Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 173
Beginning, in earnest
The black lion monsters lay sprawled across the ground. With each blink, their limbs crumbled into white petals. As the petals scattered, swept up in a breeze laced with the scent of the sea, it was like witnessing the first snowfall of the year.
There, standing silently amidst the mound of white petals and disintegrating monsters, was Freesia.
The moment Izar laid eyes on her small face, he unconsciously dropped his sword. Since the day he’d first taken up the blade, not even in his most grievous injuries had he ever let it go.
“…Ha.”
The world was still drenched in the stench of blood, the air thick with ash from fires and the cries of people. Yet, in the instant he saw her, nothing else mattered.
Even in this small, blood-soaked hell, the world seemed as beautiful as a sunlit meadow. A world filled with meaning simply because she was there, breathing.
Without hesitation, Izar pulled her close, embracing her with all the strength he could muster, amid the petals that danced in the air like they were reaching for the heavens.
* * *
After a long and exhaustive search, the Duchess of Arcturus was found in the southern region, not far from the coast. According to her own words, this was why she had been in such a place:
〈A priest who summons monsters kidnapped me… but he seemed to struggle with keeping the rift open. He had to stop and reset it a few times along the way.〉
She claimed her memory was unclear because she’d been kept sedated with herbs, making it difficult to recall the priest’s face or voice or pinpoint the exact locations they’d passed through.
〈But when he started to run out of herbs, I slowly regained my senses. Before he could drag me to the next location… I managed to escape.〉
Her story concluded with the suggestion that the monsters chasing her had likely been the ones that then attacked the southern village.
Some members of the search party looked skeptical.
Could such a tale be true?
Could a woman, regardless of her unique abilities, truly have managed to escape on her own?
Some wondered if she had suffered further indignities… or worse. But with so many witnesses having now seen the monsters crumble into white petals at her feet, none dared voice such suspicions.
After reuniting with Izar, Freesia was immediately escorted through the chaotic scene for a medical examination. Izar, though anxious, managed to wait as the healer completed a thorough check.
However, once they returned to the tent, he could no longer bear to be separated from her.
Now, Freesia was nestled in his arms. Just as he remembered from the last time he held her, her warm skin and faint pulse reminded him that she was alive.
“Freesia.”
He didn’t dare call her name too loudly. Since he had lost her, he’d called her name in countless nightmares, only for her to vanish every time.
Each time, she would disappear, embraced by his half-brother, slipping beyond Izar’s reach.
He tried once more, softly, as if confirming this was real.
“Freesia.”
Unlike in his nightmares, this time she answered with a faint whisper.
“…Duke.”
“…Ha!”
Finally, she responded to him.
There were no signs of physical abuse. No evidence of torture.
‘But what about… other things?’
The clothes she wore now weren’t ones he had given her. Nor were they what she’d been wearing during the hunt…
Speaking of it felt like inviting his worst fears into reality. Yet, even that wouldn’t be the worst possible outcome for him.
“Freesia…”
“…Yes.”
“Aren’t you happy that I found you?”
A nagging sense of dread gnawed at him. What if she wasn’t happy to see him again? She hadn’t pushed him away, but he could sense the subtle distance she maintained.
This was the same woman who once clung to him, looking up at him with pure, rapturous eyes.
But now… she gazed at him as though she were an empty shell, a doll trying to mimic a human expression.
“…Yes, I am happy.”
Her small lips parted, and she slowly formed a faint smile. Yet her beautiful eyes no longer sparkled with the same light.
Freesia gently pulled herself away from his embrace and stood up.
She hadn’t known how she would react upon seeing him again, the man she had loved for so long.
‘Since I was fifteen…’
Even after dying once, she couldn’t forget him and had tried her best to start over from the beginning.
If he had greeted her with such warmth, as he had on their wedding night, and she had fallen for it again, casting everything aside… what then?
What if she was too weak to resist?
“It seems there’s no other man who would go to such lengths to find a woman who wasn’t even truly his wife.”
“…What?”
But Freesia now realized she wasn’t as weak as she feared. The hatred she felt in her final moments, when she cursed him before her death, was too intense.
His selfishness, which had cast her and their child aside as mere burdens, filled her with deep-seated contempt.
As she looked into his golden eyes, her gaze gleamed like a moon obscured by dark clouds.
