Serious in turn, Matthias nods. He'd looked up as she'd begun her response, which means his face is open to her: grave, anxious, interested, eager to hear what it is she's got to say. In his head, he's already picking apart and filing away everything that she said, committing the words to hard truths just as sure as if he were chiseling them into rock.

"Right. All right. Only it was that sort, the-- controlling sort, if it was that or get killed." For all that it happened in a dream, only a dream, he's more or less telling on himself, but Knight-Enchanter Voss is someone that he trusts. The fact that she'd answered, genuinely, has only made that trust stronger. "You'd let yourself get killed? Or let someone else get killed?"

"Right, yeah. But if it was like, you were across the room, and you were Silenced. And someone was going to be killed. And you couldn't get there to like, physically stop it from happening, or anything, but you could do that and you could stop it, so--then, if you did."

Well. Matthias frowns, too, and looks back down at the ground. He drags his fingers back the other way, recreating the furrows in the frost that he'd drawn.

"Oh. Yeah. Okay."

Matthias presses his fingertips onto the frozen ground, committing some of his weight to them. The pressure whitens his knuckles; turns his fingertips red. He lets out a breath.

"It was in the dream," he says without looking at her. "That's all." He keeps his head down, his voice pitched low, keeping this between them. Even this is a major confession. If they were in a Circle, Matthias' admission would spell serious trouble. Even outside a Circle, he knows he's as good as stepping on a glyph to say it aloud. I dreamed I did blood magic, the worst sort. But he has to say it.

"I can't stop thinking about it. If I did it, then, I might do it. It was easy. I just--pulled on him and he stopped. He was this Vint. It was a dream, and I knew it was a dream, which-- I dunno if that's better, or if it's worse. I did think someone might get killed. Laura. My girlfriend. Sorry," and he leans back, takes the pressure off his finger tips, scrubs one hand over his face. "You didn't sign up for this, I know, I just don't-- I don't know."

"Yeah."

Just a dream, is what Matthias is hanging on to. He drops his gaze back to the dirt, pushes his fingertips against it again.

"I don't want anything to cock that up. The spirit blade, I mean. That's-- that's important, to me. I mean, so's living a long time, if I can manage it. D'you think everyone thinks about this? Every mage, I mean. In the Circle I remember them saying never to do it, and I still think that's right, if you can manage it. If is the word, innit. 'Cause then you hear about, y'know--things happening. Times when the choice wasn't easy. That's what I think about. All the time."