There's the snort of Gideon's wry amusement because yes she'd been having a fucking bad week leading up to meeting Lenore, and yes that was putting it mildly. And perhaps she's now clean and fed and relatively warm, but the days since they first beheld each other have hardly been a party either. The vampire is, in part, responsible for her current situation, something she knows right down to the bones of herself. She ought to push her hand away, or crush it, or turn around and bite-- but fuck if this last stretch of time hasn't been hard. Fuck if she isn't aching for even the meanest kind of comfort.

So she leans into the pass of Lenore's thumb against the contours of her cheek, like doing so will be enough to prolong the contact. But her captor keeps talking, and she feels the sudden lurch from stomach to throat like she’s standing on a dizzyingly high precipice with nowhere to go but down. Another week of this? Hold up here in this shitty little cage amongst guards who won't so much hurl an insult at her? The one person in this place (in her whole damn life) who’s bothered to show any interest in her is heading off into danger? It all feels like too much suddenly, starved and desperately ravenous for attention as Gideon has always been. It's still there in her, the hard twist of shame. She should be standing her ground, making good on her promises, giving Lenore and her ilk sweet fuck all. But. But.

She lets out a low breath, muscles gone tense, forehead resting against the chill bars of her prison. "I mean, you could leave me here. Sitting around, taking naps, bored out of my fucking skull. But like, I killed nearly fifty of your soldiers. Obviously they're seriously inept. I might be a bit of an unknown quantity, but it's gotta be better than relying on that rabble."

She peels her face away from the bars, and looks up at Lenore.

"Seriously. I'd be a fucking good bodyguard. I'll even behave and be all stoic and scary and shit, so no-one thinks about coming near you. You'd be astounded and amazed."