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He simply bent down, picked up my rucksack as though it weighed nothing, slung it over one shoulder, and started climbing.

For a second, I stood there with my mouth open.

Then I followed him.

He took the stairs slowly. At first I assumed that was because they were narrow and uneven, circling upward through the tower in tight turns. After the first few landings, though, I realized he was slowing down for me.

Every thirty steps or so, when my breathing became loud enough to echo off the stone, he stopped beside one of the narrow arrow-slit windows and looked out toward the sea. He never glanced back at me or asked whether I needed a break. He simply waited until my breathing settled and then started climbing again.

He wasn’t even slightly winded.

It took me until the fourth landing to understand what he was doing. He was giving me a reason to stop without making me admit that I needed one. He noticed when I struggled and quietly made space for it. He never asked me to explain myself, and he never made me feel as though I needed to apologize for slowing him down.

Somewhere far below us, a door slammed.

The sound cracked through the stairwell, and I flinched.

The man in front of me stopped so suddenly that I nearly walked into him.

Every muscle in his back tightened at once. His hand closed around the strap of my rucksack hard enough to make the old canvas creak, and for one second he seemed completely removed from the staircase and from me.

Then his fingers loosened.

He started climbing again without saying anything.

I didn’t know what had happened to him, but I knew what I had seen. The sound had frightened him, and not in the ordinary way that a sudden noise made someone jump. I had never seen fear look like that in someone so physically imposing.

As we climbed, I noticed that he smelled faintly of rain, pine needles, and woodsmoke.

Maybe I only noticed because I was walking so close behind him. Maybe it was because he had stopped every time I needed him to and never once made me ask.

After the courtyard, I found myself wanting to be near something steady.

The feeling embarrassed me almost immediately.

I had the absurd urge to lean forward and rest my forehead against the space between his shoulder blades, just for a second. I wanted to know whether he was as warm as he looked, and then my thoughts went somewhere considerably more dangerous, because I started wondering what it would feel like if he turned around and put those enormous arms around me.

I did neither of those things.

I kept my eyes on the steps, kept my hands to myself, and tried to ignore the heat spreading across my face.

“Mind this step,” he said when we were almost at the top.

It was the first thing he had said since telling me how many stairs there were.

The ninth step from the top was cracked straight through, with one edge of the stone slightly raised. I stepped over it carefully.

The staircase ended at a small round landing with a single wooden door.

He opened it and ducked through, turning his shoulders sideways to fit past the frame. He moved carefully, with the practiced awareness of someone who was used to being larger than the spaces around him.

He carried my rucksack inside and set it gently on the bare wooden floor.

Then he stepped back onto the landing.

“Thank you,” I said. “Seriously. You didn’t have to do that.” I should have stopped there. Instead, because the courtyard was still lodged firmly in the center of my thoughts, I added, “You know you don’t have to be nice to me. Everyone saw what happened. I’m the Stray now. You might ruin your reputation.”

He frowned slightly and actually seemed to consider the possibility.