Chapter 145
In this life, when she first met him, she couldn’t reveal her secret.
Considering the anger he barely suppressed over marrying a bastard, she didn’t need to give him another reason to raise his voice.
But things had changed.
“…And after losing our baby, I think I also died not long after.”
Izar, who had never kissed her before, now desired her without hesitation. Once, he had called her a blemish and an eyesore for the family…
Though he hadn’t apologized for that yet.
‘…Let’s put that aside for now.’
A brief sting of pain hit her, but her heart raced as she prepared to share the most important fact in the current situation.
While Izar listened silently, she hurried to explain.
Three years of marriage. The miraculous baby. The sudden miscarriage…
Even after spilling out so much, she couldn’t bring herself to speak this part.
<To be born to parents like us—happiness would forever elude that child anyway.>
‘There’s no need to talk about how bad our relationship was.’
She didn’t want to give the current Izar any strange ideas. For example, she didn’t want him to think about how disappointed he might have been with her as his wife to say something like that.
Instead, she explained everything about how God had given her 365 days and how she wanted to save Riegel at the hunting festival.
“That’s why I wanted to visit the academy.”
“…”
“Lady Alpheratz said I might have a purifying power, so I thought it might be the power that Adamant spoke of…”
As she neared the end of her explanation, her voice naturally grew more anxious. Izar had listened patiently to her urgent story without interruption.
What would he say in response?
The breeze blowing between them felt different, carrying a sense of unease.
But Izar, still fiddling with the button, answered calmly.
“…I see.”
His flat tone made Freesia widen her eyes in surprise.
‘What? He believes me?’
Honestly, she had expected him to react indifferently, as he did when he claimed not to remember the incident at the lake. But Izar was meeting her gaze with a firm expression.
“Do you have more to say to me?”
“Oh! Um, t-then. Until my remaining time is up, I’d like us to stay together.”
Freesia clasped her hands and blushed.
“And in the future, I’d like to ask you not to… finish inside me.”
Her remaining lifespan was still in the 200s.
Thinking that way made death feel like something she could push away with both hands. In the bright daylight, ‘death’ didn’t seem so scary.
But asking him not to finish inside her was proving to be much harder than she thought.
Even though it was her body.
‘But I have to say it. It concerns the heir.’
What if the unborn heir died too? Although a reckless desire surfaced that perhaps she could narrowly give birth if she conceived now, Freesia forcefully suppressed it.
And a few seconds later, Izar coolly responded.
“If that’s what you want.”
“Oh…!”
Freesia unconsciously opened her mouth in surprise. She hadn’t expected things to go this smoothly, but Izar pulled her back into his arms.
“Is there anything else you want to say?”
“No, I think that’s all. Thank… thank you.”
“Alright.”
And then, silence flowed again.
However, unlike the earlier prickly tension, there was now a sense of relaxed relief.
Freesia rested her head against Izar’s chest, blinking silently. She was simply dazed, unable to believe the conversation that had just taken place.
‘Is this really settled?’
It seemed to have flowed easily… But something felt different from what she had expected.
‘What’s different?’
Before she could fully process her confusion and relief, Izar’s voice came from above.
“There’s something that comes to mind about your ability.”
“Y-Yes…?”
“The Duke of Antares may not be your biological father.”
“…Pardon?”
Caught off guard, Freesia quickly looked up.
Izar’s eyes were deadly serious.
“Their family hasn’t had an ability user in over 300 years. But suddenly, you have one?”
“That’s…”
“It’s more reasonable to think your father is from another family entirely.”
“…”
Freesia blinked slowly a few times, then lowered her head. His words stung, but surprisingly, they didn’t shock her as much as she thought.
‘I’ve wondered if he was my father, too.’
Her mother had insisted her father was a ‘nobleman,’ and there was no family as prestigious as the Antares in the capital, so she had naturally accepted it.
But if there was a possibility as Izar said…
“Then what happened to me in that mansion…”
What was the purpose of what that wicked woman and Atria did to her?
‘What about all the things the Duchess of Antares said?’
The words that cruelly crushed both her and her mother. The horrible actions. She had tried desperately not to remember them once her body healed because they scratched and tore at her insides.
Otherwise, she felt she might collapse long before her remaining days were up.
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