The knight turns to look at her, finally, and there's just as much anger in his face as the other Kevin carries. On the one hand, of course she's right -- he's got a shitty temper, and he's not really any better at dealing with it than he ever has been. Part of the reason he'd kept struggling was simply that he'd been pitching a tantrum. But there's a difference between small bursts of anger, tiny fits that don't last, and the cold, calculating decision his elders made to launch themselves into a crazed, murderous fairy tale.

"Don't make up bullshit scenarios to try and teach me a lesson," he snaps. "I know exactly what he's lost, and I also know exactly what he's destroyed. You know, nobody told me what I am? I was with people who knew and didn't say a word about it for a year, and I found out what's supposed to happen to me when a Kevin who still had his Chain murdered Lady Shelly. Her Chain went for help, but I didn't get there in time to stop him. That whole time everyone was probably wondering if I was out on the streets murdering people every night, but they were too polite to mention it, I guess. Instead I got to see one of the people who loves me most lying dead at my own feet while the Break who also got there too late screamed at me about how stupid I am."

He laughs a little, bitterly, and turns away.

"It was your brother I ran to that night. That was when he took me in. And if he hadn't talked me through it and made me think I was something worth protecting, that maybe I could be someone who didn't follow in their footsteps, I'd have given up then. So yes, I struggled, because for all I knew I could get out of your damned chains. And don't you dare compare a fifteen second struggle to win a spar to murdering a hundred people one by one because a magical chunk of armor appeared out of the sky and said it would work."

And yet, despite the tenseness in him -- despite the fact that he clearly wants to get up and pace, just as the other one is -- he doesn't get up to leave.