The words came calmly, practiced in the way reassurance often was when repeated more than once.
Dorian did not move at first. The tension in his shoulders did not release immediately, but the worst of the panic began to ebb away, as though his body was only now catching up to the fact that what he had feared most had not occurred.
His hands still shook slightly as he gripped the doorframe, rain dripping from his sleeves onto the polished floor. Anne noticed. Her expression softened again, concern replacing confusion.
“You rode here in this weather?”
He released a short, unsteady breath that was almost a laugh but not quite. “Yes. I rode like hell.”
A pause followed, heavier now that the urgency had begun to settle.
Anne stepped closer, lowering the blanket slightly as if preparing to properly assess whether he was injured or simply frozen through with cold.
“You are soaked,” she noted.
“I noticed.”
“That cannot be good for your health.”
“I am relieved,” he said after a moment, though the words came out rougher than he had intended. “That shall help with any ailment that may arise.”
Anne held his gaze. For the first time since he had arrived, he relaxed, though his breathing still had not fully steadied. Relief washed over him in slow stages rather than all at once, as if his body was only just allowing itself to believe what his mind had already been told.
She was here, she was safe, and despite everything he had thought as he rode through the storm, he was not too late.
He stood there for a moment longer than he needed to, rain still dripping from his coat onto the floor, his breathing slowly settling.
Anne watched him carefully, as though still trying to decide whether she should be concerned or amused, her expression caught somewhere between confusion and softened understanding.
“This is all because of a letter?” she sighed.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of his answer seemed to unsettle her more than reassure her. She shifted slightly beneath the blanket, as if preparing to insist again that nothing about this warranted such urgency.
“I am not severely ill,” she reassured.
“I know,” he said.
Anne hesitated. “Then why?—”
Dorian did not let her finish. He looked at her properly, looked at her slightly pale face, at the way she stood there wrapped in warmth while he was still shaking from the cold and fear and everything he had refused to admit on the ride over.
The relief that had begun to settle in him did not fade, but something deeper rose beneath it, something far less controlled and far more dangerous.
Because it was not only fear that had driven him through the storm. It was the thought of losing her. The same hollow, corrosive dread he had buried once before and sworn never to feel again. Only this time, it had not stayed buried. It had grown roots.
Anne blinked as he stepped closer.
“Dorian?” she asked, quieter now.
He did not answer. Not because he had nothing to say, but because anything he might have said would have been a lie compared to what he was feeling too sharply to contain.
The space between them closed in a single breath. His hands came up first, not hesitating, not asking, simply reaching for her as though the decision had been made long before he consciously allowed it.
Anne barely had time to register the movement before he drew her fully into his arms. The blanket slipped slightly between them, forgotten.
“Dorian,” she gasped, her voice muffled against his chest.
