The dreary evening was far too eager to take over the foggy afternoon. Valentine had approximately two hours of decent enough grey light to watch the inhabited moor he was accustomed to from the windows of the Nidus House, transition from ethereally lonely, to only sparsely empty. The closer they drove to Manestelladen, the more homes littered the flat horizon.

Like clockwork, every half hour Valentine peeked to the side at the two hands slowly ticking over the white-faced carriage clock. Whatever foolish optimism he had tricked himself into believing about “finding the good” in this journey was just that—foolish. He wasn't interested in the landscape when Rhys first drove him here, why would he care any more the second time? 

It was a shame Rhys chose to spite Valentine by doing the exact opposite of what he ordered the butler to do—drive the carriage rather than hiring a coachman. The silence wasn't pleasant, or peaceful, it was maddening. At this point his anxiety was his only, dull, company, gnawing at his attention span and making his knee bounce. 

By now the moor was taken over by the vast forest that surrounded Manestelladen. What was interesting about the same trees painted in shadow going by? Nothing.

His knees were stabbed by the bench across from him when the carriage jerked to a halt. Valentine caught himself on the door, whipping his head to the window when muffled horse snorting and voices seeped inside. The horses protested with stomping hooves at the yanking of their lines, and the deep voice was frantic and pleading. Despite how much he craned his head, Valentine couldn’t get a good angle on the commotion through the glass.

“I beg you, help me! Sir, she’s after me, she’s—God she's after me!” Valentine heard as he opened the door. His pointed-toe shoe came down onto the carriage step, poking his head out to watch the half dressed, twig and leaf adorned man clasping his trembling hands at his chest. 

“Sir, calm yourself,” Rhys looked down at the large man’s drenched, pale face.

“You don’t understand, she's coming! She’s–”

“What is all this?” Valentine snapped. This was the first person he had spoken to, besides his butler, in six months and it was a man whose face reminded Valentine of a mole. And that wasn’t just because he had dirt covering his whiskers as if he had dug himself out of a burrow. 

Valentine blamed his solitude for the way his stomach soured when the man’s wide, dark eyes turned from Rhys, to him. Perhaps he should’ve allowed the butler to deal with it, rather than throwing himself in the matter.

“Young master,” a breath of relief left the man’s chapped lips, and Valentine’s glare sharped. “Oh, thank the heavens, you must help me. There is a witch I tell you, a witch and she’s after me.” 

Rhys and Valentine exchanged glances. Even in the dark, Valentine caught the humor shining in Rhys’ golden gaze.

“A witch?” Valentine echoed with a single, arched brow.

He nodded. 

“What do you say, young master, might we provide this gentleman with a ride to the city?” questioned Rhys, checking his pocket watch—no doubt to calculate the potential setback and not to disguise chuckling at another of Valentine’s pointed stares. 

The stranger’s clammy hands tightened, praying that the man he believed to be a child would have a weak heart that would cave with sympathy and lead him to salvation.

In the case the man was in true danger, would Valentine regret leaving him to die here? How would he feel reading about his death in the paper a couple days later, if his body was discovered? In the case the man was a mad lunatic and sprayed Valentine’s blood across the carriage walls with a hidden blade the moment the doors were shut, would Valentine regret that?

“My lord,” Rhys urged him to respond.

“Very well,” Valentine flicked his hand and sighed.

Gratitude poured from the man’s mouth, he started for the open door before Rhys cleared his throat.

“I might suggest you take a seat beside me, sir,” the butler offered, and though the man didn’t seem as enthusiastic, he nonetheless nodded and said his blessings once more.

“That is not necessary,” Valentine said, “he may ride with me.”

Rhys’ displeasure creased his brow, but the stranger disappeared inside with Valentine without noticing.

As the door shut behind the man’s back, Valentine caught a glimpse of the tree line through the window. There stood a doe, half obscured by the thickening fog. Her ears stood tall, body unnaturally still where she stared them down. Though her eyes were as dark as the night sky—they were striking. At alert. Intelligent.

Almost human.

Valentine hadn’t realised he held her stare very long until she lowered her head and stalked into the mist. Muffled and warbled ramblings from the strange man gradually cleared up in his ringing ears.

“I assure you, master, your generosity will not be forgotten,” the man promised. His large heart still thundered. It did its best to keep him on his toes and out of danger. It had not yet realised he had been saved, and continued to put a quiver in his voice. 

Valentine hummed, knocking the grip of his cane against the roof twice. Their take off was much smoother compared to that knee-bruising stop. 

At least now he would be entertained.

“How did you end up being chased by a witch through the woods?” Valentine leaned back in his seat. His curiosity wasn't naive like a little boy's, and yet the man still chuckled apprehensively as if he had asked how children were made. 

“That is, well—it is something you wouldn't understand, young master. Nothing you need to worry yourself about,” the man answered. He instinctively reached for the handkerchief his hands itched for that wasn’t in his breast pocket, to dab the filth from his face. 

“Oh?” Valentine tilted his head to the side. He clasped his hands in his lap—a habit adopted early in life when enduring suffocating his own honesty. What good would it do him to go off on the man whose identity was unknown. Right now he might not strongly resemble a gentleman of society, but even gentlemen could find themselves disheveled and dressed in mother nature. 

He could set the record straight regarding his age… but it was a bit too late for that now. 

“Pray, entertain me won’t you? This carriage ride so far has been incredibly dull,” Valentine urged and tapped his shoe against the floor impatiently.

The man’s blond, dirty mustache curled when he shook his head and gruffly laughed. 

“I have a strong feeling your parents have their hands full with you,” said the stranger. Valentine’s well behaved, tiny smile, grew by a hair.

“I had gone on a walk with a lady. A promenade, if you will,” the man's dark eyes shifted to the bare, twisted silhouettes of trees passing by, “it was not meant to last this long into the evening. It seems we were truly enjoying each other's company.”

The stranger cleared the forced humor in his throat. His next words were spoken in a low tone, “We must have—well… we must have wandered into the witches territory.” 

Valentine chose to stay silent, or risk offense by pointedly questioning the man on the whereabouts of his lady companion, and why he was now alone. 

The man’s heavy tongue was weighed with hesitation. A long, hollow silence followed as he forcibly reflected on the terrifying encounter that led him here. The fresh horror that mutilated his memory was relived through his eyes. He took a slow breath and glanced at Valentine, with his thick eyebrows set straight. 

For the brief contact, Valentine managed to glimpse through the peepholes of those dark pupils and saw the sincere distress eating away at the man’s mind.

He had to stare into his own reflection in the window to regain his composure. Slumping over, his elbows propped upon his knees, such undignified posture would lead most to believe he hadn’t learned manners through the stinging strike of a cane.

“That wicked woman emerged from the shadows. She was running yet I could not hear her steps. One moment I was standing… the next I was on the ground with my head ringing. I caught a glimpse of her devilish horns and—” he spoke hoarsely as he recalled her appearance. No amount of struggling to steady his composure was believable, yet he still tried. A man, after all, was meant to be courageous. 

His faux-bravery was shattered to bits by a yelp when the carriage veered strongly to the side. Valentine's light weight was thrown more easily than the stranger’s. He was quick to right himself and turn his head towards outside in search of what drove Rhys to make such a decision.

“A doe,” Valentine said aloud, watching the deer in the road hop by the side of the carriage and onwards. 

“Mad creature,” the man across from him shook his pale face. 

“They are popular with the ladies, aren't they?” Valentine said. Though what he said wasn't a riddle to solve, it still left the stranger’s expression creasing in confusion. “Deer, especially doe and fawns. Ladies are more likely to scold a hunter for killing them than they are a buck.”

“Uh, yes, I suppose you're right,” the stranger nodded slowly. How did they get from regaling the tale of the witch to here? Valentine—the poor boy—must’ve been too spooked to listen to his story any longer. This conversation was for the better, the stranger had decided. 

“My grandmother liked them as well. She always told me that if I felt in danger, look around to see if you can find yourself a doe. If you do find one, do not fret. If you do not, then prepare yourself,” the shorter man continued. In spite of the stranger’s eagerness for a distraction, his face had not received the memo and remained growing with puzzlement.

“Your grandmother sounds like a smart woman,” was the only polite response. 

Valentine smiled softly. “She was known to be quite the batty woman.” Then, he lifted his cane. Tapping on the roof twice. 

They came to a gradual stop.

The man turned his head to the door when Rhys appeared. Valentine didn't bother, and found his thumb rubbing the cane's handle more interesting.

“Yes, my lord?” Rhys obediently asked. 

“This is as far as we can take this gentleman. Please assure he has an easy exit,” Valentine ordered as simply as if he were asking for lunch to be taken outside.

“Yes, my lord,” Rhys bowed his head. 

“Pardon? Here—but we're still in the woods! Surely you don't mean that,” began the nervous plea, chuckling with hope that this was a child’s joke. But his smile was strung over tense lips. If he could pull out all of his gentlemanly charm and pitiful eyes, surely the young man would take back his clearly wrong decision. That’s what Valentine was meant to do.

The right thing to do.

Valentine turned his nose away and boredly gazed out the window opposite of the open door. 

The stranger’s fidgety hands stilled, brows lowered into tense lines, and his breathing filtered through his gritted teeth behind his fallen smile. 

Rhys pulled the door open more and said, “the young master has spoken. I must implore you, sir, to step out of the-”

“Why you little shit!” Those clammy hands came for his thin, frill adorned throat. In the confined carriage, Valentine wasn't able to escape swiftly enough to save his collar from the man’s grasp.

Rhys intervention stopped it from getting worse for the younger man.

The butler’s constricting grip closed about his wrist. For a jarring moment, Valentine was dragged along with the man being hauled from the carriage. 

He stared down at the thrashing stranger on the ground, his hands braced him against the carriage walls. Valentine’s own breaths were loud to him, yet were a whisper compared to the stranger’s fuming, booming demands to be unhanded. 

The man struggled against Rhys’ quick and humane solution of shoving his nose into the cold dirt and pinning his raging fists behind his back as far as they could go.

“Are you hurt?” Rhys assessed the shorter man's condition with a sharp eye. There was no blood—only dirt dusting his shirt, and stormy eyes fixed upon his assailant. 

At first, Valentine merely shook his head. A harsh exhale was forced out of his sewn lips, frozen shut by icy adrenaline. 

“I'm fine,” Valentine declared. 

“Evil you are! You know I'm in danger you insolent brat! You are abandoning me here to die, do you understand that?” Screamed the man, spewing his spit into pebbles and dirt. 

The act was comparable to an animal lashing out of fear, but it was not the same.

An animal's instinct to thrash widely with its teeth and claws, scream as loud as it could, was a mask to survive. Humans did the same—masks of pleasantries, submission, politeness…

All to survive in society.

Valentine could now say he believed the man to be maskless twice their entire interaction. Once, in his fear of what he encountered in the woods, and presently.

“We have an engagement, Rhys. Assure he does not follow,” the younger man brushed his collar off. 

“Very well, my lord,” the butler readily agreed. 

The man was flung over and onto his back. When he decided to use that opportunity to fight back, a loud THWACK silenced his struggling. 

Valentine recoiled at the sight, his eyelids spared him—in tandem with his shoulder raising towards his face—from watching the body go limp.

Silence settled over the road, until one of the horses blew their nose and shook their head, jingling their bridle. 

“Is he dead?” Valentine asked quietly. 

“No, it was a single punch,” Rhys even pressed his fingers under his double chin after peeling off a leather glove. There was a pulse. “The blood lends it to appear more gruesome than it is.”

Valentine, whose vision still cowered, hadn't seen the blood—but he had heard the grim crack of the man's skull bashing the ground after the strike. When Valentine dared to peek, the only blood was streaming from his nose. Rhys was right, the amount of red was deceptive and suggested he sustained greater injury. 

Rhys stood, brushing the dirt from the knees and shins of his black trousers calmly.

“Are you fine with leaving him here for the witch?” Rhys wondered, the corner of his lips curled with dry sarcasm. 

Valentine scoffed and rolled his eyes, breaking off his unintentional stare down with the man incapable of staring back.

“There is no witch,” Valentine stated with sureness.