"I—" Verity's voice emerged slightly strangled. She cleared her throat. "What time?"
"Seventh bell. I will have food brought."
"Food," she repeated.
"You have demonstrated an unreliable relationship with meals. I am taking precautions."
Beside her, Delia made a choked cough she poorly disguised by pressing her fist to her mouth.
Verity should refuse. She should suggest an alternate location. Somewhere public. Somewhere that did not involve his quarters and food and the two of them alone with all the things they had agreed to stop pretending about.
"Seventh bell," she said instead. "I'll be there."
Targesh inclined his head, managing to convey satisfaction without any change in his expression. Then he turned and walked out of the room.
The hall seemed to exhale around her. Conversations resumed at their normal volume. The studied casualness of the past few minutes dissolved into genuine disinterest as the warchief's business with the human archivist concluded.
Delia waited until he was fully out of earshot before leaning close.
"His quarters," she said. "For dinner."
"To discuss my report."
"And other things."
Verity pressed her palms flat against the table. "This is a professional meeting. He is the warchief. I am here under diplomatic sanction. There are protocols—"
"There are," Delia agreed. "And none of them require dinner in his private quarters." She rose from the bench, gathering her empty plate. "Wear a good dress."
"I don't have a good dress. I have traveling dresses, all of which are—"
"Then wear the less rumpled one." Delia's smile was knowing, infuriating, and entirely too delighted. "Seventh bell. His quarters. Other things."
She departed before Verity could formulate a response, leaving her alone at the table with the remnants of her breakfast and the growing certainty that she had just agreed to something far more significant than a progress report.
Chapter 10
The seventh bell found Verity standing outside Targesh's quarters, her less-rumpled traveling dress smoothed as flat as determined hands could manage, her report clutched against her chest like a shield.
The door was heavy oak, banded with iron. She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. Raised it again. Stood there like an idiot with her fist hovering in the air, her pulse knocking against her collarbone so hard she could count it.
You agreed only to stop hiding. This is the opposite of hiding. This is walking directly into—
The door opened.
Targesh stood in the frame, and Verity's breath stopped mid-draw.
He had changed into a dark tunic that fit close across his shoulders, with leather bracers at his wrists. His hair, usually loose, had been pulled back from his face, revealing the full architecture of his features: the heavy brow, the strong jaw, thetusks curving upward like ivory parentheses around whatever words he might speak.
He looked like exactly what he was. A warchief. A leader of warriors. A male in his prime, at the height of his power, and she was standing in his doorway clutching a sheaf of parchment like it might protect her from the weight of his attention.
His eyes traveled over her. She held still under it, her shoulders drawing back, her chin lifting—an instinct she hadn't planned. He noted the dress, dark blue wool that actually fit her properly. Noted the hair she had attempted to arrange. Noted, probably, the thundering of her pulse and the flush prickling along her jaw.
"Come in," he said, and stepped aside.
His quarters were large. A main chamber with a hearth already lit, flames casting dancing shadows across stone walls. A table set with two places. A doorway leading to what she presumed was a sleeping chamber, firmly closed.
The space was spare but not austere. Furs on the floor. A weapons rack holding an axe that could have cleaved her in half. Shelves lined with—
