Stone Circle With his gun, with his head held high

He laughed, a singular, nervous laugh, when Greyback said he would remember his name. That should have been reassuring, only, with the Patriarch's chilling look of stone, the words hit Kaito more like some ominous utterance than anything of comfort. Kaito's ears splayed to the side, his uncertainty still quite evident on his face.

The only thing that shook him was what Arlette said in what he assumed was an effort to appease Greyback, but Kaito only turned his head to her with a lift of his brows. She had definitely not informed him - he was going to what? A flutter of both unease and excitement filled his stomach like some horde of moths, and when he turned his head in subtle question of what she was doing, he also flinched with a smile that in small part reflected the look on her face.

Greyback's words pulled him forward again.

The Patriarch might never know how his words stung the boy to his core, and made something rise in him he had never much felt before. It was a peculiar feeling, unpleasant, yet not wholly unwelcome, one which simmered in his chest like a swath of kindling first introduced to fire. He did not know that this feeling is what had driven his father for the first years of his life, through his exile, and through Duskfire, until the world and its sorrows had tempered him down, and his Icarus wings had touched the sun, and burned him out into the raging sea. Kaito had never touched the sun. He had hardly touched the sea, but in this moment he felt his wings unfurling.

Did Greyback think there was some reason to assume Arlette was in danger with him?

Nerves still held his face, but he procured a smile for Greyback that stretched a bit further than before, and his eyes glinted with that streak that had touched his father before him. "Don't worry, Mister Greyback. If your daughter's anything like my sisters, she'll hold her own with or without a smart boy to help her."

He allowed Arlette to have the final word, torn between dying inside or feeling elated as his thoughts skipped like a broken track over what he had just said to the Patriarch. Somehow quipping back didn't quite seem like the best way to win his favour...

Once Greyback was out of range, Kaito turned to his friend, and his smile dropped to a look of utter dishevelment. "That's your dad?!" he gawked under his breath, and he glanced over his shoulder before he continued, "Does he always do, you know... that to new people?" his voice cracked with his final word, and pressed through another laugh, the natural extension of his nerves. "Or was it, was that not normal? Frick! He looked like he wanted to kill me!"