Even getting to the beach had been an experience to remember: the bright, feathery animal that had wound through the sky (like something from The Never-Ending Story, not that Kaz would know that). He'd been dropped off politely, but was too dizzy to even stand until his daemon found him.

"It was difficult to process," he agrees grimly, tamping down the soft internal wash of anger that threatens to rise like a blood tide. At least that gives him a reason to look icy, rather than simply as a response to her sunniness. So long as she isn't actively flirting, though, he doesn't mind. And even then — well, it's easier to bear if he can turn his own reciprocal flare of interest off. Nina's flirtation had never mattered because it never made him want anything, never felt dangerous.

Anyway. It's possible he's left an inordinately lengthy lapse in the conversation, just glittering obsidian-chip eyes, but he did take his hand back, and he does speak again. "I thought we were here to save the world. This," a loose palm up gesture, "Seems to me like a waste of time."