"Ye did," she said.
Her voice came out wrong. She cleared her throat. She had to fight to keep it steady.
"Ye still need the treatment twice daily," she said, "and ye're nae runnin' anywhere until I say so, and if ye try to go down the stairs alone I will ken about it before ye reach the second step." She tried to sound stern, but her eyes were wet.
"How?" James said, fascinated.
"Fox tells me everythin'."
James looked at Fox. Fox sat down and looked at the ceiling with sublime indifference.
"He wouldnae," James said. A small, conspiratorial giggle escaped him.
"Try me," she said.
The servants were still making noise behind her.
She could hear Mairi's voice among them now, which meant the keep would know within twenty minutes, which meant Eidith would know within ten, which meant it was already done. She felt a sense of profound accomplishment, a weight lifting from her shoulders.
She stood. Turned.
Anthony stood in the doorway.
She didn't know how long he'd been there. He was still. The particular stillness he had when he was holding something still. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his knuckles stark white.
His eyes were on James, who had turned to show him the evidence of the achievement and was demonstrating his balance by standing without touching anything.
She watched Anthony look at the boy. There was a look on his face she couldn't describe—a mixture of terror, relief, and a love so deep it seemed to wound him.
His jaw shifted once. His hand, at his side, closed briefly and opened. A muscle jumping in his cheek was the only sign of the storm within.
Daenae look at his face.
Look at James. Look at Fox. Look at the window. Anywhere else.
She looked at his face.
And what she saw there, raw, unguarded, present in the way it was never present. The six years of that chair in the dark and the footsteps in the corridor. The hand beside the blanket that never claimed the comfort of touching. The sheer intensity of his emotion was overwhelming, and she felt her own breath hitch in response. All of it arriving at once in two seconds on the face of a man who had no idea she was watching.
She looked away.
She looked at the window. At the pale winter light on the courtyard stones. At the frost still on the north-facing wall. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, a frantic, hollow sound.
He's better.
The thought was clean. Simple. The thing she had been working toward since the first morning she'd pressed two fingers to the inside of James's wrist and counted.
He's better.
And then, arriving immediately after, quiet and cold and precise as a blade finding the gap in armor.
He's better.
She would leave.
I will leave soon.
The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water, draining the warmth from her limbs.
