The door swung open. The torchlight from the corridor spilled in around him, casting his long shadow across the floorboards. Matilda exhaled, a long, shaky sound she hadn't decided to make.
"Matilda." His voice was low, vibrating with an immediate, sharp focus.
He crossed to the fireplace without a word. He crouched, his large hands moving with efficient speed to build the fire back into a roar that sent orange light dancing across the room. Then he pulled a taper from his cloak.
He moved through the room. Table first, then the shelf, then the stand by the door. Matilda watched the flames bloom under his hand. She felt the grey pull back, retreating into the corners as the warmth returned.
He set the taper down and crouched in front of her chair.
His eyes were level with hers. He looked at her with steady, unhurried attention, reading the tension in her jaw and the way her knuckles remained white.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice sounding thin to her own ears.
"Aye," he said, his gaze never wavering.
She pressed her lips together. "Ye dinnae have tae be irritating about it."
"I'm nae being irritating. I'm agreeing with ye." He stayed where he was, forearms resting on his knees. He looked perfectly at ease in the crouch, a predator at rest. "Though if ye were actually fine, ye'd have lit the candle yerself."
She glanced at the nearest candle, then back at the heat in his eyes. "I was managing."
"Aye." His voice was a low rasp. "Ye were daein’ an excellent job."
She opened her mouth to snap a response, but he stood and held out his hand. It wasn't a command. It was just an open palm, still and waiting in the amber light between them.
She looked at it.
She thought about two weeks of this man. The way he positioned his body between her and every door before he slept. The ventilation slit he’d cut in the canvas of the training tent. The candles in every corner of their room that were never allowed to burn out. He had never once asked her why.
She put her hand in his.
He drew her to her feet. Then, his arms came around her. One broad palm at her back, the other cradling the back of her head.
Matilda went still. Her body ran its familiar, frantic check. The scan for a threat, for a grip that meant a trap, for the suffocating shape of a cage.
It found none of it. Just warmth. And the unhurried steadiness of a man who had decided exactly where his hands were going to stay.
She leaned in.
Her forehead found the rough wool of his tunic. Her hands bunched into the fabric at his chest and held on. The tight, practiced management of her breathing finally fractured.
He stood like a statue and let her lean. His chin rested on the crown of her head. She could feel his pulse where her forehead pressed against his chest, steady. But there was a thrum beneath it, a lack of the ease he projected.
That small crack in his composure hit her harder than any word.
He wanted a great deal. She could feel it in the rigid stillness of his frame, in the specific, heavy quality of his restraint. He was holding himself back for her.
Something shifted in her chest, a door opening.
"When he took me," she said, her voice muffled against his chest. "The first night, he locked the door. There was nay light. None at all."
His hand at the back of her head didn't move, but she felt his fingers flex slightly against her hair.
"I was fifteen. I'd never been afraid of the dark before that. It was just dark." She paused. The words felt like stones in her throat. "After that, it was something else. Something that lived and knew where tae find me."
He said nothing, only breathed. Long, deliberate draws of air. He was working hard to stay still when every instinct told him to strike at something. She understood that need. She found, unexpectedly, that she didn't mind the violence of his protective instinct.
"I learned tae count," she said. "One, two, three. Sometimes tae ten. It helped. Nae always. But it helped."