He turned the horse toward the glen. The fox fell into a trot alongside without being called, keeping perfect pace as if this were entirely ordinary.
She was warm.
That was the first thing, an inconvenient fact his body registered before his mind could dismiss it.
The movement of the horse pressed her back against his chest at every stride, and she didn't lean away from it the way he expected. She held herself straight, rigid with fury, which somehow made it worse.
He was aware of her spine. Of the exact place where her shoulder met his arm. Of the way she breathed. Measured, controlled, not giving him the satisfaction of discomfort.
He fixed his eyes on the tree line.
She twisted in the saddle to look up at him. The fury hadn't dimmed, but underneath it something assessed and calculated and refused, entirely, to be afraid of him.
"If he dies," she said, voice level, "because ye dragged me here like cattle, Laird, the blame is yers."
He didn't slow. Didn't look down.
"Then see that he lives."
She faced forward. A beat of silence.
Then, quieter, but no less sharp: "What is his name?"
Anthony glanced down at her. "James."
"And ye say he has been like this since he was an infant?"
"Aye."
She went still, and he learnt it was the way she goes still when she's thinking, processing, and filing things.
The fury hadn't left her face but something else had joined it now, something that had nothing to do with him.
“So what is wrong?”
“Cough. A wild one.”
"What brings it on? Cold air? Exertion?"
"Both. Dust. Sometimes nothin' at all."
She absorbed that. "Fever with it?"
"Recurrin'. All his life."
Her mouth pressed into a line. She turned forward and said nothing more. But her posture had shifted, fractionally, barely, and Anthony caught it.
The fight was still there. But he could see she was already thinking about the boy.
He kept his eyes on the path ahead and said nothing more.
The falls faded behind them. The wind pushed through the glen cold and steady and he thought about one thing only: James in the east wing, breathing thin through another night, and the woman currently bound to his saddle who Annabeth had said could fix what no one else had managed.
He'd found her. He'd brought her.
The rest was hers to carry.
He told himself that was all he felt, relief. The clean, functional relief of a problem moving toward its solution.
