My Ruin to You - Chapter 79

The captain quickly gathered volunteers to retrieve the bodies.

Surprisingly, volunteers came forward rapidly, and thirty were selected to leave the encampment. The castle gates had been sealed shut with thick iron planks nailed tightly, leaving no gaps, so they had to scale the walls using ladders.

“I don’t recall you watching me so wistfully when I left for the duchy.”

Valen tightened the cloak that had slipped from his shoulders, smiling with his eyes as he watched the distant figures climbing the walls.

Anyone with sense would recognize that this wasn’t a smile of joy or approval. The glint in his half-lidded eyes was cool, his lips pressed thin.

“Ah, was your heart already cold by then?”

“…Forgive me, but why do you keep testing me?”

“Why ask when you won’t answer?”

Snap.

Valen tightened the knot of his cloak and extended his hand. Roseline hesitated for only a moment—clenching and unclenching her fingers beneath the cloak—before finally placing her hand over his. Refusal had never come easily to her, but after witnessing his madness within the castle walls, she had erased the very concept of refusal from her mind.

They walked toward the barracks. As the sun set and the infected grew active, the guards along the walls would be reinforced, and the camp buzzed with preparations for battle. Carts laden with arrows were wheeled past, and the smoke from newly lit fires seeped into the tense air.

“I thought you wouldn’t allow it.”

Roseline voiced her thoughts belatedly—her surprise that Valen had permitted the captain’s request to recover the bodies.

“I couldn’t refuse.”

“Why not?”

Valen glanced at her with a faintly amused glint in his eyes before looking away.

“I thought you’d be hiding near the infirmary.”

It was an answer that dodged her question. When Roseline tilted her head in confusion, he tightened his grip on her hand and continued.

“Your movements are predictable, and you’re too soft-hearted to leave the castle alone. I assumed you’d gotten stuck helping others.”

“I’m not that soft-hearted.”

“Would that it were so”

He clicked his tongue, adding with a hint of regret that it would’ve been nice if she’d lived up to even half her cold appearance. Given how often people mistook her quiet demeanor for aloofness or anger, she understood what he meant. His assumption had been half-right—she had been trapped in the inner castle after meddling where she shouldn’t have.

Roseline felt an awkward heat rise to her cheeks and fell silent. Valen, glancing at her quiet reaction, continued calmly:

“You wouldn’t believe how thoroughly I searched that area. I even overturned floors and furniture, wondering if there was some hidden passage or door.”

His voice was flat, as if recounting a mundane task. But the way his grip tightened around her hand—so hard her fingers ached—spoke volumes about how desperate and unsettled he had been.

What is this feeling?

It was too sorrowful to be called touching, too overwhelming to be mere guilt. This tangled, ambiguous emotion was the essence of what she felt for him. Too close to hate, too far to return.

When Roseline stopped walking, Valen halted as well. He studied her as she bit her lip, unsure what to say, then narrowed his eyes. Instead of releasing her lip, he lightly tapped the tip of her nose. Roseline flinched reflexively and looked up at him.

“So I had no grounds to refuse. I tore everything apart searching for you—when I didn’t even know if you were alive. If I’d denied them the chance to recover their dead, the consequences would’ve been obvious.”

“……”

“And that wouldn’t have been good for you, either.”

Every word was undeniably true. He couldn’t outright defy their wishes—morale would plummet, and resentment would fester. Suddenly, the Marquis’ warning came to mind: Suspicion carries responsibility, but you lack the strength to bear it.

She didn’t understand why suspicion required responsibility, but she knew all too well that someone powerless like her would become the target. People couldn’t openly blame those in power, so their grievances would inevitably turn toward someone weaker, someone easier to blame.

She understood. When faced with hardship, it was human nature to seek someone to hold accountable—and she wasn’t entirely blameless in the knights’ deaths. If she hadn’t been here—no, if she hadn’t turned a blind eye to the vampire bats underground that day, if she hadn’t dismissed the doctor’s suspicious behavior and the sudden visitors—perhaps this horrific tragedy could have been avoided.