She thought about this. About two days of back corridors and cold meals and the ache of avoiding someone she had not even realized she wanted to see.
"You're right," she said. "It probably cannot be worse."
"Probably?"
"I hedge my conclusions pending further evidence."
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. "Then we have a truce," he said. "No more hiding. No more pretending."
"No more pretending," she agreed.
Targesh nodded once, sharp and final. Then he turned toward the doorway, and she thought that was the end of it. Conversation concluded, new terms established, both of them free to retreat to their separate corners and process what had just occurred.
But he paused at the threshold. "Tomorrow. Breakfast. The great hall. At a normal hour."
It was not a request.
Verity bristled. She was not a child to be ordered about, directed to meals like a recalcitrant adolescent. She was a scholar of the Royal Archive, here on diplomatic sanction, and she did not take orders from—
"Fine," she said.
He nodded again. And then he was gone, his footsteps receding up the stairs, leaving her alone in the archive with her racing heart and the document she had not actually been reading.
No more pretending.
She was not at all certain she knew how to do that.
That night, Verity tried to write a letter to Master Aldric.
She sat at the small desk in her quarters, a single candle guttering in its holder, a fresh sheet of parchment before her. She had written thousands of documents in her years at the Archive. Reports, catalogues, correspondence, marginalia. Writing was what she did. Writing was how she processed the world.
Master Aldric,
I hope this letter finds you in good health. I write to report on my initial progress at Northwatch.
Good. Professional. Exactly the sort of opening he would expect.
The archives here are extensive and sophisticated in their organization. The previous archivist developed a system of associative classification that differs significantly from our own methodologies, but which demonstrates considerable intelligence and intentionality. I have begun the process of mapping the underlying logic and anticipate making substantial progress within—
Within what? Within the three months of her assignment? Within the uncertain future that stretched before her, no longer shaped by the clear parameters she had assumed when she left Valdara?
She set the quill down.
The problem was not the archives. The archives were rich, revelatory, and full of potential threads leading toward Thornfield Pass. The problem was everything else.
How did she explain, in the measured prose of an academic report, that the Warchief of the Mountain Clan had confronted her about her attraction to him and proposed a truce of mutual acknowledgment? How did she describe the way his voice sounded when he said her name, or the weight she had felt lifting from her shoulders when she agreed to stop hiding?
She could not.
Master Aldric had sponsored her assignment. He had vouched for her competence, her professionalism, her dedication to the scholarly mission. He expected reports of documents examined, connections discovered, progress toward the official goals of cultural preservation and diplomatic knowledge exchange.
He did not expect to learn that his protégé had been—
What? What exactly have you been doing?
Nothing. She had been doing nothing. She had watched a man train and found him attractive. She had been embarrassed when she learned he could smell her desire. She had hidden for two days, been confronted, and agreed to stop hiding.
None of it compromised her work. None of it affected her mission.
