But beneath the weight of those duties, something new had taken root.
He wanted.
Not the clan. Not victory. Not the careful, managed existence he had built around himself like armor.
He wanted a brown-eyed woman with ink-stained fingers and too many questions, who slept sprawled across his bed like she belonged there and looked at him like he was something she intended to understand.
He wanted to let her.
Chapter 17
Verity made it halfway across the main courtyard before she understood her mistake.
She had dressed carefully in Targesh's quarters, retrieving her shift from beneath the bed, her dress from where it had pooled beside the hearth. She had finger-combed her hair and twisted it into something approaching order. She had splashed water on her face from the basin in his sleeping chamber and examined herself in the small mirror mounted beside it.
She looked like herself. Rumpled, certainly. Slightly wild around the edges. But recognizably Verity Dunmore, archivist.
What she had failed to account for was that Northwatch did not rely on visual evidence.
The first orc she passed—a young warrior hauling firewood—went still as she approached. His nostrils flared. His eyes cut to her and then away, very quickly, and he ducked his head in something that might have been respect or might have been a desperate attempt not to laugh.
The second orc, an older woman carrying a basket of linens, did not bother hiding her reaction. She stopped in the middle of the path, inhaled deeply, and her mouth curved into a smile of unmistakable satisfaction.
"Good morning," she said.
Verity's face caught fire. "Good morning."
By the time she reached the great hall, she had passed seven orcs, and every single one of them had known exactly where she had spent the night and what she had done there.
She smelled like him. She understood that now. His scent was on her skin, in her hair, probably woven into the very fibers of her dress. To human senses, she smelled like herself. To orc senses, she was walking through the fortress wearing a declaration.
The great hall was half-full with the breakfast crowd. Heads turned as she entered. Nostrils flared in a wave that rippled outward from the doorway. She forced herself to keep walking, to find an empty spot at one of the long tables, to sit down as though her thighs were not aching and her neck did not bear the faint marks of his tusks.
Durgan materialized beside her before she had finished reaching for the bread.
"Good morning." His voice was cheerful. Aggressively cheerful. "You look well."
She focused on tearing a piece from the loaf. "Thank you."
"Must have been a comfortable night. Good bed. Warm fire." His grin stretched wider. "Plenty of furs."
"The accommodations were adequate."
Durgan laughed—a great booming sound that drew looks from three tables away. "Adequate. I will tell him you said so. He will be devastated."
"Please don't."
"Too late. It is already the funniest thing I have heard this week."
He clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to rattle her teeth and ambled off toward the training yard, still chuckling. Verity stared at her bread and reminded herself that murder was typically frowned upon in diplomatic contexts.
Kira appeared beside her with a bowl of porridge, setting it down with more gentleness than usual.
"Eat," she said. "You will need your strength."
Verity looked up. Kira's weathered face was carefully neutral, but her eyes held a knowing warmth that made Verity want to sink through the floor.
"I—"
