Chapter 272
When he watched Freesia at the underground lake, he had felt an inexplicable sense of unease. At the time, he wondered if it was just a hallucination brought on by the fatigue that had been gnawing at him.
The déjà vu was probably the same…
After all, this was his first time seeing the underground lake of this palace—
‘In this life.’
For a moment, a chill like ice filled his ears.
“……”
Izar slowly lifted his head. He could hardly believe what he’d just been thinking.
“I…”
Was his mind still as unstable as it had been when he was at his limit? No, now he was clearer than ever.
‘If that wasn’t a hallucination just now…’
That was his own voice. Without a doubt.
But when had he ever said such a thing? When had he spoken those words at that lake?
Words like that…
〈Izar, I despise you.〉
Suddenly, he saw the vision of a woman’s lips moving in a dim, blurred light. The woman, perched on a windowsill, looked as if a breeze could tip her over at any moment.
That woman was the very same who now slept in his arms.
‘Is this a hallucination?’
But when her body swayed and collapsed backward, how could he dismiss the cold, stabbing terror—like a blade to the spine—as merely a hallucination?
Seeing her barefoot and drifting, why did thoughts pop into his head like, ‘I told them to make sure she always wore shoes’—thoughts that had nothing to do with the present?
Izar gently pulled the blanket over the sleeping Freesia. He didn’t want to leave her side.
But every cell in his body was screaming.
‘I have to check it right now.’
This one thing—just this—had to be done now.
He hurriedly threw open the bedroom door and rushed out. The startled attendants of the palace hurried after him.
“Your Grace, where are you going?”
“I’m just going down to the underground. Tell Her Highness that I’ll be back soon if she wakes up.”
He had to hurry. Before the voices that kept echoing, before the afterimages flashing past every time he blinked, faded away completely.
The farther he descended, the more his temples throbbed as if they would burst, and one eye darkened so badly he could barely see.
Izar hastily covered his eye with a hand. Cold sweat beaded on his brow at the stabbing, knife-like pain.
“Haa…! Ugh!”
Just then, he heard the voice of a man he knew all too well.
〈You should guard your wife’s remains here. You know it’s too dangerous to keep her in the duchy.〉
Of course he knew. But he hadn’t wanted to move her. He wanted her to remain in the ducal estate forever.
He had intended to wait until she woke again. If only that crushing ‘family duty’ had not burdened him with yet another heavy task.
“Ugh, uh…”
His head throbbed as though he would go blind, but he made his way to the underground lake with the familiarity of one who had done it many times before.
He swore that, until he came searching for Freesia, he had never set foot in this place.
“Adamant…”
And yet, as he approached the altar where Freesia’s glass coffin lay, words he’d never planned tumbled from his lips.
“I truly gave up everything, so why…”
A searing wretchedness, hot as lava, filled his lungs.
At least right now, Freesia was still alive and breathing. The despair he felt in this moment was reserved for ‘after she had died’…
“Agh…!”
He was suddenly gripped by a pain so piercing it felt as if he’d been run through. But when he looked down, his body was unharmed. He hadn’t been stabbed by a blade, nor bitten by a beast, nor was he bleeding out as if on the verge of death.
And yet, it was as though the agony of the dead had taken hold of him. He couldn’t breathe.
It wasn’t just physical. Like time turning backward, faded memories tormented his mind.
〈If you just stand by, the enemy will come for your wife’s remains first.〉
He saw Albireo Deneb’s hateful face, hazy in his mind’s eye.
It was that bastard who had yelled at him earlier to move the body. That same annoying voice, always pestering Izar even when he wanted to throw everything away.
〈…You expected this, didn’t you? She’s your wife.〉
He’d wanted to strangle the man back ‘in those days’ too. But he never could, because he knew he was right.
He also remembered the loathsome faces of the Antares family.
〈Please, Your Grace…!〉
They’d trembled at his feet like drowned rats. Who knew what they’d done while he’d been away…
〈We’re acting on His Majesty’s orders, for the future of the Empire—〉
〈AAAHHHH!〉
Before letting their pitiful wailing continue, he’d dragged them out and punished them until their bodies were broken.
He hated everything. The resentment was unbearable. He had only just returned from the battlefield, and she had thrown herself from the window.
He had told the attendants again and again, in letter after letter, to keep her away from dangerous places.
And yet, his wife had died, crushed like a white flower.
〈Izar, I despise you.〉
After saying she would wait.
But he…
〈To be born to parents like us. Happiness would forever elude that child anyway.〉
The woman who didn’t cry simply stared at him, her lips moving on that pale face.
〈Yes. That’s right… It might be for the best that he was never born.〉
He’d tested her, and her answer split him in two.
No, our relationship… our relationship was never supposed to be like that.
He hadn’t wanted to hear those words, hadn’t truly wanted to ask them.
“Hah…!”
Izar, his golden eyes aged by time, opened them wide and gasped for breath.
He had returned to the place where, in the past, he had died.
Just as he had bargained with God.
For the very last time.
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