Chapter 18
Verity found him that afternoon in the council chamber.
The door stood open. She stopped in the threshold.
Targesh sat at the head of a long table scarred with use, his attention fixed on a map weighted at the corners with stones. Kethrak stood to his left, finger tracing a route along what looked like the southern border. Neither man had noticed her yet.
"—third report of movement in that sector," Kethrak was saying. "Could be bandits. Could be Valdaran scouts testing the boundary."
"Send Ralvar's patrol." Targesh's voice was flat, decisive. "Tell him eyes only. No engagement unless provoked."
"And if they are provoked?"
"Then I trust his judgment." Targesh looked up from the map, and his gaze found her in the doorway. "We are finished, Kethrak."
Kethrak turned, saw her, and his mouth twitched. "Warchief."
He left. Verity heard his footsteps recede down the corridor, then silence. Targesh leaned back in his chair.
Verity crossed the threshold, her boots loud against stone in the empty chamber. The map on the table showed the territory surrounding Northwatch in careful detail—passes, ridges, the spider-web network of patrol routes.
When she was close enough, he reached out and pulled her into his lap.
She made a startled sound that he swallowed with his mouth.
His hand splayed across her lower back, holding her steady against him while his tongue traced the seam of her lips.
She opened for him, her fingers finding the front of his tunic and gripping.
"Targesh." She pulled back just far enough to speak. "I came here to—"
"I know." His other hand slid up her thigh, beneath the hem of her dress. "You came here to ask me something."
"Yes."
His fingers found the soft skin above her knee. Traced higher. "Then ask me."
She couldn't think. His hand was moving with terrible patience, stroking the inside of her thigh in slow circles that crept upward by inches. The door was still open. Anyone walking past would see them, the warchief with his archivist in his lap, her skirts rucked up around his wrist.
"The door," she managed.
"What about it?"
"It's open."
"Yes." His fingers brushed the juncture of her thighs, a whisper of contact through thin linen. "I remember what you liked. When I mentioned the council chamber."
Her face flooded with heat. She had clenched around him when he'd said it. He had noticed and had promised to remember.
"That was—I wasn't—"
"You were."
His fingers hooked into the waist of her smallclothes and tugged them aside.
"We shouldn't." Her voice came out breathless. "Someone could—"
"Someone could." He stroked through her folds, finding her already slick, and made a sound of satisfaction deep in his chest. "You are wet thinking about it."
She was. Gods help her, she was.
His thumb found her clit and pressed. Her hips jerked. She bit down on her lip hard enough to taste copper.
"Quiet." His mouth traced the line of her jaw, teeth grazing skin. "Unless you want them to hear."
She didn't want them to hear. She didn't want them to hear, and that was exactly why her body was responding like this.
He slid one thick finger inside her.
She choked on a moan. Her inner walls clenched around him, sore from the night before but aching for pressure anyway. He felt the resistance and gentled immediately.
"Still tender."
"Yes." The word came out strangled.
"Then I will be careful." He withdrew almost completely, then pressed back in with excruciating slowness. "I will not hurt you. But I am going to make you come in this chair, in this room, with that door open. And you are going to be very, very quiet."
His thumb circled her clit in counterpoint to the slow thrust of his finger. The sensation was maddening—not enough, too much, her body caught between soreness and desperate want.
Footsteps echoed somewhere in the corridor.
Verity went rigid. Targesh's hand stilled inside her, but he did not withdraw.
The footsteps passed. Faded.
His thumb resumed its slow circle over her clit, slick with her arousal. She clenched around him, the soreness from last night flaring bright and then melting into heat. He added a second finger, stretching her carefully, his tusks grazing her neck as he bent to inhale at her throat.
"You smell like me."
His free hand slid up her side, palm flattening against her belly, fingers splaying wide enough to span from hip to hip. He pressed there, feeling the softness yield under his touch, and groaned softly against her ear.
"This," he murmured, kneading her flesh with reverent pressure. "I cannot stop thinking of this. How you give beneath my hands. How much of you there is to hold."
His fingers curled inside her, finding that spot that made her vision spark, while his other hand roamed higher, cupping her breast through her dress. He thumbed her nipple, already peaked and sensitive, and she arched into it, her body chasing the sensation without permission.
Footsteps again. Closer this time. Voices murmuring, two warriors discussing patrols, their boots scuffing the corridor stone.
Targesh didn't stop. His fingers thrust deeper, his knuckles dragging against her inner walls. She clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the whimper that tried to escape. He was hard beneath her, his cock a rigid line pressing up through the layers of fabric.
The voices paused outside the door. Laughter, low and easy. One warrior said something about the southern ridge.
Verity's pulse thundered in her ears. She was exposed like this, skirts hiked up, his hand buried between her legs. If they looked in—if they so much as glanced—
Targesh's thumb pressed harder on her clit, rolling it in tight, insistent circles.
The pleasure built sharp and fast, coiling low in her belly, her body clenching around his fingers in desperate rhythm.
His tusks scraped her collarbone, leaving faint red lines on her skin that would linger beneath her clothes.
The voices moved on. The footsteps faded down the corridor, swallowed by distance and stone.
Targesh bit down on the curve of her shoulder.
She came, her body seizing around his fingers, her hand pressed so hard against her mouth that her teeth cut into her palm.
He worked her through it, his thumb never faltering, his fingers curling and stroking until she was shaking apart in his lap, until the pleasure crested and broke and left her gasping.
He withdrew his hand slowly. Brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean, his eyes never leaving her face.
"Good," he said. "Now. Ask me what you came here to ask."
She couldn't think. Her mind was white noise and aftershocks, her body still clenching around nothing, her thighs trembling where they bracketed his hips. He was still hard beneath her. He had not taken anything for himself.
"I—" She swallowed. Tried again. "I need to tell you something first."
His expression shifted. The heat banked, replaced by something watchful. "Then tell me."
She climbed off his lap. Her legs nearly buckled, but she caught herself on the edge of the table, fingers gripping scarred wood. She needed distance for this. She needed to not be touching him when she said it.
"My brother died at Thornfield Pass," she said. "Four years ago. The twenty-third of Harvestmoon. A border skirmish. His body was never recovered."
Targesh went very still.
"I came here to find out what happened to him. The official Valdaran report was—" Her throat tightened. "Three paragraphs. Circumstances prevented retrieval. Remains could not be located."
"You have been searching the archives for records of that skirmish."
"Yes."
"You did not tell me this when I asked about your interest in border conflicts."
"No."
His hands rested flat on the table, fingers spread wide. She could not read his expression.
"What did you find?" he asked finally.
"Your annotation. Page 147. Brenneth's brother Torunn.
" She swallowed. "This morning I went to the tannery.
I asked Brenneth about it. He told me—" Her voice caught.
"He told me the orc dead are buried where they fell.
That Torunn is in the high pass. And the Valdaran dead that couldn't be retrieved—"
"The mountain keeps them."
"Yes."
Targesh rose from his chair. He came around the table and stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"Your brother is still there," he said.
"I think so. Somewhere in that pass. I—" She pressed her palms flat against the table edge. The wood was solid. Real. "I have been grieving him for four years without knowing where he is. Without being able to stand anywhere and say goodbye. I need to go there."
"Thornfield Pass is two or three days' ride. The terrain is unstable. There are rockfalls. Snow that does not melt until late spring. Predators."
"I know."
"You cannot go alone."
"I know that too." She met his gaze. "I am asking you to take me."
The silence stretched. Outside, the fortress continued its rhythms—voices in the courtyard, the clang of metal from the smithy, the creak of the gate mechanism. Inside the council chamber, there was only breath and heartbeat and the weight of what she had just asked.
"When were you going to tell me?" Targesh's voice was quiet.
"I don't know. I kept thinking—" She stopped. Started again. "I told myself I would wait until I found something concrete. Evidence. A record that proved he was there. Then I could bring it to you and it would be a simple request for confirmation, not—" Her hands moved helplessly. "Not this."
"Not help."
"Yes."
His hand came up, palm settling against the side of her face. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone.
"You have been carrying this alone since you arrived."
"I have been carrying it for four years."
"Alone," he repeated.
She did not answer. She did not need to.
Targesh exhaled through his nose, and she felt the warmth of it against her forehead. His other hand found her waist, anchoring her.
"I suspected you were hunting something," he said.
"I'm sorry—"
"Do not apologize." His voice went hard. "You came to me now. That is what matters."
Her eyes stung. She blinked hard, forced the tears back.
"Will you take me?" she asked. "To the pass?"
"Yes."
Relief hit her so suddenly her knees weakened. Targesh's hand tightened on her waist, steadying her.
"When?" she managed.
"Give me a few days. I need to arrange patrol coverage and provisions." His thumb moved against her cheek. "You will need warmer clothing. Proper boots. The high pass is not the valleys."
"I'll get whatever you tell me to get."
His mouth curved. "Tell Delia. And Thessaly. They will outfit you."
She stepped forward against him. Her arms went around his waist. Her cheek pressed against his chest, against the rough wool of his tunic and the heat of him beneath it. His arms came around her, and he held her.
"Thank you," she said into his chest.
His hand stroked down her spine. "Do not thank me yet. The journey will not be easy."
"I don't need easy. I just need to get there."
"You will." His voice rumbled through her, felt as much as heard. "I will make sure of it."
The archives welcomed her back. Verity lit the lamps in the main chamber and stood in the center of the web, surrounded by centuries of memory.
She had come here looking for her brother in documents. In records and reports and the careful accounting of the dead.
The orcs did not keep their dead that way.
She pulled her journal from the shelf where she had left it and opened to a blank page. Her pen found the paper.
Verity stared at the empty page.
She had been writing about Corvin for four years. Notes in margins. Questions in journals. A careful accumulation of fragments that never quite assembled into a picture she could hold.
Now she had something different. Not a document. Not a date or a location or an official record.
A promise.
He will take me.
She wrote it down. The words looked strange on the page, too simple for what they meant. She had spent so long building her case in ink and evidence, preparing arguments she might need to make, anticipating objections she would have to counter.
Instead, she had climbed off his lap with her thighs still trembling and told him the truth.
And he had said yes.
She set down the pen. Pressed her palms flat against the table.
In a matter of days, she would go to the place where he died. She would stand on the ground that held him. And Targesh, who carried names the way the mountain carried bones, would take her there.
The tears came then, silent and hot, and she let them fall.