Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 203
Festering wounds
After the tea party ended, before she was dragged back to her quarters in disgrace, Electra witnessed something clearly.
That shepherd girl was moving her lips alone, without any attendants nearby. It lasted too long to simply be idle muttering.
‘Has she gone mad, like her mother?’
Looking closer, the girl wasn’t entirely alone. She seemed to be speaking to a white bird. Who knew when she had tamed such a winged creature…
If her life hadn’t been hanging on the girl’s every action, Electra would have dismissed it as unimportant.
But Electra wanted to live.
The desire to reclaim her lost dignity and return to her rightful place made her desperate.
“That girl was using dangerous words like ‘plans’ while speaking to a winged beast, Izar!”
“Hah…”
“Wasn’t she captured by the one who controls the monsters? If so, we can’t afford to overlook even such minor actions!”
“…So this is why you called me.”
Izar looked at his stepmother with cold eyes as she rattled on.
“If you’re going to make accusations, at least come up with a plausible excuse, Elder Madam. And she is not ‘that wench’. She is an imperial descendant and the Duchess. Show the proper respect.”
“Izar!”
“You wouldn’t want your punishment to escalate further, would you?”
“That’s…!”
“Even if the imperial descendant forgives you, I have no intention of doing so.”
Electra’s lips trembled with fear.
A harsher punishment?
The very fact that Izar had come to see her likely meant he was here to discuss her final sentence.
But when she properly met Izar’s shadowed face, her eyes widened.
“…Izar. You’re pretending not to know on purpose.”
“I told you to stop.”
“You’re deliberately ignoring it because you don’t want to confront the suspicion you already have, aren’t you?”
Electra was the person who had known Izar the longest, even more than his biological parents.
From childhood, Izar had never revealed his inner thoughts to those around him. He never expressed likes or dislikes, nor did he laugh out of joy or cry out of physical pain.
The only times he revealed intense emotions were when the family’s honor was at stake.
‘And now, he’s taking such a defensive stance to protect that wench.’
But this wasn’t the behavior of someone who had complete trust in her. Nor did it come from confidence in knowing the full truth of the kidnapping incident.
Noticing the flicker of emotion in Izar’s golden eyes, Electra’s voice rose further.
“You’ve already suspected it, haven’t you? That there’s a possibility she’s in league with her captors!”
In a sudden flash, Electra thought she understood what that girl was planning.
Pretending to be the merciful mistress of this castle, using her imperial title to mock Electra—it couldn’t be that simple.
‘No, that’s just a trivial pastime for her.’
That girl must be planning to gather all those who tormented her into one place to punish them. Just like a shepherd herding her sheep.
And after corralling these troublesome creatures, what kind of act did she intend to carry out?
Electra clawed at her own head, crying out in terror.
“Izar, at this rate, we might all die! If that girl is truly determined…!”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop spouting nonsense?!”
Izar finally lost his temper, unable to hold back any longer.
Freesia, who claimed she was not terminally ill.
The woman who insisted there had never been a child between them.
The woman he loved more than anything in the world.
And simultaneously, the worst liar he had ever met.
But even though he didn’t believe her, there was one thing he desperately wanted to trust…
“Freesia has been completely cleared of any connection to those people. An imperial descendant wouldn’t stoop to such things!”
That she had no ties to his half-brother or those monsters.
That she was simply kidnapped and taken away against her will.
He wanted to believe that with all his heart, to the point of death.
Because if this staunch belief failed to be true, he felt he might descend into madness, reduced to nothing but a mindless beast.
“You, whom I’ve treated as my father’s wife all this time—”
“Wife? What wife?!”
Electra burst into half-mad laughter.
The icy terror of death seeped into her, but as memories of the years spent walking on eggshells around her stepson surfaced, rage began to boil within her.
“You’ve never treated me as anything as such! You didn’t even give me the Duchess’s chambers!”
The late Duke had taken Electra as his second wife but paid her no mind, too busy chasing after the traces of the woman who had betrayed and fled from him.
Until the day he took his own life.
His son, Izar, also refused to yield ‘that room’ to her.
〈I understand that sufficient funds were allocated to refurbish your current quarters. Why insist on such an old room?〉
He might have called it an ‘old room’ with his own mouth, and perhaps as a boy, Izar even thought of it that way.
But deep down, the boy’s intentions were different.
It had been his mother’s room, and by refusing it to his stepmother, he had sent a clear warning: Do not dare to touch it. He had likely been reserving it for his future wife, guarding it fiercely.
For a woman who would silently glare at her husband with malicious intent.
Both father and son were so eerily similar that the thought made her want to scream.
“You and your father are exactly the same! Always desperate to strangle the life out of a woman! And you’re even worse—a hypocrite!”
Electra glared with wild eyes, cackling like a vengeful spirit.
“Was I the only one at fault here? Was I the only villain? You’re the one who created an environment where that wench could be beaten!”
“……”
“If that wench hadn’t brought back those briars, you’d have ignored her forever!”
Izar felt her words hit him like icy water poured over his head.
If, as Electra claimed, he hadn’t returned early to the tea gathering that day… If he hadn’t witnessed Freesia covered in blood…
Would his indifference have lasted months? Or perhaps years?
“And now that girl has gotten a little prettier, and suddenly your body responds, is that it?”
Izar’s face twisted into a bitter smile at the question. Freesia, too, had belittled his feelings in much the same way.
“…You must know you’re about to receive a punishment worse than death. The way you’re unloading everything in your heart before you go says as much.”
“Yes! Since we’re all going to die anyway, what’s left to hold back?!”
