I am merely going off my own observations, darling. [His smile is bright and sunny, betraying the eventual chill in his eyes when he opens them] Is it so wrong to make a hypothesis or two?

[He could tell she was old, perhaps nearly as much as the beast himself. That, perhaps, alleviated the anger he felt from having his power taken away. In a sense, Valerius was impressed by the witch]

Well said. And while “the greater good” is nothing that interests me, I’ll play along, just in case something that does comes up along the way.