"Because ye feed him."
"Because he trusts me." She set the pestle down. The sound of the stone hitting the table was final. She looked at him then. Directly, the way she always looked at him, the way that had been unsettling him since a cliff ledge in the western glens. "There's a difference." Her gaze was unwavering, cutting through his defenses.
Fergus had found something to examine on the far shelf. He stood at the shelf with his hands behind his back, reading each label in turn. The man was trying very hard to appear invisible, his shoulders hunched.
"Ye treat this place like a battlefield," Catriona said. She leaned against the table, her arms folding over her chest.
"It is one," Anthony said. He felt his jaw tighten again. "Some of the time."
"Nae in here." She looked at the room. The low ceiling, the brazier warmth, the smell of the preparations she'd been working on since dawn. "In here it's a sickroom. Sickrooms run on different rules." The softness in her voice made the air feel thicker.
"Everythin' in these walls runs on my rules." He stepped closer, his heart thudding in his ears.
"Includin' the boy?" She said it evenly. No heat. Worse than heat. The question landed like a blow to his stomach.
His jaw tightened. He felt the familiar pressure behind his eyes. "The boy is why the rules exist."
"The boy is why I'm here," she said. "And I'm still here. Which should tell ye somethin' about my rules." She stepped toward him, the height difference between them feeling suddenly insignificant.
Fergus had gone very still beside the shelf. He didn't even seem to be breathing.
"Ye treat danger like inconvenience," Anthony stated, his voice matter of fact. He looked down at her, his pulse racing.
"I treat illness like somethin' that can be fixed." She held his gaze. Her eyes were a deep, dark emerald in the dim light. "Which it can. When people step aside and let it be."
"I warn ye when there is somethin' to be warned about." His voice dropped, becoming a low, private rumble.
"And I decide what the warnin's worth." She picked up the pestle. Her fingers brushed against the stone, a slow, deliberate movement. "I've been decidin' that since before I came here."
"And before ye came here," he declared, his voice growing louder, "ye were alone in the western glens with a fox and a satchel and no walls between ye and whatever found ye in the night."
“I trust healin'.” She looked at the mortar, her jaw set.
“I trust survival.” He met her gaze, the intensity between them almost physical.
The pestle stopped. The silence that followed was absolute.
The room went quiet. The only sound was the soft hiss of the peat in the brazier.
She looked at him. He looked at her. Fox opened one eye from the brazier corner. The fox watched them with a knowing, ancient stillness.
The quiet stretched long enough that Fergus shifted his weight on the flagstone, the small sound of a man regretting his position in a room and seeing no clean exit from it. The scrape of leather on stone was jarring.
"Better healin' than fleein'." Fergus said. The words were out before the man could stop them.
And stopped. Fergus froze, his face draining of color.
The words landed the way a stone landed in still water. The impact first, then the rings spreading outward, then the stillness that came after that was not the same stillness as before. Anthony felt the blood rush to his face, a heat that had nothing to do with the run.
Fergus's mouth closed. His chin came down slightly. His shoulders dropped by a fraction. The whole posture of a man who had heard his own words arrive in a room and understood, too late, the exact thing they'd hit and the exact person they'd hit it in front of. The man's hands trembled at his sides.
Anthony turned his head. The movement was slow, predatory.
He looked at Fergus. Fergus looked back at him with both hands loose at his sides and his jaw set. The particular expression he wore when he had done something he couldn't undo and had decided that holding still was the only remaining option. Fergus's eyes were wide with a sudden, sharp fear.
"I meant-" Fergus started. His voice cracked, the word trailing off into nothing.
"Leave us," Anthony commanded. The word was a low, dangerous snarl.
