Chapter 238
“M-Milord!”
The retainers, having rushed in due to the commotion inside his bedchamber, stifled their screams.
The floor was covered in shattered glass. That much was expected—Izar had smashed the window with his bare fist. But the blood pouring from his hand made everyone recoil in horror.
Had the shards gone any deeper, he might have lost the use of his hand entirely.
“Call the physician! Now!”
“Milord, your condition—!”
Those around him hurried to his side, but Izar looked at them with a face devoid of emotion.
Perhaps it was from that moment on that the people’s faces began to blur together in his eyes…
What they said was just noise brushing past his eardrums.
“Everyone, get out.”
“Pardon? But, Milord—”
“I said, get out.”
He stared at the flustering attendants with lifeless eyes.
“Unless you want to die here.”
There wasn’t a single person who didn’t recognize the sincerity of that threat.
The retainers, terrified, reluctantly withdrew.
Once everyone had left, Izar staggered to one wall, leaving droplets of blood in his wake.
It was where the ruined, burned portrait was kept.
“You’re not dead.”
Izar whispered to the scorched, hole-ridden portrait. He didn’t care one bit how insane he looked to others.
“You’re not dead. There’s no way you died like that, at the side of another man.”
That she could die after abandoning him to this hell—that was unthinkable.
“You’re staying by the man you chose… Don’t leave his side… stay with him…”
Because he would come find her. No matter what happened, he was the only one who should be by her side in the end.
But after that first spring passed, and the year waned into autumn—
“I intend to publicly announce my cousin’s death.”
Crown Prince Riegel said that he would formally declare Freesia dead.
At those words, Izar stared at him as if he were witnessing madness.
Even the night before, he had dreamt another nightmare in which Freesia had built a life with someone else.
So he thought he must have misunderstood what Riegel was saying. Of all people, surely not the Emperor or Riegel—they wouldn’t say such a thing.
But as the silence stretched on, he was forced to ask:
“…Whose death are you referring to?”
“Huu… why do you continue to deny it?”
Riegel examined Izar’s pallid face with furrowed brows.
Did he even sleep? A corpse might have looked more lively.
The dark shadows under his eyes only intensified the reaper-like gloom he exuded.
And his eyes.
Eyes that had lost all hope, sustained only by the madness that continued to burn within.
Riegel averted his gaze and muttered,
“Your wife. My cousin. Who else would I mean?”
“……”
“It’s time we held her funeral.”
Funeral.
Izar rolled the word silently in his mouth.
Though short, it weighed heavily on his tongue and left a bitter taste like tree sap.
It didn’t suit her at all—the woman who had been as lovely as a white flower. Not in the slightest.
“At the very least, you and I both know, don’t we? That child… even by now, she must—”
“Ha.”
“Duke—”
“Haha, ha…!”
Izar heard Riegel’s sigh, but laughed instead.
The attendants in the room all shrank at the chilling sound. They exchanged anxious glances, thinking the rumors spreading through the capital might be true.
That the duke had lost his mind.
That he had finally broken, over his wife and unborn child who had vanished.
But… ah, for Izar, this situation was nothing but laughable.
How ridiculous. Freesia isn’t dead, and yet they’re talking about holding a funeral?
The dry laughter gradually faded, but Izar continued to sneer at Riegel.
“Freesia is not dead. She cannot be dead.”
“Duke.”
“If I cannot acknowledge it, then how can you speak as if she is?”
Freesia’s husband was Izar. That was a fact no one could deny.
Even before he left for the front, she had confessed that all she wanted was to be his wife.
If her husband refused to acknowledge her death, who could possibly claim she was dead? Who?
“…Even if you do not acknowledge it, if I issue the decree, it becomes fact.”
“Will His Majesty truly acknowledge it as well?”
“Grandfather must come to terms with it. Otherwise, people will begin to resent her.”
Riegel placed a hand on his forehead and let out a sigh.
If it were just Duke Arcturus acting out, people might understand.
No man could stay calm when his wife had disappeared.
But the Emperor’s fury had—as always—gone too far.
Before public opinion turned and people began to ask why she had disappeared only to cause so many others pain, it would be better to put it to rest.
“We cannot allow her honor to be tarnished in the end. This will proceed by my order.”
“……”
Izar, to the very end, gave no answer.
But Riegel interpreted that silence as consent.
“We’ll hold the funeral at the imperial palace. Please attend. For now, let us honor only Freesia’s soul.”
“……”
“It would be too painful… to include the child in her womb.”
At that moment, even Izar—who had always denied reality—could find no words to respond.
And so, at the end of the year in which Freesia vanished, her funeral was held.
Discussion
1 Commentangelicaxll