Previously
Cordelia and Madame Shallow arrive at the opulent Devillers estate, where the servants covertly sneer at them. Lord and Lady Devillers warmly welcome Cordelia and recall her late mother, Marilyn, though they are put off by Madame Shallow's gaudy presence.
It was an explicit insult, even among aristocrats—a plain declaration that she was no elder of the household because she was not a Marguerite. Her aunt was hardly brilliant, but she had an uncanny knack for catching slights directed at herself. Flushing crimson, she snapped back.
“An outsider? How do you think this girl was raised? I stayed behind in that ruined house and gave up the best years of my youth just to wipe and feed a helpless babe!”
“Aunt, please….”
Cordelia could have sworn her aunt had hardly ever acted as her guardian or caretaker, but the sheer inability to make the woman shut up filled her with far greater despair. She scrambled to murmur an apology, only to freeze as if doused in ice water when she met Lord Devillers’s cold gaze.
The very look that had treated her aunt like a filthy, vulgar mass of germs was now turned squarely upon Cordelia herself.
Ah.
‘I see. Just as I thought.’
A vulgar family, blood mingled with theirs, a wretched upbringing steeped in poverty. And the rotten seed who must have watched, learned, and grown among it all.
A dizzying vertigo seized her, as if she were being shoved off the precipice she had barely clung to. Deep down, she must have brainwashed herself into believing she was different, that she was merely enduring prolonged misfortune and was not like those people. That she was distinct, if only by the tiniest speck of difference.
Yet in the eyes of others, they were all merely leeches wriggling in the same pit.
Shameless parasites latching onto finer things for free, sucking them dry.
She wanted to deny it, but deep inside, a part of her agreed.
Had Cordelia truly waited for Jonathan all her life out of love?
Was it not just a vain daydream born of utter hopelessness, yearning for a savior from the outside, a prince on a white horse who would rescue her without asking for anything in return?
If she were to claim that was unfair, asking what was so wrong with that, her family would surely say the same. What was so wrong with cursing reality and coveting a sudden stroke of fortune fallen from the sky when life was so miserable? Her breath caught.
No, it felt as though she were dying.
And then, death truly came.
“Ah….”
Cordelia blinked. Whenever she recalled this moment in later years, she would feel the sensation of sinking endlessly into the deep sea. Down, down, down toward the bottom of a fathomless abyss. Her heavy body plummeted without end, yet the glossy, translucent surface of the water lingered in her hazy vision. The world out there must be different. She reached out with desperate longing, but she lacked the strength to swim.
A prickling ache gripped her toes as if she were treading on shattered glass, and a shimmering, heat-haze sensation crept up the bridge of her foot, inch by inch past her ankle. It was a bizarre feeling, as though scales were sprouting over bare flesh.
Her head grew foggy, and her breath turned shallow. It felt as if she had truly plunged into the sea. No, she was underwater. A hallucination of cerulean waves crashing over her seized her mind. A bright, chiming hum rose as if a chorus of boys and girls were chattering at once, and a voice like a siren’s lullaby called out.
‘Cordelia.’
‘Cordelia.’
‘Return to the sea.’
For some reason, Cordelia was struck by an eerie déjà vu, as if she had already lived through this moment before.
“This only confirms it. In truth, our reason for wishing to meet today was out of concern for the two children’s future.”
No, rather than having lived it, had she heard it?
And quite a few times, repeatedly, at that.
‘Child, if death ever comes for you, you will hear the sound of the sea in your ears.’
‘And you will hear their song.’
Her mother had possessed a talent for whispering terrifying words with utter beauty. Yes, just like the song of a mermaid.
‘You need not be afraid. The sea is always waiting for us.’
‘My sweet, I only wish….’
‘I wish they would never come for you.’
“Circumstances are quite different now from when the elder lord was still with us. Our Jonathan has yet to finish his studies as well. We had intended to propose postponing the wedding and extending the engagement, but….”
‘Yet should you finally meet them….’
‘I am so sorry, Cordelia.’
“…from what you have said, Madame Shallow, it sounds as though you have no wish to prolong the engagement. Certainly, it would be wrong of us to hold back a young lady of marrying age out of our own selfishness.”
‘It will hurt terribly.’
‘Very, very much.’
“If you so wish, you may dissolve the engagement right here and now.”
“What on earth! Are you trying to break the engagement right now?!”
“We are merely giving her the right to choose. Cordelia? What do you th—Cordelia?”
The polite smile on Lady Devillers’s face slowly drained away. Lord Devillers, who had been rubbing his mustache in displeasure with crossed arms, sprang to his feet. Her aunt’s shrill protests cut off mid-sentence.
A fishy reek hung in the air.
It resembled the brine of the sea, but far more ominous.
She looked down in bewilderment at the stream of blood trickling beneath her nose, her brow furrowing. Her heart hammered violently, screaming like a whale’s cry. A clot of blood surged up from beneath her throat. She tried desperately not to vomit, but with wretched retching sounds, a torrent of blood spilled past her lips. Lady Devillers’s scream and frantic calls for a doctor scattered into a dizzying blur.
Ah. Lowering her dull eyes like a dying fish, she saw scales sprouting across her feet. The siren’s song grew louder. Seeing that her aunt’s horrified eyes did not look toward them in the slightest, she gathered it was likely a hallucination.
Coughing up blood, chest pain, and hallucinations that blurred the line of reality.
Every single symptom pointed to one thing.
Drip. Drops of blood fell upon the pale, blanched bridge of her foot.
The onset of the disease had begun.
***
She had scrambled to take her medicine, but for some reason, none remained inside her pouch.
So it was that, even after being dragged away to be examined by the doctor, Cordelia had to vomit up another basinful of blood. Her chatty aunt had been struck dumb, and Cordelia closed her eyes as she watched Lady Devillers speak rapidly in a low voice to Lord Devillers, who was rubbing his temples. It was almost as though she were congratulating herself for being caught by the very curse she had guarded against and fled for so long.
Surprisingly, it was not the lady, but Lord Devillers who urged her to stay another day at the estate before leaving.
The lord, who had spared his words and kept his distance throughout the meeting, sighed and advised her to rest and recover her strength before departing. Seeing the unmistakable pity in his eyes left Cordelia with an unsettled feeling.
‘I really am going to die.’
No one knew how long she had left. Her mother had lived for exactly five more years after the onset. Records told of those who fell ill in early childhood, and even those said to have suffered from birth. There were grooms who had been perfectly healthy only to fall ill out of nowhere, and women who attempted suicide after hallucinations set in during pregnancy. Each story was horrifying in its own way, but they all shared one thing in common.
None ever lived past twenty-three. The longest survivor was Cynthia Marguerite, who died just before her twenty-fourth birthday a hundred and twenty years ago. Even that was an exceptionally lucky case; most perished around twenty-one.
It felt as though a dry, gritty hourglass were lodged inside her heart.
Grains of sand tumbling endlessly, with no way to hold them back.
Cordelia could not tell whether she was confused or simply detached from reality.
“Swindlers! Did you intend to push such a sickly child into our family? Shameless wretches!”
“She was perfectly fine just yesterday! What am I supposed to do about her suddenly vomiting blood like that?”
“Rushing the wedding must have been for this very reason! This is why one cannot trust people of questionable breeding!”
She had never in her life heard Lady Devillers speak with such fury. If the lady had treated them with bare-minimum respect out of friendship for her late mother until now, she was treating them like spoiled food outright. The argument between her aunt and the lady rang so fiercely it seemed to reverberate down the entire corridor.
“Watch your tongue! The illness that child has was inherited from that precious noble family of hers! It’s the hereditary disease of the Marguerites you were so eager to covet!”
“Stop it, darling. Madame Shallow, please compose yourself as well. We are right outside the patient’s room. That poor child will hear everything.”
At Lord Devillers’s intervention, her aunt grumbled for a while longer before apparently departing, for the hallway fell quiet. Soon after, the couple’s lowered voices hummed in muffled tones. Cordelia rose with a pale face and walked slowly toward the door.