My Ruin to You - Chapter 139

Yet, he was patient.

He employed tedious and cumbersome methods, slowly tightening the noose around Roseline, waiting each day. Reports of her growing closeness with Schnitzel were irritating, but he didn’t give them much weight. After all, Roseline, who despised the nobility despite being one herself, couldn’t possibly grow close to the young Countess.

It wasn’t until he attended the graduation banquet that he acknowledged his miscalculation.

‘So, you want to tame me because I don’t listen to you?’
‘I don’t understand you, Your Highness. If you loved me, you wouldn’t go this far. How is this love?’

Roseline denied it, but if it weren’t love, he would have discarded her without a second thought instead of going to all this trouble. Because he couldn’t do that—because even the moments she infuriated him with her audacious words were precious—he couldn’t let her go.

A few days later, he sat down with the Marquis. He gave the order to summon Roseline to the Marquis’s domain but to treat her with exceptional care. The Marquis, whose weakness had been exposed, bowed his head without a word of protest and withdrew. He sent Edan to the Marquis’s domain. To monitor the Marquis’s movements, watch Roseline’s whereabouts, and find the safest location. Those were the orders he gave Edan.

‘Safe from what, Your Highness?’
‘The plague.’
‘The plague… You mean the Marquis’s experiment?’
‘Yes. I need the safest place from the plague. Because you will soon have to release the bats.’

Edan, born as the illegitimate child of a ruined ducal house and raised amidst scorn, was a knight as loyal as Merrick. As expected, Edan bowed his head.
‘Yes, Your Highness. I will obey your command.’

The only thing that didn’t go according to his will was Roseline. Moreover, even the process to reclaim her didn’t proceed as he wished. How shocked he was by the sudden news of the plague outbreak.

No, simply saying he was shocked couldn’t capture the depth of his despair. Every moment spent searching through the ruined castle, his heart was in turmoil. He prayed just to see her, even if it was her corpse; then he wished she had escaped the castle early and survived; he fervently hoped, above all, just to confirm whether she was alive or dead.

To say he wouldn’t mind even her corpse…

It was only after holding Roseline, losing her warmth and growing cold in his arms, that he realized how terribly arrogant that had been.

“Should I have prevented her from meeting Schnitzel?”

This, too, was arrogance. Though Roseline didn’t know it, the moment he heard news of Schnitzel being in the Count’s domain, he had her watched. Her disguising herself as a maid to secretly infiltrate the Count’s mansion was quite novel even to him, but he turned a blind eye. Because what Schnitzel would tell Roseline was utterly predictable.

The truth was necessary, in some form, and he was confident he could keep Roseline by his side no matter what she thought upon hearing it. He could simply destroy all her other options.

However, after hearing the news of Schnitzel’s accident, he grew uneasy for no reason. He was worried about how Roseline would react upon hearing of Schnitzel’s death. The timing was bad. So, he sent a letter to the Schnitzel Marquisate, ordering them to keep their mouths firmly shut, but the cunning Marquis sent a maid and revealed the truth he had so desperately wanted to hide.

“You weren’t taking me to a meeting, were you.”

He admitted it. The engagement ring on Roseline’s fourth finger had elated him. He also found Roseline utterly endearing, sweetly coaxing him as if to please him, like the tongue in his mouth. Even if he could go back to that moment, he would have no choice but to make the same decision. Exactly that much.

“Just open your eyes, Roseline. You can be sulky, you can be angry. It’s okay if you never forgive me for the rest of your life. Hmm?”

He couldn’t bring himself to say he would let her go. Because that was something he simply couldn’t do.

Valen looked down at Roseline with a sunken gaze, as if waiting for an answer. Even after waiting a long time, no answer came.

“So stubborn.”

He dismissed the dead’s silence as stubbornness and kissed her lustrous hair, which he brushed every day.

“I’ll go wash up. If I don’t shave, you’ll say it’s scratchy and hate it.”

He might skip meals, but he never neglected washing and grooming for a single day. Every day, he changed into neat clothes and never forgot the perfume Roseline liked. All so that if Roseline opened her eyes, she wouldn’t be disappointed by his haggard appearance.

Yet, his mind was never at ease leaving Roseline alone, and his anxiety was fully transmitted to his fingertips. The hand holding the razor trembled violently and inevitably drew blood. As red blood seeped from the thin cut, he clicked his tongue briefly. He roughly wiped the blood with a dry towel and quickly washed his body. After changing into pajamas, he changed Roseline’s clothes as well.

Moving her stiffened arms and legs slowly and carefully, he fastened every button meticulously before finally lying down beside Roseline.

“Sleep well, Roseline. I’ll only wait until today.”