Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 174
“Not truly my wife… What are you saying?”
“……”
“Freesia. Answer me.”
Silently, Freesia slipped her hand into the loose sleeve of her dress, pulling out a small, crumpled piece of paper she had hidden even during her examination with the physician.
The marriage certificate, meant to signify their sacred vow before the divine, was pathetically wrinkled, and her name was still absent from it.
Izar stared at the document as well, a sigh escaping his lips.
Now he understood what his half-brother had done, what he had revealed to Freesia when he kidnapped her.
He also realized that the fire at the temple might not have been a coincidence…
But more pressing than his desire to hunt down and kill his brother was the look in Freesia’s eyes as she gazed at him.
“Now I understand,” she said, voice steady. “Why you kept telling me not to act like your wife. Because that’s how it was true all along.”
“Freesia.”
“And now I know why you ignored me at the Antares estate.”
For the first time, Freesia dared to glare at him with open resentment.
The cursed document slipped from her hand, fluttering to the ground.
“From the start, I was never your wife, never anything to you. That’s why you left me behind, wasn’t it? You never even felt the need to apologize for breaking your promises.”
“Freesia, no!”
Izar grabbed her shoulders as she began to step back.
“That day…”
He muttered through clenched teeth, remembering the painful memory clearly.
The day he had forced himself to cut her off.
Even though he knew he would end up seeking her again, he had turned away as she walked out in pain.
If he had known how excruciatingly he would come to regret it, he never would have let her go.
He would have reached out, held her back, and walked away from that cursed gathering.
His eyes shut tightly, and he took a deep breath.
“Yes… At the time, I saw you as nothing more than a stain on my family.”
“Ha…”
“I did turn away from you. That’s true. But—”
“And what about Atria?”
Freesia’s gaze sharpened as she looked up at him, unblinking, dredging up painful memories she had tried to bury.
“You even gave Atria that signet ring. Why would you treat me like such a fool?”
In the moment he faltered, words caught in his throat, she tore the peridot earrings from her ears, throwing them forcefully at his face.
“Freesia!”
“This… this thing!”
The small pieces of jewelry struck him on the cheek.
He could have easily dodged them, but the only thing he saw was the blood trickling from her ear where she had ripped them off, and he didn’t move.
Clutching her wrist to prevent further harm, he shouted.
“Stop this! You’re hurting yourself—”
“What difference is this from the coin a man would give to a w***e?”
She writhed in his grasp, screaming in rage, blood dripping from her torn earlobe.
“You told me not to hold me if you didn’t love me… How could you do this to me?”
“You’re my only wife! There’s no one else, Freesia, please—your wounds—”
“Don’t make me laugh! What were you thinking when you listened to me talk about the baby?”
The baby.
The child she had been left to face alone, in death.
When he had shown such interest in their lost child, her heart had felt like it would burst with sadness and joy.
“If we had a child in those circumstances, what would that child have even meant to you?”
“What do you mean? That child would be the heir of our duchy, my child!”
“A baby born from a woman you tricked into believing she was your wife?”
Freesia let out a bitter laugh, choked with pain.
“That child would have been a bastard, just like I am, just like your brother is, whom you despise so much…”
In her previous life, Freesia hadn’t known anything about that hidden truth.
Izar, along with a select few in the duchy, had kept it as a closely guarded secret.
〈My dear brother must hate me so much. He’s a discarded son with only appearances to cover it up, while I, someone like me, live with the blessing of the divine.〉
If Canopus was to be believed, Izar despised his very existence.
Perhaps that was why, in the beginning, Izar had so coldly ignored her.
She was another reminder of the shame he wanted to forget. But how was that her fault?
Her laughter turned into gasping breaths, then into a tear-filled scream.
“How could you… treat me like this?”
Tears streamed from her green eyes, glistening as they slid down her cheeks, falling onto her lips.
She had deceived herself.
She had thought that he might truly love her, that he trusted her, maybe even that he loved her as much as she loved him.
But this man had tricked her—not just in this life, but in her previous one as well.
‘He made a fool of me twice over.’
Yet she had only realized it now, with just five months left of her life.
With tear-blurred vision, she gazed at his pale, stricken face.
“I despise you, Izar. I hate you. I regret ever meeting you.”
“Freesia…”
“You ruined my life.”
As tears slipped down her cheeks and into her mouth, she took shallow, labored breaths, her voice hardening with every word.
She drove the final dagger into him.
“Now, even the thought of you touching me makes me sick. It makes me want to vomit.”
