bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
She is amusing and he therefore does not mind the time he invests into the interaction.
She is a puzzle, with her fear and her courage, the way that she ran but laughed as she did it. At her confession, his mouth quirked with amusement, but no laugh escaped his mouth. He was terrifying, but perhaps not in the way that she expected, perhaps not in the way many people expected. Magic flowed through his veins—powerful magic, as only magic powered by blood can be—but he had a limit. He had places he could not go, regardless of where his morale barometer stood on the matter.
For example, he couldn’t kill her. Even if he wanted to, death was too much of a weakness for him for it to ever be worth it. It was painful enough when he felt someone else dying, but it was debilitating when the death came from his own powers. So no, she didn’t need to fear death from him.
But there were plenty of other ways to inflict terror.
At her next question, his grin widened. “Plenty of things,” he admits. “Like make sure you don’t run away,” he draws up an invisible barrier around the pair, making sure she couldn’t escape from his immediate vicinity. She wouldn't be able to see it, but she would certainly be able to feel it.
He then blankets the area in darkness, muting the moon and starlight.
A cold wind whips through and around them, blowing up the dirt and the leaves so that they spin around them. His dark eyes glitter as the wind whistles, his voice cutting through it as if the noise didn’t exist at all. “Why don’t we start with you telling me what exactly you’re running from?”
He could get the answer himself, of course, but it was better to hear it straight from her.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
