Chapter 2
Flick, Lionel twisted his lips.
“Why are you making a face like you’re about to cry? Isn’t this a joyful day where you have risen to the ranks of nobility as you wished?”
There was no mercy in Lionel’s touch.
The large hand touching her dry shoulders was hot, so Agnes grabbed Lionel’s arm.
“Wait a moment, Lionel. Just a moment.”
“If you don’t want it, say so now. I don’t have a hobby of forcing it.”
“I……, I-.”
Strength gradually drained from Agnes’s hand as she exhaled heated breath.
In response, Lionel’s voice lowered even further.
“I asked something unnecessary. It’s you and your father who want to inherit the Valheim blood more than anyone else.”
The hand with a horizontal scar across it gripped the strap of Agnes’s dress and roughly untied it.
“Anyway, I’ll make sure it’s worth the money. Settlements should be clear—that’s what you Bardos always say, isn’t it?”
In that moment, Agnes’s eyes distorted.
Lionel did not look at her until the end.
The subsequent act was dry and flavorless.
A contact close to duty, to prove a marriage in name only.
The brushing body heat certainly existed, but there was no tenderness in it.
After the act ended, Lionel silently picked up his clothes and put them on.
As if he had touched something dirty, the way he wiped the area around his neck stained with Agnes’s lipstick was merciless.
“It would be best not to wander outside unnecessarily. A duchess who can’t even walk properly.”
“……”
“If you tarnish the Valheim name any further, then no matter if it’s the emperor’s order. I might want to kill all those bearing the Bardo name.”
Lionel left the room without looking back.
Creak— Bang.
With the sound of the door closing, a deep silence descended.
Left alone on the bed, Agnes bit her lips tightly. Otherwise, it felt like tears would burst out.
However, she could not stop the tears flowing along the corners of her eyes.
Under the bed, the old toe shoes rolling around haphazardly seemed just like her own appearance.
The remnants of a worn-out dream.
Hugging to her chest the toe shoes, fragments that once made her shine the most, Agnes swallowed her sobs.
“……It’s over.”
Now she had to admit it.
Before the war began, in her childhood days.
The kind Lionel she had met in the backyard of the merchant group no longer existed.
“Ugh.”
Agnes, who tightly bit her leaking sobbing lips, hugged her throbbing right leg.
From below the knee to the ankle, the grotesquely connected scar stung as if sliced by a knife.
Clearly, the nerves were dead, so she shouldn’t feel pain. They said she couldn’t walk properly either.
The useless leg hurt. So very much.
‘Lionel. You wouldn’t know. That you are the one who made my leg like this.’
“Hic.”
The sobs she couldn’t hold back finally burst out of her mouth.
And over those sobs, the moment the bridge exploded and the carriage fell.
The resolute voice of Lionel that had rung from the radio, announcing the end of Agnes’s life as a dancer, replayed like a nightmare.
“There is no negotiation. Hostages will not be rescued.”
***
Humid steam settled in the bathroom along with a chilly silence.
A deep and wide marble bathtub.
Inside it, Lionel was leaning back with his arms draped over the edge.
Wet black hair was disheveled over his forehead, and water droplets slowly flowed down his firmly built chest.
Soon, wrinkles formed between Lionel’s straight brows.
Agnes’s scent, the soft touch of her skin. And her clear eyes that looked like they were about to cry.
All of it remained as traces throughout his body, stickily clinging to his skin.
“Unpleasant.”
However, contrary to his words, the lingering heat in his body did not easily subside.
Could he have been aroused?
Ha. Lionel let out a self-mocking laugh toward himself.
“Not even a beast.”
It couldn’t be unless he was insane.
Lionel strongly rubbed the front of his eyes. To shake off Agnes’s face that kept lingering.
At that moment, a knock sounded, and the adjutant’s report came from beyond the door.
“Colonel. Intelligence has been received that remnants of Cercadia have infiltrated imperial territory.”
Lionel let out an irritated sigh and swept his wet hair back with his fingertips.
He picked up a cigarette from the shelf, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a silver lighter.
Sizzle.
As he deeply inhaled the burning cigarette, his concave cheeks were revealed.
Thick smoke poured out long from between his sensually reddened lips.
“Continue.”
“They were calling themselves by the name ‘Rebelt.’”
Tap, tap. Lionel shook off the cigarette ash and tilted his head back to stare expressionlessly at the ceiling.
“Rebelt.”
The adjutant added that in the city center, those who attempted a bomb terror attack and failed shouted this name while fleeing.
Remnants of the war.
Even though the enemy nation Cercadia had collapsed, its remnants were still deeply rooted.
“What should we do?”
“What do you mean, what.”
Lionel slowly tilted his head.
A water droplet that slid over his sharp nose bridge precariously pooled at the tip of his chin.
“Find them and kill them all.”
“The bomb remnants left at the scene were similar to weapons supplied by the Bardo merchant group. Could the Bardo side be connected to this terror incident?”
In that instant, dimples deeply dug into Lionel’s mouth as a smile formed.
However, that smile had no warmth. Rather, deep disgust seeped out.
“With the war over and no more profit from selling weapons, perhaps they’ve found another buyer.”
It was a sufficiently possible story.
A tribe that would do anything for money. That’s the Bardos.
Agnes Bardo, who is now occupying his bedroom, was no different.
The last battle that could have been perfectly ended. The one who contributed to allowing the remnants to survive and raise their heads again under the name Rebelt was none other than Agnes.
As expected.
There was no way he could have been aroused by Agnes.
This heart pounding chaotically was merely due to anger toward her.
It had to be that way.
“Damn Bardos.”
Crunch.
Lionel pressed the cigarette out on the bathtub edge.
Along with the harsh smoke, a round ash mark remained on the marble.
The mark resembling the trace of an exploded shell reminded him of the detestable battlefield.
“……Damn it.”
With a curse, as he closed his eyes, the scene of the last battle with Cercadia flickered under his eyelids.
As if it was happening right before his eyes. Vividly.
And that vividness eventually plunged Lionel into recollection. Into that time when he did not yet hate Agnes.
***
The war between the Eschwald Empire and the Cercadia Free Federation was not a simple territorial dispute.
The empire seeking to protect the nobility system, and the free federation crying out for equality.
The two ideologies could never understand each other. A small clash at the border eventually escalated into full-scale war.
Still, three months ago when the war had not ended.
The empire’s northern front line, Lieck forward base.
Inside the commander’s tent there, a letter was placed before Lionel.
“It’s arrived again this time. This consolation letter.”
In truth, closer to a note than a letter, this paper always arrived with supplies.
The first time Lionel discovered this letter was not long after he enlisted in the army.
Back then, he thought it was just some hypocrite’s petty charity with time to spare and crumpled it up.
Perhaps it wasn’t mere verbal hypocrisy, as the letters continued steadily even now, over ten years later.
As the saying goes, clothes get wet in a drizzle without noticing.
Before he knew it, waiting for this letter from an unknown sender had become Lionel’s habit.
Short phrases describing daily life outside the battlefield. Sentences of thanks and encouragement.
In a battlefield soaked in the smell of gunpowder, a single letter was the only thing that smelled human.
A place where comrades who laughed together yesterday return as cold corpses today. That is the battlefield.
In this gray environment where all senses gradually dull, the reason he could endure without going mad.
Perhaps it was because of this letter.
This paper was the proof of the last remaining humanity on the battlefield.
The one that kept him human.
In the battlefield where death was beside him yet he became numb, it was the only thread that ultimately kept him from letting go of his emotions.
“Shall we track the sender of the letter this time? If we check with the Bardo merchant group people—”
“No need.”
It was futile.
He had tried several times to find the sender, but it was in vain.
Even the one who brought the supplies didn’t know such a thing was included.
And after knowing, they didn’t pay much attention.
“Honestly, it’s surprising. That there is such a humanitarian person in that Bardo merchant group. It really doesn’t suit them.”
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