Because Stephen is still at heart, forever and always, a doctor and a clinician, he can already feel his mind ticking over into assessing the symptoms she’d alluded to, and trying to understand them. It sounds like you need antidepressants and anxiety meds, part of him thinks, automatic and instinctive and ruminative. But that’s not exactly helpful when Thedas can’t manufacture controlled psychiatric medication, so —

“I thought it was just a temper,” he says. The parts he’s already familiar with: her whiplash tongue, her quick irritation, her Orlesian passion. But this sounds like something else, even as he’s trying to gauge the shape of it. The shattered pieces of the chair scattered around them as testament to it.

Leaving one hand still holding hers, he leans forward and lays his palm flat against her heart; as if a roundabout way of measuring her pulse, but really just an act of reassurance. (Still remembering that anchoring touch once upon a time: his hand against her spine.)

“That sickness. Those episodes. Can I ask more about that?” This wasn’t meant to be a physician’s consultation, but Stephen can’t help it; this is how he shows care. “Does it feel like a strangling panic? Pounding heart, dizziness and light-headedness, sweating, nausea, tingling in your hands? Anything like that?”