He looked up. One heartbeat, maybe two. Long enough that if he had been looking for her, he would have found her. She felt a spark shoot down her spine, and she stepped back into the shadows of the corridor, her heart hammering. She waited for a moment.
When she looked back down, Anthony had crossed the courtyard and disappeared through the gate, but she was still looking at the place where he'd stood.
The particular cobblestone where the mud had splashed, where Eidith had laughed, where his face had done that thing it had no business doing in broad daylight where people could see it.She could still see the phantom of that softer expression in her mind's eye.
She heard him then, without looking.
The way she always heard him now. Footsteps she'd catalogued without meaning to. Stride length, weight, and pace. The difference between him crossing the hall on clan business and him walking the east wing corridor at three in the morning.
She had not decided to learn the difference. She simply had. Her ears strained for the sound, a reflex she no longer tried to fight.
"Dragons breathe fire when wounded, lass," Mairi said, her voice gentle. "It doesnae mean they daenae feel the burn." Mairi reached out, her hand resting briefly on Catriona's arm in a gesture of rare solemnity.
Catriona said nothing. She just watched the empty courtyard, the silence between them heavy and deep.
She stood at the window a moment longer than she needed to.
The morning light reached the courtyard for the first time in what felt like weeks. Thin, pale, winter-weak, but present. James had been angling toward the window since breakfast, tracking it, looking like a child who had a plan. His eyes were bright, his small hands clutching the edge of the blanket.
"Nay," Catriona said, without looking up from the mortar. She kept her voice firm, despite the way her chest warmed at his eagerness.
"I didnae say anythin'," James said. He looked at her with wide, innocent eyes, his mouth twitching.
"Ye were about to ask if ye could go outside."
A pause. "I was goin' to ask if the window could be opened." He gave a small, hopeful shrug.
"That's the same thing with fewer steps."
James subsided against his pillows. His eyes went to the ceiling. His mouth pressed flat. He let out a long, dramatic sigh that filled the quiet room. He was not done, she could tell. He was just regrouping.
Across the room, Fox completed his circuit of the perimeter and sat down beside the hearth.
"He's done that four times," James said. His gaze was fixed on the animal, fascination replacing his boredom.
"He's countin' exits."
"There's only one door."
"He's being thorough."
James watched Fox with the focused attention he brought to everything he considered worth understanding.
His color was better today. The warmth of genuine blood under the skin rather than the feverish flush she'd been fighting since the first week.
His breathing, from across the room, was audible in the way breathing was supposed to be. Background, unremarkable, not a thing that required monitoring. Catriona listened to the steady rhythm, a sense of relief washing over her.
She noted it without letting herself feel it yet.
Not yet. Another week. Then feel it. She kept her hands busy, the grinding of the herbs a familiar comfort.
"Can I try?" James said.
She looked up. The question was a soft, urgent thing in the air.
He was looking at Fox and said nothing for a moment. His small body was tense with concentration.
"He'll come to ye when he's ready," she said. "Daenae reach for him."
