Fergus left. The door pulled closed behind him with a click that sat in the air after it. The sound of the latch was like the snap of a trap.
The herb room was small at the best of times. Worktable, shelves, brazier, window. Two people and whatever Fergus's words had just put in the room with them made it considerably smaller. The air felt thin, the scent of lavender and rot suddenly overwhelming.
Catriona set the pestle down. She looked at the table. Then at him. Her eyes were searching his face, looking for the wound.
"Who fled?" she said. Her voice was quiet, a soft probe into a tender place. "I thought the previous healer passed away."
"She did." His voice was flat, a wall of stone.
"Then who fled?" She stepped closer, her presence a warm, persistent pressure.
"That is none of yer concern." He turned away, his heart hammering against his ribs.
She was quiet. He could hear the rhythmic rise and fall of her breath.
He watched her file it. The deflection, the tone, the door he'd shut before she'd finished the question. He watched her jaw set slightly, and her hands flatten on the edge of the table. The tension in her fingers was visible, her knuckles white.
"What happened to James's parents?" She kept her voice level. "Iona said the fire. Donal said the smoke took them. The womanin the market couldnae believe I didnae ken the tale, livin' here as I do." She took a step toward him, her gaze never wavering.
She folded her arms. Not a challenge, a steadying, the way she steadied herself before delivering difficult information to a patient. He saw her shoulders rise with a deep, bracing breath.
"Everyone in this valley handles that story like it's made of somethin' that breaks. And nobody will say it plain." Her voice was a low, steady demand.
He looked at the window. The small grey square of sky above the inner courtyard. Frost on the sill. The thread of cold air coming through the two-finger gap. He watched the frost patterns, his mind a chaotic whirl of smoke and memory.
A muscle moved in his jaw. Once. He felt the old, familiar pain flare in his chest.
"Anthony," she said. It was a whisper, a plea.
"Enough." Quiet. Level. The word carrying under it not anger, something below anger, something with more weight and more room in it than anger had. He felt the weight of the years pressing down on him, a heavy, cold tide.
She looked at him. He looked at the window. Fox in the corner had both eyes open now, ears up, watching them both. The fox's amber gaze was a silent witness to the cracking of the walls.
"James deserves to understand the full story of how he came to be here," she said. She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from his arm. "And I cannae treat what I daenae understand. That's the first rule of healin', ye cannae fix what ye willnae look at."
"Ye are treatin' it," he said. "Ye have been treatin' it. Ye daenae need the history." He turned back to her, his eyes blazing with a desperate, defensive fire.
"I always need the history." She held her ground, two feet of cold flagstone between them, her eyes on his face, steady. "Ye cannae understand the illness without understandin' everything that came before it. The whole body. The whole life." She didn't flinch from the heat in his gaze.
"The history…" He stopped. The word died in his throat, a dry, choked thing.
She waited. The silence was a physical pressure, pushing the air from his lungs.
The brazier shifted. A small collapse of peat, a brief brightening of the flame, then lower than before. The light flickered across his face, revealing the depth of the exhaustion etched there.
“Anthony.” She said his name like a prayer.
"ENOUGH." The roar tore from his throat before he could stop it.
It came out harder than he would have wanted. The word filled the room and bounced off the stone and settled. The echo of it was immediate and visible in her. He watched her flinch, her shoulders tensing, but she didn't move back.
Chin up, shoulders back, hands flat on the table edge, and her eyes on his face without flinching, without stepping back, without giving him the retreat he had not asked for and did not deserve. He saw the flicker of pain in her eyes, and it gutted him.
He looked at the window. His breath was coming in short, shallow gasps.
His hands at his sides were still. His jaw was tight. The frost on the windowsill had not moved. He felt the cold from the stone floor seeping into his boots.
The room held it. The stillness was absolute.
