Their convoy followed the coastal road. In front, Vermilian soldiers were advancing to ensure the safety of their masters, who was coming from the rear.
At the very back were the roarons. The white wagon between the roarons and the Vermilia convoy belonged to Yu. On either side of the wagon driven by Bart, four roarons were driving their rinos.
"The sun is shining. The snow will start to melt."
As a child, it made him sad that the snow would melt. Yu didn't want the snow to melt when he was a child either. As he grew older, he wanted winter to end and spring to come, but now, the passing of the days scared him because the coming of spring meant his death was near.
"After nine months it will start raining again."
Yu had a notebook in his hand. The notebook was full of notes he had taken. He had taken so many notes that almost all the pages were full, even in school he didn't take so many notes. There were even subjects that he didn't feel the need to take notes since he could find most of them on the internet, but when he looked at the notebook in his hand, he realized that there was no more page for notes. He had to buy a new one.
This was not the first notebook he had finished, he had many notebooks and he had kept most of them when he was at the Wizarding Academy.
When the little library was opened to him, he was not allowed to take all the books he wanted from it. But Maron had told him he could take as many notes as he wanted from the books he wanted. So he risked disrupting his sleep schedule and took note after note, day and night.
He wrote in the Latin alphabet so that he could take notes quickly, and because there were not many people who could read these notebooks except him.
"Where did I write this..."
After he had filled a few notebooks, he had added a table of contents to them to make it easier to find what he was looking for, but this was one of the first notebooks he had written, so there was no table of contents, therefore it was hard for him to find what he was looking for.
"Got it."
This notebook contained information about the poison. When Maron wouldn't let him take the books about the poison, Yu wrote everything down in it.
He was weak, unable to fight, so he had to find his own ways of dealing with threats. Poison was one of the ways Yu found.
"I'm glad I bought something while we were in Rolderhelm."
Yu had medicines and herbs he could use to make poison. Rolderhelm had plenty of them stacked there because they were easy to find.
"What are you reading?"
Yurine approached Yu and glanced at the notes he held in his hand. Naturally, she didn't understand any of it.
"Widow Poison. A poison that causes shortness of breath. Eventually it stops the victim from breathing and kills him."
"You, why are you reading something like this?"
"I'm going to poison Leoral and Bart."
He said it in a low voice and calmly. It was hard to decide someone's death just like that, even if he felt justified.
"Why? Can't we just fire them?"
"If we try to fire them out, Leoral will rightly claim that I force you to do it, and he will claim that I control you and use his military might to destroy the demon in your collar. Even if I try to defend myself with the roarons and we are facing a weakened enemy, we don't stand a chance against his army."
Leoral could field his trained knights, Yu had thirty roarons to lead into battle.
"Leoral and Bart, those two can somehow link me to the events in İlonya, and Raul's sudden appearance has given them more ammunition. I bet they even think I killed Rie. They don't want me to be around you. Such a thing is unacceptable."
Except for the great ideal they had, Yu did not want to leave Yurine. He would not let anything but death separate them.
"I'm going to get them out of the way so they don't continue their ideas and spread them to others. What do you think about that?"
He wanted to know her opinion. Yu was making up his own mind about the deaths of two people and he wanted to know what Yurine would say about it.
"Yu, if they try to separate us, they must die."
Yurine's response was also quiet and calm. Like Yu, she made her decision in cold blood. In Yurine's eyes, anyone who tried to separate them had to be destroyed.
"It's horrible for a child to give someone a death warrant..."
He hated himself even more for forcing Yurine to do such things. In the new world, he would make sure she became a normal child.
"When we take a break, you stay with Sivina. I'll take Kigaro and Dimen and Bart and find a secluded spot on the side of the road. He'll be finished there. Then we'll say he's lost, and we'll look for him, but when we can't find him, we'll have to move again. Don't worry, I have an idea to hide him. You just say you're not feeling well today when we stop and extend the break."
Yurine nodded and rested her shoulder against Yu's.
"Yurine, about Raul. The roarons will be around Sivina and Ana to keep him away, but Leoral will bring him to us. When that time comes, I want something from you..."
***
When their convoy took their first break, Yurine did her duty and tripled the break time. This would be enough time to cook Bart.
"Kigaro, Dimen."
Their camp was near a small forest. Yu had seven rinos following him. When he called out to the two roaron commanders, he received puzzled looks from the rinos following him.
"Valarfin, what's for that rinos?" Kigaro asked.
"Come here," Yu said. He had not answered the question.
He walked to a secluded corner of the camp with Kigaro and Dimen following him. He kept looking around and checking to see if anyone was watching them. If not, the only ones who could see him now were the roarons.
When he was behind the trailers and near the trees, Yu stopped and turned to face them. Seeing his seriousness, the roarons became serious too.
"Listen to me, I will be brief and take no questions. Yurine is being betrayed."
Betrayal was a word not part of the roarons' code. No matter what, they punished betrayal with death.
"Bart, the old butler, is telling the duke things that only Yurine and I should know. Even though the duke is Yurine's supporter, this is unacceptable. And it's a crime that he's even spying on us and accessing confidential information. We're going to kill Bart today. Yurine will send him here soon. Dimen, you take him and bring him into the forest. Kigaro and I will wait there."
Neither of them questioned the serious Yu Valarfin. Of course they must have had a lot of questions, but if Yu said they were going to do something and Yurine was part of the plan, they had no choice but to accept it without question.
Yu entered the forest with a demon sword at his waist, the rope of rinos tied together in his left hand, a glass of wine in his right hand and Kigaro at his side.
"We will build a fire over there to cook the food for the rinos."
Kigaro, normally talkative, quietly carried out his orders. When he prepared the places where the rinos would cook their meals, he didn't even ask why they would feed them here.
Yu had brought his sword in case the poison didn't work. In his hand he held the wine glass in which he had mixed his blood.
There was much more blood in the glass than in the crows' water, so much so that the red wine had darkened in color. Yu hoped it would kill him. Otherwise he would have to use his sword.
"They're coming."
Bart's face showed no emotion as he walked in front of Dimen. They didn't speak until they were a few feet away from touching each other.
Dimen continued to stand behind Bart, while Kigaro stood next to Yu. Bart was a dead man from now on.
"What does young lady want?"
"Punish the traitors."
When Yu made his intentions clear, his amethyst eyes locked with the gray eyes of the old maid. Bart's face was still expressionless.
"Does the young lady want this, or do you?"
"What difference does it make? Yurine's wishes are mine and my wishes are Yurine's."
"Yurine?"
"Her name. That's what I named her when I adopted her in Rolderhelm. Isn't it beautiful? It's kind of a tradition to have 'yu' in our family members and her name has Yu for Yu, Ri for Rie and Ne for Neko."
He spread his arms and laughed. He didn't like killing people, but he wouldn't feel as guilty about it as before. He was a more determined man now.
"I wonder what kind of demon you are."
"Demon? Frankly, after what we've been through with the demons, it hurts me to be called that. I am a human being in the fullest sense of the word."
Bart laughed mockingly at Yu's words. He couldn't tell whether this old man at the end of his life was very brave or very stupid. If Yu had been in his place, he would have tried to go easy on his killer so that his death would at least be painless.
If Yu was in his place, though, he wouldn't have betrayed anybody, or if he did, he wouldn't have been caught.
"She was entrusted to us by the real lady. I don't regret anything I did."
"Anything you did?"
What had they done? They must have already planned something to end Yu, is that what he was talking about?
"How well do you know her? I'm her father and you tried to separate us. You spilled the secrets of the Virgo Cathedral. You stupid old man!"
Suddenly Yu lost his temper and shouted. Bart closed his eyes as he yelled.
"Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea what would have happened if Leoral had succeeded and separated us?"
"Yes, I do. Young lady, get rid of the demon from her collar-"
As Bart spoke, Yu handed the glass to Kigaro and punched Bart in the face. It didn't feel good to hit an old man, but he hated people like him who meddled in things that were none of their business.
And... He had no tolerance for betrayal.
"You don't even know our purpose... You don't even know what I've done for her... Yes, the things I did for her..." Even though he didn't need to control his temper, he was trying to stay calm because of his self-respect.
He had killed people, stolen their dreams and left chaos in his wake to fulfill Yurine's dream. Yu was sinking and had no choice but to keep sinking.
"But there's no need to tell all this to a dead man."