But Targesh found he could not stop watching.
She had recovered. That was not unusual; people recovered from social mistakes all the time. What struck him was how she had done it. Not with deflection or defense or any attempt to minimize the offense. She had simply acknowledged it, asked how to fix it, and then fixed it with an earnestness so transparent it was almost painful to witness.
She meant it. Every word, every question, every enthusiastic bite of Kira's cooking. There was no performance in it, no calculation.
Dangerous, he had called her earlier.
He had not been wrong.
He watched her lean forward to hear something Kira was saying, her brown hair sliding across her cheek, fingers wrapped around a cup of ale she'd been given at some point. She laughed at something, and the lines around her mouth disappeared, her eyes creasing shut, her head tipping back to expose the pale line of her throat.
The firelight caught the curves of her, the warmth of her skin, the fullness of her figure.
He looked away.
The meal continued.
Targesh ate without tasting, his attention split between the food and the small human woman who had become the gravitational center of the room
She had not moved from her place at the long table, but the space around her had shifted. Kira had actually sat down beside her at some point, which Kira never did during meals because she was always supervising the kitchen. Young Torgun had migrated closer, hovering at the edge of the conversation with obvious fascination. Skareth, who had lost an arm in a border skirmish twelve years ago and now served as quartermaster, had drifted over to grunt responses to some question she'd asked about supply chains.
She asked questions of everyone.
Targesh had observed this on the walk from the archives to the great hall. She could not seem to help it. Every piece of information she encountered generated three more questions, and she asked them without apparent concern for whether they were appropriate or welcome.
How old was Northwatch? (Four hundred years, give or take.) Who carved the original chambers? (Clan ancestors, with techniques now partially lost.) Why were the windows so narrow? (Defense, obviously.)
He had answered more questions in that ten-minute walk than he typically answered in a week.
He had not meant to. The words had simply come out, pulled from him by her relentless curiosity.
Now he watched her do the same thing to others, and hunger opened in his chest, a pull toward—
No.
He stopped the thought before it could finish.
He was warchief. He had been warchief for nineteen years, since Gorath Mountainbreaker had died. Nineteen years of decisions that cost lives. Nineteen years of holding the line at theborder, negotiating the uneasy truce that currently permitted human scholars to enter his territory, burying warriors he had trained.
He did not have the luxury of wanting. Not this. Not her.
The archivist laughed at something Kira had said, and his breath caught, his ribs tightening as though bracing for a blow that never landed.
He put down his cup, harder than necessary. The thunk of wood against table drew a glance from Brenneth, who sat at his left. The master leatherworker had known Targesh since they were both young warriors.
"The human seems to be recovering," Brenneth observed mildly.
"She talks a great deal."
"She does." Brenneth took a drink from his own cup. "She's very... present, isn't she? For someone so small."
Targesh did not respond.
"Takes up more space than her body accounts for," Brenneth continued, as though Targesh had asked for elaboration. "Interesting quality in a human. Especially one who looks like—"
"Enough."
Brenneth raised an eyebrow but subsided.This was the problem with old friends. They saw too much.
