She walked to the wall on the far side of the yard and put her back against the stone and tipped her head up. The rough granite bit into her shoulders through her shawl.
Rain hit her face. Her eyes closed. She drank in the cold, letting it numb the frantic energy of the morning.
Her hands were shaking. She watched them, the fingers twitching with a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
She had known that would happen. She always knew, in the room, that the shaking was waiting, that it arrived after. That the body held it in reserve until the work was done and then presented the bill. The reaction was a violent, physical release.
She had learned not to be frightened of it. It was not fear. It was the body spending what it had kept back.
She let it spend.
Her chest rose and fell. The air was sweet with the scent of wet earth and ancient rock.
The rain came down steady and cold on the courtyard stones, on the walls, and on the frost that was still on the north-facing surfaces. The smell of it was clean and cold and outside and she pressed the back of her head against the stone and breathed it in. The world felt washed clean, for a single, fleeting moment.
He's all right. He's sleepin'. He's all right.
The door opened. The sound of the latch was a sharp crack in the rain.
She didn't need to look. She felt the change in the air before he even spoke.
"Ye said he was gettin' better." Anthony's voice was harsh, the roughness of a man who had been holding something in a clenched fist for forty minutes and had not decided what to do with it yet. He sounded like he was falling apart and fighting it with every word.
He crossed the yard and stopped two feet from her. He loomed over her, a dark shadow in the mist.
Rain darkened his shoulders. He hadn't taken a cloak. The water ran in rivulets down his face, caught in the ridges of his scar.
"He is gettin' better," she said. She kept her head against the wall, eyes open, rain on her face. "This is what better looks like sometimes. The body tries harder before it can do less. The lungs strengthen, and then they test the strength." She met his gaze, her own eyes steady and unblinking.
"Ye push too hard." He stepped closer, his shadow falling over her.
She looked at him then. She felt a flare of defensive pride rise in her chest.
"I push exactly as hard as the treatment requires," she said. "Nay harder."
His jaw tightened. "He couldnae breathe." The words were a low, desperate snarl.
"He can now."
"Because of ye." He said it like an accusation and a statement of fact at the same time. "Because ye were there. What if ye hadnae been there?" The vulnerability in his voice was a raw, bleeding thing.
"I was there."
"What if something worse happened?" He was shaking now, a fine, violent tremor she could see in his hands.
"Anthony." She held his gaze through the rain. "I was there." She reached out, her fingers hovering in the cold air between them.
He looked at her. The rain came down between them and on both of them. His jaw was tight, and his hands were at his sides. He was wet through the shoulders now and had not moved back. The intensity of the silence was deafening.
"Ye've turned this house upside down," he said. Quieter. The harshness still in it, but different now, the roughness of something that didn't know what it wanted to be. His eyes were dark with a desperate, new hunger.
"Aye," she said. "And ye didnae hate it." She felt her heart give a heavy, answering thrum.
Something moved in his face. The mask finally broke.
He kissed her.
Not gentle. Not careful. His hands came up. One to her jaw, one to the wall beside her head. The impact was a collision of pure, concentrated need.
