As soon as she smelled that pungent odor, Cordelia stopped in her tracks. Without seeing, she could vaguely guess what was happening or about to happen inside. She turned to Beluce and Casius and said:

“I’ll go in alone.”

“Yes, understood. We’ll wait here.”

Knowing that she had rushed here to be with her father in his final moments, the two men waited outside without question. Once inside, she closed the door tightly to prevent any sound from escaping and took a deep breath.

The place where her father was staying was so small and dirty that it was embarrassing to call it a home.

Although the glory of the Vasquez family had faded compared to the past, it wasn’t to the extent of meeting one’s end in a place fit for commoners. In other words, it was also a place Pablo Vasquez would never choose to spend his last moments.

“Father.”

“Cough.”

Cordelia slowly approached her father lying on the bed. The bed he was on was so old and dirty that dust flew with every movement. He sat up, pushing aside the blanket.

“I received your letter. It said you were very ill.”

“Y-yes. It seems I don’t have many days left to live.”

Pablo coughed roughly, curling up like a shrimp. Cordelia looked down at him coldly, her face expressionless.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure the funeral is grand. All the people of Yebo Delim will shed tears before your coffin and throw blue flowers.”

No sooner had she finished speaking than Pablo shook his body violently up and down. It was quite a vigorous movement for a patient near death.

“Funeral? Your father is still breathing, and you’re already thinking about burying me?”

“The physician said your end was near, that even breathing was a struggle. You seem to have recovered a lot since then. Did you take some good medicine?”

If he were truly a dying man, he wouldn’t have been drinking enough to fill this small room with the smell of alcohol.

Cordelia couldn’t help but sneer. She had her suspicions, but she never imagined he would lie about his own life. She was so dumbfounded that she wasn’t even angry.

“I even brought mourning clothes. Looks like I won’t be needing them.”

“Mourning clothes? Why don’t you go pray at the temple for my death while you’re at it?”

“You seem to have already forgotten that you lied to me about being on the verge of death. As a dutiful daughter, I rushed all the way here from Wilace, bringing mourning clothes to prepare for your funeral. Ha!”

What kind of emotion was this?

Cordelia felt an irresistible tingling in her stomach. It was too deep to be simply described as hatred or dislike. It felt like facing a well of hatred that never ran dry no matter how much one drew from it.

“Cough, what do you mean a lie!”

“Did you run out of money? I heard from my master that you took nearly a hundred thousand linkits. Have you already spent all that money?”

“Is that how you speak to your father, you insolent girl?”

At Cordelia’s sarcasm, Pablo habitually swung his hand. However, this time, Cordelia wasn’t helplessly enduring it like at the Saracen banquet.

“Agh!”

The pain he expressed after hitting the barrier was evidence of how violently he had swung. Pablo received back the same shock he had tried to inflict. He grabbed his right arm and screamed as if he were dying.

It was so loud that it sounded like a pig being slaughtered. Cordelia frowned and stepped back a little.

“It seems your throat has already healed. You’re not coughing anymore. I’m so glad, Father.”

“You ill-mannered wench! Your father is sick, and you show this stiff attitude? Do you know how much money I spent raising you? The clothes you wear, the food you eat. It all came from my pocket!”

“Now you’re even taking credit for that? My goodness, aren’t you going to charge me for bringing me into this world too?”

Cordelia burst out laughing. Her voice was quite loud, and she no longer worried about the two knights outside hearing. She just felt that the man sitting before her was utterly despicable.

“I thought I couldn’t be more disappointed in you, Father, but you’re really showing your true colors now.”

“You! Watch your mouth.”

“Just be honest. Say you called me here because you ran out of money for alcohol. Tell me you called me to extort money under some pretext like the cost of bringing me into this world or whatever. If you had, I would have brought more money.”

As she openly mocked him, Pablo gritted his teeth and exhaled roughly, then changed his expression as if he had made some decision.

“I can’t accept payment for bringing you into this world, if nothing else.”

“True. If I were to pay that price, it should rightfully go to Mother, not you.”

“No. I can’t be so shameless as to ask for that price for a child who isn’t even my own.”

“…What?”

Cordelia doubted her ears for a moment. There was a word in the sentence she had never imagined. For the first time, Cordelia was at a loss for words, blinking her eyes. Thinking he had gained the upper hand, Pablo’s voice grew stronger.

“Your eyes. Do you know how I felt every time I saw those detestable green eyes?”

“What, what are you saying?”

“The Vasquez family has had black eyes for generations. My father, grandfather, even my son, all of them.”

Cordelia’s mother, Greta, had light brown eyes. Cordelia had sometimes resented her eye color that resembled neither of her parents, but she had never once doubted her birth.

When young Cordelia would rub her eyes and feel gloomy, Greta would hug her daughter tightly and say:

“Your great-grandmother, she had green eyes. Mother said I took after my grandmother, that’s why you have green eyes.”

“As if. Even the late Mrs. Manson had the same brown eyes as your mother.”

“…”

“Do you have any idea how painful it was for me to look at your eyes, evidence of infidelity, for over twenty years?”

He pointed at Cordelia, mimicking a deeply sorrowful emotion.

“Infidelity? You can’t know just from that. You can’t judge just by eye color, can you…?”

Cordelia denied reality with her whole body. Sentences that shook her very roots came crashing like waves. She forgot how to breathe, holding her breath for a long time before finally exhaling with difficulty.

“Are you saying it’s all a coincidence that the man your mother met right before marrying me had the exact same color eyes as you, and that you happened to be born prematurely? Hahaha. Even a dog wouldn’t believe such a coincidence.”

Pablo was relentless, as if he had been waiting for this moment. He extended his long nails and wielded a cruel hand at the woman who had been his daughter for over twenty years. Cordelia’s complexion turned deathly pale, as if she might collapse at any moment.

“Do you understand now? How great a favor it was for me to take you in and raise you? I even allowed the Vasquez name to a dirty seed from who knows where, and what? Bottom of the barrel? Money for alcohol?”

“…”

“I thought I was finally getting back what I spent raising you from Atilei, but… Dennis said you came to the inn where he was staying and just yelled without any manners? It’s all your doing that Atilei completely changed his words and said he couldn’t give the money after that, isn’t it?”

“…”

“Don’t just stand there stupidly, answer me! What exactly did you whisper to Atilei that made Dennis get kicked out of the knighthood and Atilei stubbornly refuse to give the money he clearly promised?”

Pablo, seemingly done pretending to be ill, got up from the bed entirely.

Her head was in a fog. She wasn’t crying or angry. The situation was too overwhelming to handle. As if in a dream, she vaguely remembered a scene from her childhood where her father pointed at a very young Cordelia while fighting with her mother.

‘The evidence of your infidelity is so clear, what excuse do you have?’

‘No, Cordelia is our child, yours and mine! I can swear to God. Please believe me.’

‘Swear? As if. How dare you say such things while looking at those disgusting eyeballs?’

She was too young then to understand why her parents were fighting. As Cordelia grew older, her father, for whatever change of heart, stopped mentioning it directly, so she didn’t know.

No, perhaps she wanted to cover her ears. She didn’t want to believe that her eyes, which resembled neither of her parents, were evidence of her mother’s infidelity.

Pablo looked straight into his daughter’s eyes and spoke. His breath smelled of alcohol, and his hunched back was unsightly, but his black eyes gleamed like well-polished beads.

“I’ve done everything I could for you. Fed you, raised you, even arranged a good marriage for you.”

“Ah…”

She couldn’t call him father. Cordelia silently parted her lips, then closed them again. Pablo looked around somewhat frantically. He seemed to be searching for something, or perhaps waiting. He kept muttering something in a low voice.

“If only you hadn’t done that to Dennis, if only Atilei had kept giving me the money he promised, I wouldn’t have gone this far.”

Cordelia was still half out of her mind, so Pablo’s words didn’t register at all.

At that moment, there was a sound of rough scuffling outside the door. As Cordelia turned her head towards the door in surprise, Pablo quickly grabbed her shoulder. His grip was so rough that Cordelia frowned.

“Listen carefully to what I say. You are no longer a Vasquez.”

“Father!”

Cordelia, who had been in a daze from the shocking and desperate feelings, snapped back to her senses and looked at her father. The words that followed were even colder.

“I won’t send you begging letters anymore, so don’t worry. From now on, you and I are complete strangers.”