Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 177
A lie
Izar ran a hand over his face, overwhelmed by a deep sense of despair. The woman who had once been as lovely as a spring blossom showed no hint of emotion toward him now that she had turned away.
‘It would almost be better if she kept shouting at me…’
At least then, it would mean she still had some feelings left to spend on him.
After that one outburst of anger, however, Freesia had maintained this cold, unfeeling attitude.
He wished he could turn back time—back to before she knew about that wretched marriage certificate, or at least to when he let her slip away at the Antares estate.
But time showed no signs of rewinding, and so Izar responded to her scorn with determination.
“There is no parting for us. I’ve told you over and over again—you’re my only wife.”
“……”
“That certificate… it’s all my fault.”
“……”
“We’ll fix it. We’ll set things right and begin properly. From here on, we’ll start fresh.”
Izar climbed into the carriage, seating himself across from her. If he did this, at least she would engage in a real conversation.
Looking at her shadowed, impassive face, he felt a lump of pain rise in his throat. What had he planned to say to her upon finding her again?
Because he had believed in her words, the damage had been minimized. Without her, the imperial family might not have been saved. Many lives had been spared because of her… and he had even restored his family to its former glory and achieved feats no one in his line had ever accomplished.
Only then did he realize something unsettling—that even with his lifelong ambitions fulfilled, he felt no sense of achievement.
‘How can I feel so empty?’
Had the ambition his father had instilled in him always been this hollow?
More than all those accomplishments, he now saw that he’d been looking forward to seeing Freesia smile joyfully in his arms after the hunting festival.
A realization that had come far, far too late.
Finally, Freesia turned to face him. Yet her expression showed no trace of feeling, as though a thick pane of glass separated them.
She let out a faint, mocking laugh and asked,
“You must have found our time in bed quite satisfying, Your Grace? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be trying this hard.”
“I don’t see you that way. Why do you keep—”
“But I, too, have deceived you in one way, so shall we call it even?”
“…You? About what?”
Izar began to feel a spark of anger at her self-deprecation, but his voice turned urgent with hope.
Maybe her claim about hating him enough to take her own life was a lie. Perhaps the story of her terrible death was exaggerated. No, better yet—if only her terminal illness were false. That would be the best outcome of all.
At that moment, Freesia looked up at him with a calm expression.
Her face, a visage he had missed so dearly, was as beautiful as a flower carved from ice and just as cold, sending a chill through him.
“The child buried under the wild rosebush—that was a lie.”
“What… do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. There was no such child.”
“……”
Izar, his face frozen, stared at her in shock.
Was the desire for a child just a natural instinct? Her ‘husband’ had been this way too, but Izar seemed fixated on the idea of that child.
A child he hadn’t hesitated to treat as worthless.
The tender happiness she had felt while reminiscing about her pregnancy was no more than a scrap of cloth dirtied in muddy water.
Freesia unconsciously touched her abdomen. …At the very least, that child under the wild roses was forever hers alone.
She intended to leave him with no memory to cherish.
“Isn’t it obvious? After all, you treated me with such coldness.”
“But—”
“No child could have been conceived from that one night together.”
At first, she hadn’t bothered to mention the extent of her ‘husband’s’ neglect. With only memories of the love she’d once felt, it hadn’t seemed necessary. She had even gone out of her way to recall only the good parts, believing that was what he wanted to hear.
But now, Freesia withdrew all those considerations.
“You ignored me for three years. You didn’t even know that Lady Electra’s discipline meant beatings, or that I had spent a year sleeping alone in the servants’ quarters meant for the lowest maids.”
In this life, she had been fortunate not to bear any scars. But in her past life, her calves had been perpetually bruised and scabbed over.
Their first night together, she had revealed her wounded legs to him. Remembering that, Freesia couldn’t help but smirk.
“You never protected me from the mockery of nobles at the banquets, or from the beatings at the Antares estate, or from the retainers who looked down on me. How could a child have been born in such a situation?”
“……”
“A child born from a marriage like ours would be a curse.”
Izar ran his hand over his face again, his fingers trembling slightly.
The three years of her previous life that Freesia had glossed over—he could vaguely imagine how he must have treated her then.
He had, at least, believed he could imagine it.
Knowing his own nature, he figured he hadn’t been a warm husband. Nursing his wounded pride, he was sure he must have spent the early years of their marriage cold and furious.
But he had always assumed that, since they’d eventually had a child together, their relationship couldn’t have been all that bad.
‘How naive I was…’
Hearing the raw truth directly from Freesia’s lips left him reeling.
