Whatever he is expecting in that moment, it isn't that she becomes angry with him that he just states why he isn't certain about stripping away the dangerous man he's been. Even if he ignores his fear in doing so, for his own reasons, he certainly hadn't said that.

"I never insinuated that," he snaps back, and yet he doesn't move. Not in the least as she storms up to him. Not that he doesn't know how dangerous that fury from her is, but because he doesn't know how to back down. It isn't in him, no matter who he is seen as by others.

"No one is asking you to like it. No one is asking you to want to be at war. I didn't put you here though, or put you in that position and I won't be punished for it because I worry for you and Jesper in this place. Or that I will do whatever I have to, be whoever is required, to do so."

He speaks in a soft, steady voice, his gaze hard as steel as it meets her own.

"I don't want you to live it. Not any of it. I chose my path a long time ago, Inej. You were forced on yours. If this place lets you leave that path, then good."

Ignoring that he'd had little choice in it as well, but claiming that as he always had. The boy he had been died and was shoved on a barge of the dead. The man he is was born in the Barrel, from it's dirt and grime and greed and pain. He's not sure he could be someone else, whereas Inej and Jesper have always been others who adopted the shroud of the place. They were good at it, some of the best, but it wasn't their blood like it was his.

And he knows that, knows what separates him and why he isn't sure he can be who they want him to be. Worse, that they might need him to be someone he can't.

But he can't admit those fears, isn't sure how to open up like that and so when it becomes this, he isn't surprised.