The Truth Revealed
In Veronica's bedroom, her eyelids felt as heavy as lumps of lead. Amid the burning fever, Veronica let out a groan and slowly regained consciousness. The first thing she felt was the cool sensation resting on her forehead. Someone must have been changing the wet towel for her all night long.
Veronica raised a trembling hand and touched the cloth on her brow. It was rough and crude fabric, yet it held a strangely lingering warmth. ‘Could it be… Mr. Rodin?’ A hazy memory flickered through her mind. In the midst of that hellish heat, there had been a solid, heavy chest supporting her firmly, and large hands awkwardly but carefully brushing her hair aside.
But right after that came the cold, venomous words he had spat out.
She bit her lip and tried to sit up. At that moment, the old door creaked open. The one who entered was Balkan, the oldest veteran in the stronghold and the man infamous for never reading the room. Gone was his usual sloppy attitude. He approached with a solemn expression, carrying a bowl of medicine on a tray.
“Princess, are you awake? This is a medicinal decoction the boss personally prepared by grinding herbs. Drink it and you’ll regain your strength right away.”
“…And Mr. Rodin? Did he go out to the fields? After pushing me away like that, he still took care of me while I was sick? Or did he just nurse me enough before running off to chat with the mercenaries?”
At Veronica’s barbed words, Balkan let out a deep sigh. He set the tray on the table and gazed out the window.
“The boss stayed by your side all night, Princess. He kept soaking towels until dawn because your fever wouldn’t break. When I saw him leaving this morning, his face was a complete mess. He looked like he had aged ten years.”
“He must be upset because he had to chase away those ‘rose flower’ women. It seems the mercenaries are more precious to him than I am. More than an imperial princess, he prefers sword-wielding women, I suppose.”
Veronica spat out the words, unable to hide her twisted heart. But Balkan’s reaction was different from usual. He looked down at her with heavy eyes stripped of all playfulness.
“Princess, you really don’t know anything. Why the boss trembles at the mere mention of mercenaries. Why he flew into a rage the moment he saw those women.”
“……That’s why I’m asking. What kind of hidden story could make him act like that? Is it just that one of his old lovers was mixed in among them?”
Instead of answering, Balkan gazed at the distant mountains. In his eyes, the deep sorrow and reverence unique to old soldiers intertwined. The usual lightness of shouting “Boss, grill us some meat!” was nowhere to be found.
“The boss was once called the legendary Mercenary King, but he is also a legendary ‘ghost.’ Do you know about the Blood Valley incident?”
Veronica’s pupils shook. It was the worst tragedy that was mandatory to study in tactical classes at the Imperial Military Academy. The legendary annihilation battle where allies and enemies had mixed together and not a single person survived.
“He… survived there alone.”
Balkan’s voice sank low.
“Annihilation… you say? But Mr. Rodin is so strong… How could his comrades die when he was there?”
“Strength wasn’t the issue. It was betrayal. Other money-crazed mercenary bands stabbed them in the back. While the boss was briefly away, hundreds of comrades who were like brothers were turned into chunks of meat. When the boss returned, all he saw… were the heads of his comrades piled up like a mountain.”
Veronica stopped breathing. Her vision spun.
“That’s when it started. To the boss, mercenaries aren’t comrades—they’re devils who stab you in the back. The women you brought, Princess… those flashy gauntlets and blades weren’t saviors to him. They were illusions of the butchers who slaughtered his comrades. The hand that woman extended must have looked like the blade that had cut his comrades’ throats.”
Balkan’s words became daggers, carving up Veronica’s chest.
“You handed a one-way ticket back to hell to someone who had barely crawled out of it, Princess. And you did it with a bright smile on your face.”
After Balkan left the medicine bowl behind and departed, a silence heavier than death settled over the room. Veronica clutched the bedsheet with trembling hands. Her nails dug into her palms and drew blood, but she felt no pain.
“Ah…… Aah……”
In her head, her own voice from last night replayed.
It had been selfish jealousy. All because of her childish pride as an imperial princess and her petty desire to be loved, she had trampled on a man’s torn soul with her own feet.
Rodin had built a toll gate on the mountain to protect her. He had clumsily grown cabbages with his own hands, trying to wash away the stench of blood. Yet she had invited the very ‘phantoms’ he hated and feared most into his own backyard.
“I… I really am trash. Blinded by nothing but jealousy… I was killing that man’s soul.”
Veronica curled up under the crushing weight of guilt that made her want to vomit. Only now did she understand why he couldn’t sleep at night and drank strong liquor, why—even with his overwhelming strength—he was obsessed with catching mere cabbage worms.
Because if he didn’t touch the soil, the smell of blood on his hands wouldn’t go away. Because if he didn’t listen to the sound of cabbages growing, the screams of his dead comrades wouldn’t leave his ears.
“Rodin… I’m sorry. How much it must have hurt. Someone like me… really deserves to die.”
Veronica bit her lip, not even thinking to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks. The arrogance had vanished from her eyes. All that remained was a fierce compassion and atonement directed at one man.
Boom! Boom!
A thunderous roar echoed across the stronghold’s courtyard as if an earthquake had struck. Rodin was swinging his pickaxe with vacant eyes. Normally he would have carefully uprooted even a single weed, but right now he looked like a battering ram smashing down a massive castle wall. Every time his pickaxe came down, the ground split open a full meter, and the sound of rushing air tore at the eardrums.
From behind a distant tree, Dagan and Gil hid with pale faces, whispering to each other.
“The boss has been digging in the exact same spot for three hours straight. At this rate he’s going to tunnel straight through to the other side of the planet. Isn’t the whole mountain going to collapse?”
“Shut up, you idiot! Look at the boss’s eyes right now. Those aren’t farming eyes—they’re eyes that want to destroy an entire continent!”
Rodin heard neither his subordinates’ voices nor the chirping of birds. Every time he breathed, the metallic stench of blood brushed the tip of his nose. The hallucinations that had begun the moment he saw the armor emblem of the Red Rose Mercenary Band refused to stop.
Rodin growled at the empty air. The past he had tried to bury under the smell of soil was erupting like a volcano at the single word “mercenary.”
“U-um… They say Sister-in-law has woken up. She even took her medicine.”
At Gil’s desperate shout, Rodin’s pickaxe stopped mid-swing. A chilling aura flickered from the tip of the tool hovering in the air.
“……Is that so? Then that’s fine. Tell her not to bother collapsing again.”
Rodin violently tore into the earth once more. But inside, his heart was being shredded.
‘What face do I have to look at that woman with? I scared her so badly because I couldn’t control my temper. I couldn’t even treat her properly as an imperial princess… and instead I gave her a tour of hell.’
As evening approached, a slender shadow stretched long across the red cabbage field bathed in sunset. Rodin knew without turning around. In this entire stronghold, only one person made footsteps that were both this cautious and this stubborn.
He gripped the pickaxe tighter, his body frozen cold. He thought he should spit out more hurtful words to drive her away. If he stayed by her side, she too would become infected by this stench of blood.
But the moment he tried to speak, a warm, gentle heat enveloped him from behind. Rodin’s back, stiff as a statue, was pulled into Veronica’s embrace.
“Hey… Princess. Your body isn’t well yet. Why did you crawl out here? Go back to your room right now.”
He had meant to say it coldly, but his voice trembled weakly. He could feel Veronica’s shoulders shaking faintly against his back.
“I’m sorry… Rodin, I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know anything… and I made you see hell again.”
Rodin’s heart sank with a thud.
“……What are you talking about? That old man Balkan must have said something useless again. Just tell him to mind his own farming.”
“I know now. Why you hate mercenaries, why you’ve been suffering all alone. I was jealous of someone like you, hurting you… I feel so pathetic I want to die.”
Veronica buried her face in his back and burst into silent sobs. Rodin looked down at his dirt-covered hands. He wondered if these blood-stained hands had any right to hold her.
“I won’t go anywhere anymore. Whenever you have a nightmare, I’ll wake you up. If the smell of blood comes, I’ll spray perfume all over my body and stay by your side. So please… don’t push me away.”
Rodin remained silent for a long time. The setting sun dyed the two of them in deep red. Slowly, he set the pickaxe down on the ground. Then, very carefully—almost reverently—he took Veronica’s small hand in his own.
It was an ugly hand, covered in dirt and calluses, but Veronica clutched it like a treasure.
“……This is so bothersome. You’re getting dirt all over your clothes. Do you know how expensive the laundry fee is?”
The sharp killing intent had finally disappeared from Rodin’s voice. In its place was bone-deep exhaustion and a strange sense of relief he had never felt before.
“Who cares if it gets dirty? I’ll wash it all for you. I’m good at laundry now, you know.”
“You hate getting your hands wet. Act like a proper princess.”
“I told you I’m not a princess anymore. I’m the chief administrator of this stronghold and your lady of the house. Washing my husband’s clothes is something I’ll do myself.”
Rodin turned his head to look at Veronica. The imperial princess’s face was a mess from tears, yet it shone brighter than any jewel.
“……Do as you please.”
Rodin led Veronica back toward the stronghold with an indifferent expression. For the first time, his steps felt light.
But as the two of them savored their peace while climbing the hill, hundreds of cold eyes gleamed in the forest below the mountain. Count Valder’s elite knights, who had followed the traces of the toll gate and the fallen mercenaries, were tightening a massive encirclement around the stronghold.