Chapter 162
trigger warning: depression, suicide, self-harm, death of loved ones
Her first attempt was a dismal failure.
Everyone thought she’d simply missed a step, and they gossiped about how fortunate it was that she only sprained her ankle.
But her husband went pale with rage. He dragged her back to his bedroom, sat her on the bed, and, breathing heavily, struggled to contain his anger in silence for a long time.
When he finally managed to speak, his voice was as sharp as a blade, but it didn’t reach her.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”
“……”
“You dare threaten me with your life. Right in front of my eyes…!”
She thought of saying, “I’m sorry,” or maybe, “It was just a mistake,” like the fumbling words she’d stammered before, cowed by his gaze.
But nothing came out.
She didn’t want to say anything.
“Try something like that again, and I will never forgive you.”
His voice shook with anger.
But there was nothing he could threaten Freesia with.
The child was gone, she had no loving family, and there was no one or thing she held dear.
The one person she’d loved now resented her.
“Your Grace.”
She was drowning at the very bottom of a cold lake. She was already dying, but every time she fought to break the surface and breathe, it only made it worse.
She just wanted to sink to the bottom now.
“Why did you save me from the lake that day?”
“What…?”
“That day… you must regret not leaving me there.”
“What a foolish thing to say…!”
His lips trembled with anger.
But before he could scold her further, Freesia spoke quietly.
“It would have been easier for me too if you had.”
“……”
He didn’t say another word. His pale face remained, with only his piercing gaze fixed on her.
After that day, ‘husband’ no longer touched Freesia. However, he still wouldn’t allow her out of his bedroom, so she stayed quiet for a time.
Her second attempt nearly succeeded.
When everyone’s guard had relaxed, the noose around Freesia’s neck held tight.
But there was one thing she hadn’t accounted for: her husband returned sooner than expected.
He screamed as he pulled her down, and with a broken voice, she whispered, hoping this would be the last time she’d see him.
“Izar…”
The air was too thin. She felt dizzy to the point of death.
“Our baby… please, please… take him out of the ground.”
He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear it well.
After that, Freesia’s consciousness sank into a bitter darkness.
* * *
…She had always known how stubborn her husband was. But he continued to hold onto her life.
Even as the days passed with her mind drifting in and out, he kept her close.
As if he couldn’t bear to suffer alone and clung to her as his companion in punishment.
So Atria’s sneering remark one night wasn’t exactly wrong.
“You’re truly resilient, aren’t you, ‘Sister’?”
It wasn’t Freesia who was resilient, but him.
“Poor creature of a sister. To think you’ve ended up like this… His tastes are quite strange, aren’t they?”
But what mattered most was the pungent scent of mint filling the air as Atria’s mocking voice continued.
“Look at you, gobbling up whatever is shoved into your mouth like a greedy pig without knowing what’s in it. Despite eating so much of it, you haven’t even died. All you’ve done is bleed, yet here you are, alive.”
“…What?”
“Hmph. Why don’t you just die already? No one knows what to make of you.”
Her venom-laced words stabbed her ears like needles, each bitter statement hard to process.
A marriage oath made without Freesia. The deliberate erasure of her name. A union that was void from the start.
“Don’t believe me? Then look at this. It’s proof that he wants you gone and me by his side.”
Clink.
After the vial, a ring now rolled across the floor.
“You know nothing. And your child was nothing too. Just the offspring of a beast, not a human.”
No.
“No! He’s human! My child is not a beast!”
“That’s what I mean—you know nothing. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Ahh…”
“If only you’d been born under a proper mother. You and your child alike.”
This can’t be.
“So why don’t you do us all a favor and just die? Stop being a nuisance to the world.”
With a final light laugh, Atria left the room. Freesia looked up at the ceiling, letting out a choked laugh.
“Hah.”
What had she thought, back when she used to lie in the arms of her ‘husband’? That at least her situation was better than her mother’s?
“Hah…”
How could she have found such dark satisfaction in that? In truth, both mother and daughter had been treated like mere concubines for two generations, toyed with by men.
Her child, whom she had treasured so dearly, was nothing more than a worm, just like her.
Unknowingly, Freesia had nearly condemned her own child to the same miserable fate. The man who had led her to carry this child—she could hardly bear the hatred she felt for him.
When he returned later, he found Freesia sitting on the windowsill, welcoming him with a smile.
“Freesia?”
“…Izar.”
The cold wind brushed her ankles, making the thin hem of her dress sway like seaweed.
Once, she might have wanted to say that she’d loved him for a long time.
But she could no longer do so.
“I despise you.”
And with that final confession, Freesia fell, swallowed by the starless night.
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