The verbal slap is enough like something Van would say when he means to wound that it robs Myr of breath a moment. His grip on his staff tightens until his knuckles are white; startled, the curious bumblebee takes wing again to rejoin its sisters in foraging.

He'd been trying to be polite, trying to find some way to salvage this conversation he'd been trying to avoid, and--this. This is what he's gotten instead.

"I'd like it much better if I could see it, serah," he says, voice low and soft and oh-so-perfectly controlled. "I'd like it much better knowing my home and family weren't destroyed to purchase that freedom. Thank you," the words are edged, "for what you did to save the mages of Kirkwall, but I thank you also that you don't rub my face in it."