In this work, we present a theoretical and numerical study of the microscopic and electronic structure of solutions of refractory metal halides in alkali halide melts, [NbCl5](x)[KCl](1-x) and [TaCl5](x)[KCl](1-x) with 0 less than or equal tox less than or equal to0.5. The geometry of the melts is described by ensembles of charged hard spheres, the electronic structure is modeled by a tight-binding Hamiltonian, which is extended by a reaction field to describe the diabatic energy profile of the electronic self-exchange in many-orbital mixed-valence systems. Despite its simplicity, the model leads to the formation of distorted octahedral [NbCl6](-) and [TaCl6](-) clusters, as evident both from the inspection of the simulation geometries and from the analysis of the partial pair distribution functions. Even in the presence of the strong potential energy fluctuations characteristic of ionic liquids, the octahedral structure is manifest in the density of states in a t(2g)-e(g) splitting of the conduction band. The Hamiltonian that describes mixed-valence systems is solved self-consistently. Using an attractive Hubbard parameter of 1.5 eV, we show that the numerical results can be interpreted by Marcus' theory of outer-sphere electron transfer reactions with a reorganization energy of 2.2 eV, an electronic coupling parameter of 0.12 eV, and an activation energy of 0.42 eV. Both anion-d metal cation and intervalence charge transfer excitations contribute to the optical absorption spectrum, the latter leads to a pronounced polaron absorption peak. These findings are compared to recent experimental results.