But she could not write about the archives without thinking about him. Could not describe Northwatch without remembering the way he had stood in the doorway of this very building. Could not capture the texture of this place without acknowledging how thoroughly he was woven into it.
I have begun the process of mapping the underlying logic...
She stared at the incomplete sentence.
In the Archive, she had been invisible. She had moved through the stacks like a ghost, cataloguing and connecting and disappearing into the work. No one looked at her too closely. No one noticed when she arrived or when she left or whether she ate or slept or breathed.
Here, she was seen.
The warchief tracked her movements. Kira worried about her meals. Delia appeared to drag her into conversation. Even the documents seemed to watch her, waiting to reveal their secrets if she could only learn to read them properly.
It should have been uncomfortable. It should have felt like surveillance, like the loss of the privacy she had cultivated so carefully.
Instead it felt like—
Being known.
Verity pushed back from the desk.
The letter would have to wait. She would write it tomorrow, or the next day, when she had more distance. When she could separate the professional observations from the personal disruption. When she understood, herself, what she was doing here and what it meant.
She folded the parchment and tucked it into her traveling case, beside her brother's letter.
Chapter 9
The great hall was already half-full when Verity arrived.
She had timed it intentionally—not so early that she would be alone, not so late that her entrance would draw attention. A normal hour. A reasonable time for a scholar to take her morning meal before descending to the archives for another day of work.
She had changed her dress. Washed her face. Even attempted to tame her hair, though the result was questionable at best. The quill she habitually kept tucked behind her ear had been relocated to her pocket, which felt strange.
You are being ridiculous, she told herself as she crossed the threshold.It is breakfast. You have eaten breakfast before. You are capable of sitting at a table and consuming food like a functional adult human.
Her gaze found Targesh immediately.
He was at the high table, as she had known he would be. Positioned where he could see all the entrances, speaking witha gray-haired orc whose scarred forearms suggested decades of military service. He did not look up when she entered, but his posture shifted. There was a tension that had not been there a moment before.
He knows you're here.
Of course he did. He could probably smell her from across the room. The thought sent heat crawling up her neck, and she forced herself to focus on the immediate problem: where to sit.
The hall was arranged in long communal tables, with the high table set perpendicular at the far end. The serving area, with its enormous pots and laden platters, occupied one corner, steam rising from the assembled dishes. Warriors and craftsmen filled the benches in clusters, conversations layering over one another in a comfortable din.
Verity chose a seat near the middle of the hall. Far enough from the high table to avoid the appearance of seeking attention. Close enough to the serving area to suggest she was here for food, not observation.
Shewashere for food. Exclusively.
She rose to fill her plate, and the motion brought her into Kira's line of sight. The old cook's eyes narrowed, tracking Verity's approach with an expression that suggested she had been monitoring the archivist's eating habits and found them wanting.
"You are eating at a normal hour," Kira observed. "This is progress."
"I was advised to improve my schedule."
Kira's weathered face creased with satisfaction as she ladled a generous portion of grain porridge into Verity's bowl, then added a second scoop without being asked. She added a thick slice of bread to the plate, followed by a portion of cured meat that could have fed three scholars.
"You have good bones, but you neglect yourself. Eat."
It was a command, not a suggestion. Verity took her overflowing plate back to her seat.
