He doesn’t understand her softness.
He could live to be a hundred and he probably would never understand the kind of softness that still holds on in the face of cruelty. It is beyond his own scope of understanding and frustration flares at him, something dark that twists in his belly when he realizes that he is up against something he can’t control.
With a snap, all of his flames go out, leaving him still peculiar looking, but cooling. His face is hard as he looks at her, lips slowly settling down, the handsome, stern lines of his features unreadable.
“Fine,” he finally says, the word tossed out almost callously.
Another step toward her, although this time he doesn’t reach for flames first. This time he is just a boy and she is just a girl and he feels something shift in his stomach at the realization.
“But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She has no way of knowing that he’s already claimed her in his head. That she pushed and he finally relented, but not in the way she maybe intended. Cleave isn’t the time to have friends, but he is the type to have possessions—to hoard the things that he believes are his own. She pushed for friendship, but he doesn’t have the ability to soften for something like that so he diverts to what he can understand.
“Where do you live?” he asks suddenly, because now that she is his, these are the kind of things that matter. These are the kind of things that he needs to approve, although he doesn’t say it outright.
After all, he had warned her.
@[Astarielle]