9
Liadan
She had been in the fortress for nine days before she understood what Ciarán had actually come to do.
Not warn her. He had told himself it was warning — had built the entire journey on that foundation, had ridden hard for two weeks with the conviction of a man executing a necessary and protective act. But she had been watching him for nine days in the particular way she watched things she had not yet fully decoded, and the picture that had assembled itself was not the picture of a man delivering information. It was the picture of a man who had carried a secret for nine years and had finally arrived at the moment when the secret had stopped being protectable, and who was now — with the secret out — adrift in a way that he had not anticipated and was not managing particularly wel
