Chapter 290
“Ah…!”
Freesia trembled from head to toe, gasping for breath.
She had suspected he was the one orchestrating all this, but as she looked up at the man, covered in blood from head to toe and smiling, she felt a primal fear.
“It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?”
Canopus smiled tenderly. Smiling like that, he looked not at all like someone who could slaughter people so viciously, but rather like a lover seeing his beloved again after many years.
“Not a single day has passed where I’ve forgotten you.”
“Nova! Brother!”
But Freesia screamed in terror when she saw the man being dragged by Canopus’s hand.
Riegel’s left shoulder had been pierced through by a sword. He was so pale from blood loss he looked dead, and his half-closed eyes had already gone dull.
But in his arms, Nova was still held. Soaked in her uncle’s blood, Nova was shaking, unable even to breathe as if she were about to have a seizure.
Canopus casually drew the sword from the Prince’s shoulder. As a terrible sound of blood spurting out rang out and Riegel let out a dull moan, Freesia regained her senses and screamed.
“Let them go! Please!”
He was already losing so much blood from that wound… Any more and Riegel would die.
What’s more, as if to mock Freesia, Canopus lightly traced the sword tip over the crown of Nova’s head, making her face turn white as a sheet.
Canopus looked down at the ashen-faced woman with a genuinely regretful expression.
“Freesia, it’s truly a shame you have imperial blood in you.”
A system where the previous Duke Arcturus was given the right to violate any woman who rejected him, and where the Betelgeuse Imperial Family turned a blind eye to the endless exploitation of the manors. Such a line deserved to end.
With the old emperor and the feeble prince as the last.
‘They’d all die soon enough if left alone anyway.’
That blood ran in Freesia’s veins, too. But she was a special case, chosen by the gods, and needed to be treated differently.
Still, Canopus bent down and pulled the child from the unconscious prince’s arms.
Soaked in blood, Nova finally looked toward Freesia and whimpered.
“M-Mama, Mama!”
“And Freesia. This thing is not needed in this world.”
Canopus grabbed the child by the scruff and lifted her up, inspecting her slowly, barely holding back his revulsion. Thanks to Freesia, the child had a gentle disposition, but her despised half-brother’s features were unmistakably stamped on her face.
“Even though you’re mixed in, just look at this face. There’s filth in her.”
“NO!”
Freesia cried out, as if a sword had stabbed straight through her heart.
It was the same pain she’d felt when her briar baby had been mocked as a beast. Though she had once said with her own mouth that she hated the child, Nova had inherited the face Freesia loved most.
She had been delighted to see those eyes, which she had loved since she was fifteen, passed down to her daughter, and relieved to know that, taking after her father, her daughter would one day be loved in the duchy.
Her daughter was precious. She was not filthy in the least, but lovely, the child who proved Freesia was still alive.
“My baby isn’t dirty! Please, let her go…!”
Freesia crawled forward on her knees, desperately clutching at Canopus’s feet, begging frantically. She was out of her mind with terror that Nova might suffocate and die.
“It’s my fault! Please, let my baby go, she can’t… she can’t breathe…!”
“Do you really think you’re at fault?”
At Canopus’s smooth voice, Freesia nodded desperately.
“Please, it’s my fault, I was wrong.”
She had no shame in begging for forgiveness while her daughter’s tiny feet kicked helplessly in the air. There was nothing pitiful in it.
“If you’re going to punish someone, punish me. Please, just let my baby go…”
“All right. If you’re willing to take the punishment.”
Canopus crouched and looked down at the woman writhing at his feet with a guilty conscience. He really hadn’t wanted to do this.
But he looked at the niece in his hand, swallowing down his nausea.
The little creature had seemed to lose her wits the moment her mother started screaming, her golden eyes blinking blankly.
But he decided to honor the woman’s plea. Since she had begged so desperately, he would grant her request and let the child go.
“But thanks to her father, she can’t possibly come out of this unscathed.”
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