His gaze moved over James slowly. Forehead. Eyes. The set of his mouth.
He was reading something, and he was being thorough about it.
James, with the instincts of a child who had been studied this way his whole life and had developed opinions about it, reached across the blanket and put his hand on Anthony's knee.
Anthony looked down at it.
Small hand. Six years old. The same hand that had been the size of a walnut when Anthony had carried him out of the smoke wrapped against his chest. The last living person left of a family that had taken most of a year to finish dying.
He covered the boy's hand with his own. Once. Brief. The way a man touched something he was not going to let himself hold for too long. His fingers were steady, but the pressure was deliberate, a grounding touch.
Then James said, "Will ye pick me up?"
Anthony looked at him. His eyes searched the boy's face, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his brow.
"Catriona said I could sit by the window if someone held me," James said, with the serene confidence of a six-year-old. "The light's good today."
Catriona had said no such thing.
She held her expression and said nothing.
Ye wee menace.
She felt the smile she was hiding reach her eyes anyway.
Anthony looked at her over the top of James's head. His eyes narrowed a fraction.
He was reading her now, looking for the lie and finding only a shared purpose. The weight of his gaze landed on her the way it always did, more thorough than it had any right to be, more aware.
She returned it with complete composure.
Daenae look at his face when he finds it.
He looked back at James. He stood slowly, bent, and picked James up from the bed.
Not with the ease of long habit, not the way Catriona lifted him when she needed to reposition him for treatment, quick and matter-of-fact.
He lifted him the way you lifted something you were afraid of dropping. With both arms. He took his time, both hands steady. Like it was the only thing in the room worth getting right.
He pulled the boy close to his chest, his head bowing for a second over James's dark curls.
Daenae.
James settled against his chest and did not tense, did not check, did not hold any part of himself back. He simply settled. The boy's trust was absolute, and Catriona felt it hit her somewhere she hadn't thought to guard.
Anthony's eyes closed for a moment.
Just a moment. Just a brief, involuntary closing, and he said nothing. The lashes against his skin looked dark and tired, and he let out a long, shuddering breath.
Stop watchin' him.
Then they opened, and he looked at the window and crossed toward it. James was solid in his arms, Fox descending from the bed to follow at his heel as though the arrangement had been agreed upon in advance.
Catriona looked down at the mortar.
The herbs she'd been grinding were long since ready. She began grinding them again anyway, and the small rhythmic sound of it filled the room.
Outside, the pale winter light lay across the courtyard stones, and Anthony stood at the window with James in his arms and said nothing, and nothing needed to be said.
