Zugos stood by her side, for once, keeping his mouth shut while observing her expressions. Didn’t seem like she was particular happy about the letter though. Quite the opposite. Just as soon as he began to wondering about the content of the mysterious letter, Ezra suddenly looked up and offered it to him. He raised his eyebrow, but took it from her in the end. If he were to put his life on the line for this, at least he wanted to be better informed. “If that is your wish…”- He opened the letter and read through it quickly, his expression blank. There wasn’t much he could get out of the strange letter, just the usual ‘return alone or I kill your parents’. However, he found an unsettling twist at the end. The witch seemed to know about him and was quite aware of the fact that the princess was here for his help. Maybe she wasn’t exaggerating about the ‘I have eyes everywhere’ thing. He would have to make sure all the wards were in top conditions later. He didn’t like the thought of having a witch spying on him. 

 “Well, princess Ezra”- He said casually, trying to clear away the heavy tension.-“Afraid you will have to decide here and now though… You can take the risk and I will follow as you return to the castle, without the witch knowing, of course. Or you can choose not to take that risk and do what she said.”- Still eyeing her carefully, Zugos crumbled the letter in his hand, watched as the smooth paper turned into ashes, then shattered when he whispered the spell. He wasn’t lying to her though. There weren’t many ways to hide from a witch’s scrying, fortunately, he knew one of them. It just basically involved a lot of energy and some specially modified cloaking spells.