Larten thought a lot about Seba's warning. Despite the fact that he wasn't exactly doing well at charming her, he was stubborn by nature and didn't want to give up - and besides that, whenever he thought about just letting fate take its course, he remembered how much he was beginning to desire her. Whether it was that spark he reasoned had been between them all those years ago or just plain lust, it was almost impossible to keep his mind off of her.
Realizing that it wasn't going to be possible to forget about her, he decided it was time for more of a traditional approach. She might have been a vampire, but she was still a woman first - and in his experience no woman could resist the Quicksilver charm for long. He didn't imagine Arra was fond of any of the normal things he might have gifted to a human woman to trick them into bed, though – what use would she have for ill-gotten diamonds and gold, apart from to sell them herself?
It was for that reason that he found himself wandering outside the Mountain at dusk, just dark enough not to cause him any discomfort but light enough that he knew he wouldn't be disturbed. Seba had always loved nature, in all of its forms, and had imparted a lot of his knowledge about plants and flowers onto his assistants. If Seba liked nature, and he was as true a vampire as any, there was a chance Arra might too.
When he returned to the gate, hands pricked from digging through thorns and weeds for hours to rustle up a bouquet of questionable-looking flowers, Wester clutched his sides and dropped to his knees with laughter, which was almost enough to make him want to dump the whole lot of plants and start over. Proud as ever, though, Larten gave his pesky brother a swift kick in the ribs on his way past. He convinced himself that what Wester didn't know about women could probably fill several volumes, and set off in search of Arra, picking particularly nasty thorns out of the wild roses as he walked.
He left some of them on purpose because it seemed so appropriate. She was very much the rose with the thorns, the flower surrounded by the weeds, and rather than offend her he thought that comparison might make her laugh.
He eventually located her sparring with an opponent he didn't recognize in one of the Games Halls. She darted around him gracefully, trying to confuse and distract him with her speed. For a few minutes it looked like she had the beating of him, getting almost all of her hits in while he was unable to catch onto her. She was barely more than a girl if he looked at her long enough, and she was still a new enough vampire that she was limber and long-legged, slender and feminine rather than bulky and muscular like her more experienced opponent.
Larten didn't doubt that she was probably an awful lot stronger than she looked, but it was distinctly uncomfortable when her opponent finally bested her. That wasn't how she would have liked him to think about it, he realized, but watching her opponent ball up his huge fist and smash it into her jaw was wrong somehow. Maybe he had been living as a human too long.
Her opponent had not been malicious in his attempts to knock her down, simply clinical. Larten watched as he reached down to help her to her feet after Vanez called the match to an end, and noticed the way she rejected his hand and clambered to her feet herself with difficulty instead.
He had been so interested in watching her fight and the aftermath that he hadn't noticed until that moment the bizarre looks directed at him from the others who had gathered to watch her. Mika, who had been on his way forwards presumably to assist her, noticed him and smirked.
Larten expected some sort of disagreement between them then, but instead Mika's smirk remained firmly in place. Larten could feel himself blushing, and he knew Mika must have seen his intentions, but the black-garbed General simply shrugged and held out a hand to allow him to go first. There was a moment of confusion – perhaps he'd been wrong about Mika's intentions altogether and secretly he actually approved of Arra finding herself a mate? He looked back once to check, but Mika was still smirking infuriatingly.
It was only as he reached the ring and came to a stop next to her that he realized this might not have been an entirely appropriate time for courtship. Her nose was streaming blood and her jaw was already swelling. She turned around to look at him and she looked angry too – he ought to have guessed that she would be a bit of a sore loser.
It was too late to back out now, though, and so he held out the flowers for her with a grimace. He had a feeling, from the dark look in her eyes, that she was more likely to break his arms than kiss him. There was a long pause and Larten resisted the urge to close his eyes in fear of the oncoming storm.
"What is this?" she asked, sounding every bit as irritated as he'd hoped she wouldn't be. Her voice was barely above a growl, and now Mika's apparent display of good sportsmanship made perfect sense – he had been looking forward to her shooting him down for his foolishness.
"Flowers," he responded, holding them out to her again, trying to sound confident and sure of himself. "They are for you."
This was so humiliating. What had he expected? They didn't have much in the way of an audience, but even the few vampires around them were starting to laugh.
The silence continued, and her glare quickly became too much for him to deal with so he cleared his throat awkwardly to break the tension. "Good fight," he added pointlessly, unnecessary when she was still grimacing in pain.
She took his bunch of flowers without looking at them only to shove them back at him. It was as if for some reason she thought this was every bit as humiliating for her as it was for him, by the way she was blushing. He caught most of them as she pressed them back into his chest, but some of the petals fluttered to the floor and some caught on his shirt.
"No thank you," she spat viciously, looking practically outraged that he'd dared bring her a gift, before turning away from him to retrieve a bandage from Vanez. Though he reached out again to tap her on the shoulder to try and get her attention or assure her that he had only meant the gesture to be a kind one, she simply brushed him off and faced away again.
He supposed, thinking about it, that it might have been embarrassing for her too, in front of all of these older Generals that she wished to impress. He hadn't meant to humiliate her, but he could see how he had done. There was nothing he could say now in front of everyone else that would make her feel better, and before he could Mika – his large shoulders shaking as he chuckled – swept past him to offer to help her back to her cell.
