15
Liadan
She spent two days with the Cainteanna Scaoilte before she decided what to do with it.
Not because she was uncertain. The certainty had arrived in the lore-hall with Gormlaith's tea and had not moved since — had only grown more settled, the way things grew more settled when they were true and you had given them room to fully arrive. She knew what the release condition required. She knew it was hers to give. She knew that she intended to give it.
The two days were not for uncertainty. They were for the particular work of making sure that what she intended was entirely hers — not the Nasc pulling, not the accumulated weight of eighteen days of proximity, not the binding-verse still resonating in her chest from the study evening and the way his voice had given it to her line by
