Meredith pondered the Lord's words as she remained alone in his room, doing nothing. All day, her only companions were the white walls of the room, along with the gold-threaded curtains that swayed whenever the wind decided to blow that way.
The only people she saw and spoke to were the butler and the maids, who had come in at noon to ask what she would like for lunch, and then in the evening when they came to light the candles. She didn't want to admit it, but she found herself looking forward to Ezekiel's return. He was the only face she could tag as familiar. His voice was the only sound she could properly respond to.
Even as she dozed off on the bed after fighting sleep for a long while, she still hoped she could see him when he returned, but nothing of that sort happened, and the next morning, she woke up to an empty room.
The bed showed signs that another person had lain there the night before, and the scent she recognized as Ezekiel's filled the room, which meant that he had come and gone before she woke up.
Meanwhile, at the outskirts of Velmorea, four men walked around, examining the area that looked closer to a forest than a living settlement. Though the morning sun was at its brightest, the atmosphere was gloomy, and that gloom seemed to cast dark clouds around the place.
The ground was littered with dead bodies, which had turned blue, of men and women and even animals who were unfortunately caught and experimented upon by the witches of Velmorea. The walls and furniture were splattered with blood, and the stench hung in the air. There was no sign of life, and evidently, the witches had discarded the place before they arrived.
The sight was ghastly, eerie even, and no normal human would be found there on a fine morning like this one. But these four men weren't just humans—they were the Watchers, the few men in Velmorea who had taken it upon themselves to hunt down and kill every witch in Velmorea.
"Those pesky witches!" one of the men spat, visibly more enraged than disgusted by the sight in front of him. They were lucky enough to escape before he showed up. "How do they get lucky every time?"
"You speak as though you expected them to be here when we arrived, Matthew," Ezekiel said, a light laughter in his voice. He was kicking the severed limb of a man, and he found it funny that the man had died with his shoes on. He was more interested in what he was doing with the limb than the business they had actually come for, and he only looked up when he felt the eyes of his companions boring holes into his body. "What?" he shrugged.
The three men looked at him and shook their heads. They were used to Ezekiel's lackadaisical attitude toward the hunting of witches, and if Ezekiel himself had not built the Watchers, they would have thought he wasn't interested in finding and killing them.
"You seem more interested in that limb than the witches who have escaped, Lord Ezekiel," another man spoke. He was the oldest among the four, with greying hair, a wrinkled face, and a little squint from failing eyes.
"Oh, Lucas, I am," Ezekiel laughed, not bothering to deny their assumptions. He wasn't interested in these witches. The witch he wanted was at his home, and he was dying to go back to her, but these men had kept him out till late at night the day before and had called him out at the crack of dawn. He was in an irritable mood, and these men were responsible for it.
Old Lucas shook his head at the Lord. He couldn't exactly scold the founder of the Watchers. He placed an arm around the shoulders of the man next to him, who appeared to be the youngest, and said to the other two, "I will take Maxwell with me. You two cover this area, and both of us will keep an eye out for the witches, if they are still here."
While Ezekiel shrugged, Matthew nodded, and the group split. For a while, they worked in silence, investigating and picking up anything they thought would be important, like clues that would lead them to where the witches were, until Matthew broke the silence.
"I heard you bought a slave?"
Ezekiel paused, and his reaction made Matthew snicker. "It's true then? The slave?" Matthew continued, now enjoying Ezekiel's silence. It filled him with a certain thrill, as it was almost impossible to get such a reaction from Ezekiel. "For someone who has been openly against slave trades, you sure spent a lot of gold there, my Lord. A man's weight in gold, was it?"
Ezekiel faced him. "Do you have me followed, Matthew?"
"Followed? I would never!" said Matthew, an exaggerated expression on his face, with a hand clasped to his chest. "I only heard of it some time ago. You know nothing about you goes unnoticed, Lord Ezekiel. You are the infamous Lord, after all."
Instead of giving Matthew the satisfaction of seeing him flustered, Ezekiel ignored the man and went back to his work. But like he couldn't take a hint, or was deliberately poking a bear, Matthew did not give up.
"No one would judge you for it, though. It's no news that slaves are the most entertaining and satisfactory playthings. I have tried to get one myself but failed, because of you. Maybe you could lend me yours for a while to play with?"
The ceramic cup Ezekiel had picked suddenly cracked and broke into pieces, which fell and scattered on the messy ground. "What did you say?" Ezekiel turned suddenly and approached Matthew with deliberately slow steps, making the man shudder and take an instinctive step back.
"I'm just saying… it wouldn't hurt to have your slave entertain me for a few days and…" Poor Matthew couldn't complete his words as he suddenly dropped dead in front of Ezekiel.
The Lord stared at the additional dead body, which was fast turning blue with a blank face, and when he looked up from it, he found the guilty witch shaking in front of him.
She held a small dagger in her hand, and her clothes and face were stained with dried blood. Under Ezekiel's gaze, she trembled. She was a young witch who remained even after her witch sisters had long escaped.
"Why are you still here?" Ezekiel asked. "You should be running."
The witch looked at him, confused that he was letting her go. The Watchers were their nemesis, and no witch hunter would just let her go, especially after killing one of them.
"You're letting me go?"
Ezekiel nodded and even waved her away before turning to leave.
"But I killed him!" she called after him, pointing at the dead man on the floor.
Ezekiel looked over his shoulder at Matthew's corpse without the slightest emotion on his face. If the young witch hadn't killed him when she did, he would have done it a second later. "Hm," was his simple response before he walked away to where the others were waiting for him.
"Where is Matthew?" Lucas asked and looked in the direction Ezekiel had come from, as though expecting Matthew to follow behind.
"He died. A witch killed him," Ezekiel shrugged. The two gaped at him with evident confusion, but he ignored them and went on his way. "Don't just stand there. We have witches to hunt."