He had been wrong in his assumption that she would not try to change his mind about the truth of it. The truth of who he is and who he’s always been.
It is a kindness he does not deserve but he does not immediately have the heart to tell her so. Instead, he lets himself be who he is for a moment. Just the space of a breath. The amount of time it takes for her touch to ignite something feral in him. The thing that had fueled him for so long that it had been a wonder that he’d been able to force it into dormancy at all.
It is the bastard heart and all its want that begins to stir in his chest. But he swallows it down before it can swell something dangerous. Buries it as it should be buried. Because he is happy -- or at least as close to it as he’ll ever get -- and that is the thing that matters. He cannot let the kindness of a beautiful stranger be enough to sway him, not anymore.
So, he smiles something mournful but he does not shake his head in disagreement because he cannot bear to unseat the thorns again. It is a plague that has taken the fight out of him, the blood and the golden tears and the puddles that pool at his feet. Not that there had ever been much to begin with, but it is gone now and he cannot remember the last time he saw it. Down in that cave, perhaps. When he’d been forced to do something he’d never thought himself capable of.
“That’s very kind of you, Aislyn,” he murmurs, “although, I don’t know if I agree.” There is some dark humor in this, the most he can manage with all the sickness in his heart. He wonders if her opinion would change were he to tell her all of the reasons he should never be considered a hero but cannot find it in himself to test the theory. For the moment, it feels good to know that there is someone out in the world who thinks him worth something. Even if they’re wrong.