Isla initially attempted to flawlessly maintain her carefully crafted facade of innocent concern, gracefully extending her delicate, pale hand toward the thoroughly humiliated and mud-soaked prince as if she genuinely intended to pull him out of that foul-smelling nightmare.
However, the very second Lucier desperately reached out with his trembling hands—which were completely coated in a horrifying, thick layer of fresh manure and wet mud—a sickening, profoundly atrocious wave of stench aggressively assaulted Isla's senses.
In a single, entirely unguarded fraction of a second, her fake sympathy completely evaporated into thin air.
She violently yanked her hand back to her chest, the look of sheer, unadulterated disgust twisting her beautiful features now entirely genuine.
'Ewww! I am so incredibly sorry, Lucier, but you are going to have to manage to get up completely by yourself, because to be entirely honest, I absolutely cannot bring myself to do this!' Isla gasped out, aggressively wrinkling her nose and hastily taking two large steps backward, her voice dropping all pretenses of royal concern and instead ringing with open, merciless mockery.
Lucier remained kneeling in the center of the foul muck, staring up at her with eyes brimming with profound humiliation and wounded pride, yet Isla felt absolutely not a single ounce of pity for the arrogant bastard.
'Just look at yourself! You look so incredibly repulsive, foul, and utterly pathetic right now... eww!' she exclaimed, her face contorting with sheer disgust as she looked down at him.
'Honestly, even if I desperately wanted to, I absolutely could not bear to touch your smelly, manure-covered body with even a single fingertip; it is just far too deeply sickening!'
Carefully lifting the hem of her exquisite silk gown to ensure it remained entirely pristine, she stepped even further away from the foul puddle and delivered her final, cold verdict.
'Do yourself a favor: use those incredibly filthy hands of yours, push yourself out of that disgusting pile of rubbish, and just get up on your own!' she commanded, elegantly pressing her silk handkerchief firmly against her nose once again.
Her brilliant blue eyes sparkled with a dark, deeply wicked amusement—a sharp, taunting glint that violently shattered whatever tiny, pathetic fragments remained of the mud-covered prince's completely destroyed ego and royal dignity.
Just as Lucier was desperately struggling in the foul muck, the bright afternoon sun was suddenly swallowed by an incredibly massive, profoundly terrifying shadow that violently swept across the open sky.
It completely blotted out the daylight for a fleeting, heart-stopping second, its dark, sprawling silhouette resembling the sweeping wings of some gigantic, horrifying, and ancient creature from a forgotten nightmare.
"What on earth was that?" Isla thought, her brilliant blue eyes narrowing as a sudden, deeply unsettling chill ran straight down her spine, entirely momentarily distracted from the prince's humiliation.
Meanwhile, entirely ignoring the ominous, unnatural sky above, Lucier finally managed to push his ruined, mud-soaked body out of the foul ditch.
However, instead of flying into the blind, screaming, and humiliating rage Isla had eagerly anticipated, his reaction was chillingly, dangerously composed. The fake, charming facade he had worn all morning entirely dropped, replaced by a cold, deeply calculating stillness that immediately put Isla on edge.
'Driver, turn the carriage around and take us back to the palace immediately,' he commanded in a terrifyingly quiet, flat voice, slowly wiping a thick, disgusting glob of brown mud from his aristocratic jawline.
'It is utterly unacceptable and deeply inappropriate for me to continue this royal excursion alongside Princess Isla whilst being covered in this revolting filth.'
The agonizingly awkward ride back to the royal palace was suffocatingly silent, heavy with unspoken threats.
The exact moment they stepped through the towering grand doors of the palace, the entire royal court instantly froze in sheer disbelief.
The Queen, along with every single maid, servant, and heavily armored guard present in the grand foyer, gasped in absolute, unadulterated shock at the horrifying, smelly sight of the once-immaculate Prince of the Tiger Kingdom dripping with thick brown sludge.
'Oh my absolute heavens, Prince Lucier!
What on earth happened to you?!' the Queen cried out, rushing forward with wide, terrified eyes, completely abandoning her royal composure at the sight of her future son-in-law looking like a pathetic swamp monster.
'It was actually nothing of real concern, Your Majesty,' Lucier lied smoothly, offering a tight, incredibly forced smile that did absolutely nothing to hide the dark, plotting glint in his eyes as he subtly glanced back at Isla.
'The carriage simply lost its balance over a rather rough patch in the dirt road, and I tragically tumbled out into the mud.
But please, do not worry yourself over it; I am perfectly fine and completely unhurt.'
Standing quietly behind him in her entirely pristine, untouched silk gown, Isla aggressively rolled her eyes so hard they practically ached.
"Who even asked about your pathetic well-being anyway, you absolute, cow-dung-sniffing bastard?" she fiercely mocked him in her mind, her jaw clenching as she silently watched his flawlessly manipulative, victim-playing performance unfold before her oblivious mother.