At this hour, half-lit by a single corridor torch and the barely grey dawn through the window behind her, he was something else.
Broad shoulders filling the frame, already dressed, already armed, not a trace of sleep on him, as though the man simply didn't require it.
She was aware, in some distant and inconvenient part of her, that she had not yet combed her hair.
He took in the knife, the defensive stance, the fact that she'd been sleeping in her clothes. He said nothing about any of it.
"Come," he ordered.
She stared at him. Outside the narrow window, the sky was barely grey, the kind of early that felt like the night hadn't finished yet. "Now?"
"The boy wakes early. His breathin' is worst in the mornin'." He turned from the doorway. "Come."
She put the knife away, smoothed her hair back with both hands, slung her satchel over her shoulder, and followed him.
The keep was different at this hour.
The great hall was empty, the torches burned low, the silence had a texture to it. Not the silence of absence but of held breath, of a household not yet fully awake but already listening. Herboots on the stone floor sounded too loud. She shortened her stride without thinking.
Peat smoke hung in the air, warm and old and layered over something underneath, the cold of deep stone that no fire entirely reached.
She'd been in great houses before, visiting the sick of wealthy men who sent for her when their own physicians failed. They'd all had this quality in common.
The warmth was on the surface. The cold was structural.
Then the whispers started.
Not loud. Not meant to reach her, or meant to reach her exactly, which amounted to the same thing.
They came from doorways, from the gap between two men carrying timber across the far end of the corridor, from a pair of women who pressed back against the wall as she and Anthony passed.
"The Dragon's brought her himself."
She slowed. Just slightly. Enough to catch the answer from somewhere behind.
"Aye. Dragon of McArthur doesnae ride for nothin'."
She let her eyes slide sideways toward Anthony.
He walked as if he heard nothing, eyes forward, pace unchanged, the corridor clearing ahead of him the way water cleared a stone dropped into it.
Immediate, instinctive, nobody quite able to explain why they'd moved.
She studied him openly now.
She hadn't let herself do it properly before. On horseback, there was too much else to manage, and in the courtyard, there had been too many people watching her watch him. But here, in the low torchlight, with his back half-turned and his attention on the corridor ahead, she looked.
Broad through the shoulder, the back of his neck weathered, the muscle across his upper back moving visibly beneath his shirt with every stride.
Decisive in how he moved, each step placed like a statement. And along the left side of his jaw, running from beneath his ear and disappearing beneath his collar, was a scar. Red-silver. Old enough to have settled but not old enough to fade entirely.
She'd seen burn scars before. She knew what made them.
"The Dragon's brought her."
She looked forward again.
"Dragon," she said. Quiet. Just loud enough to reach him and no further.
