speak with any of them.
It seemed as though he would make it back to his residence without incident.
“Lord Abel.”
A man was waiting for him in front of the annex. Unlike the admiring gazes Abel had received until now, this man’s eyes were filled with unmistakable hostility.
Abel, who was equally uninterested in those who liked him and those who hated him, simply tried to walk past.
But at that moment, one of the priests assisting him quietly informed him of the man’s identity.
“Lord Abel, that is the Spencer heir.”
Felix’s brother?
The duke’s son whom Gregory had used.
Abel, who had previously dismissed the man without a second glance, looked at him once more.
His height was roughly the same as Felix’s, but their overall impressions were completely different.
If Felix was a delicately refined beauty, elegant and pure, then the duke’s son was a ruggedly handsome man with sharp, fierce features.
His dark hair and eyes, inherited from Duke Spencer, likely contributed to that impression.
‘He doesn’t resemble Felix at all, either.’
Well, that was only natural, wasn’t it?
The interest Abel had briefly shown simply because the man was Felix’s family vanished the moment he realized there was not a single feature they shared.
Abel withdrew his gaze and turned to enter the annex, but the duke’s son spoke.
“Why?”
Abel had no idea what he was talking about, and he had no desire to respond. He ignored the young man and continued walking.
However, the dukeling did not stop there.
“Why did you choose Felix?”
There was no reason for Abel to explain something like that.
He had already had a rough idea of how Felix must have grown up, but after meeting the Duke and Duchess this time, he had become certain.
They were not good family to Felix, so why should he treat them well?
It was unfortunate that Felix had grown up under such mistreatment, but for Abel, it had worked out favorably.
Ordinarily, since they were the family of the person he loved, he should have shown them some consideration. But Abel had no need to do that.
Even though he had learned how to love another person, Felix was still the only one who held Abel’s interest, so this outcome was not a bad one.
However, the duke’s son was persistent.
“Is it because of that lowborn bastard’s face?”
Lowborn bastard.
Abel stopped in his tracks.
Parents and children alike were all getting on his nerves.
“What an outrageously disrespectful way to speak.”
And this time, Felix was not here to stop him.
“How dare you speak like that here—!”
Abel silenced the priest who had been the first to rebuke the dukeling’s rudeness with a look.
When Abel turned his gaze toward him, the young duke opened his unrestrained mouth once more.
“Isn’t he a man with nothing to offer besides his face? Neither his birth nor his abilities amount to anything.”
Abel was not entirely unaware of why the man was acting this way. As the eldest son of a ducal house in the Empire, he had been born to enjoy everything and inherit a perfect life. But his mother’s scandal and Felix’s birth had left a stain on that otherwise flawless future.
If Felix had never existed, it might have remained nothing more than an old incident, a minor bit of gossip from the past.
But Felix, the product of that affair, was far too conspicuous.
The illegitimate child who irritated him.
He was probably both satisfied and dissatisfied that his bastard half-sibling had left for the Temple of his own accord.
Divine power was known to be a gift granted only to the chosen, and over the past decade or so, the Temple’s influence had risen to unprecedented heights.
Watching the Empire gradually lose ground, the duke’s son could hardly have been pleased that Felix had taken refuge in the Temple—the very center of power.
Even so, he had likely tried to accept the situation, telling himself that Felix was no longer part of the family.
And then Abel had suddenly appeared.
Calling Felix his love.
As a result, the old scandal they had desperately tried to bury resurfaced once more, and a path to prominence opened before Felix—the very man they had assumed would simply rot away in the Temple.
When the duke’s son had shown even the slightest displeasure over the matter, he had not even been permitted to attend this year’s prayer assembly.
From the dukeling’s perspective, it was nothing short of outrageous.
But even though Abel could easily understand every step that had led to this, it did not make him pity or sympathize with the man in the slightest.
“Why would Felix need anything else to be chosen?”
Abel looked down at the young duke with arrogant eyes.
“I already possess everything else.”
Abel calmly watched the young duke’s expression turn cold at his words.
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