"I know I do not have to protect you - you are more than capable."

And he doesn't say that merely because he now knows (but did he already, somehow?) that beneath this form of her soul, there lurks a dragon so powerful, so vicious, that it would cause cities to quake and crumble with merely a thought from her mind and a slash of her talons?

Skellig knows she can defend herself.
But there are just some things that a man does, for his lover.