He gave it to her straight, using the hard, plain words he would use to tell a captain that his bridge had been washed away by the winter floods.
He explained the nature of the seal, how the southern mages hadn't just shut the dragon inside her, but had actually woven her own natural fire into the very masonry of the cage.
He told her about the Varanthi Codex, the old book the scholar-boy had brought from the cellar, and the framework for a resonance unsealing.
It was a way of working the spell from the inside out, using her own blood to tickle the latch until the stone parted along the old fault line the first placement had left behind.
He didn't soften a single edge. He didn't tell her It was safe, or that the old healer had promised it would work, because he had learned long ago that Eris hated a lie more than she feared a knife.
