She knew how to walk into a hall. She had done it a thousand times with a platter in her hands and her eyes on the floor.
But she didn't have a platter. She didn't have a task. She was supposed to walk in and sit down and be seen, and every nerve in her body was firing the old signals—smaller, quieter, along the wall.
A hand landed on the back of her neck.
Varek had come up behind her without a sound, which should not have been possible for a man his size, except that she'd been staring at the hall like it was a battlefield and hadn't been listening for him.
His thumb settled against the hinge of her jaw. The same thumb that twenty minutes ago had been hooked inside her mouth while he drove into her from behind, her knees sinking into the furs, his other hand spread across her belly holding herexactly where he wanted her. She'd bitten down on it when she came and he'd laughed.
Heat rushed to her face.
"You're blushing," he said against her ear, sounding pleased.
"I'm warm," Mab said. "The hall is warm."
"Mm." His hand stayed on her neck. "Walk with me."
He stepped forward and his hand moved her forward with him, making it impossible for her to drift sideways toward the wall.
The walk was the longest thing she had ever done with empty hands.
She braced for the attention to curdle, but it never did. Heads lifted and tracked her the length of the hall, and the look in them was plain interest. An old orc with a white braid raised his cup at Varek. A woman with a baby on her hip leaned to her neighbor, and both of them smiled and went back to their food.
The table at the head of the hall sat crosswise to the others, near the great hearth, and Targesh was already at the center of it. He was no smaller sitting down to a feast than he'd been coming down the courtyard steps. The mountain, at its supper.
"Warchief," Varek said.
"Captain." The voice came up out of the bedrock. "Sit. All of you. The food's better hot, and Kira will know if you let it go cold."
Varek swung a leg over the bench and put his back to the wall. He drew Mab down beside him and settled his hand on her thigh.
Down the bench, Drogga shoved a platter and two cups sideways to clear a stretch of table. "Kids," he said, and slapped the wood. "Sit, sit. You—" to Annie "—have a dog in your shirt."
"He gets cold." Annie climbed onto the bench, and the puppy's head pushed out of her collar to confirm it.
Tibbs sat beside her, spine straight, scowl on. Both of which Mab counted as improvements over the boy who used to fold himself behind the water barrel.
A cup landed in front of her, set down by a human hand. Mab's head came up. The woman holding it was human too. She was round-faced, brown-haired, a little out of breath, with a small child propped on the shelf of one hip and the swell of another under her apron. She dropped onto the bench across the table.
"You must be Mab." The woman shifted the child to her other hip. "I'm Delia. Verity said you'd arrived with Varek's party. I would have come to see you sooner but young Oren here keeps me pretty busy."
Oren had green skin a shade lighter than any of the warriors Mab had seen, and dark hair that stuck up in tufts. He was staring at Mab with the frank, unblinking assessment that only very small children and very large orcs seemed capable of.
"Hello," Mab said to him.
Oren grabbed a fistful of Delia's collar and buried his face in her neck.
"He's shy for about thirty seconds," Delia said. "Then he's not. At all." She reached across and pushed a bread board closer to Mab. "Eat. Kira's been baking since noon and she takes it personally if the bread sits."
Mab tore a piece. The crust cracked under her fingers, and the inside was soft and sour and still warm. She closed her eyes to properly savor it.
When she opened them, Delia was watching her, bouncing Oren on her knee.
"Good bread," Mab said.
"Kira's sourdough starter is older than the fortress."
Varek's hand was still on Mab's thigh, his thumb moving in a slow arc just above her knee. He was talking to Targesh about something she couldn't follow, supply routes or border patrols,their voices a low current beneath the noise of the hall, and his hand never stopped. As though touching her and breathing were the same category of necessary.
