It took her forty minutes to work up to it.
Forty minutes of sitting across from Fin while he worked through reports and she pretended to read a briefing Tiberon had given her. Forty minutes of rehearsing in her head, rearranging words, discarding entire approaches, and generally behaving like a woman about to defuse an explosive device with a set of instructions written in a language she was blood-bound not to translate.
Because that was functionally what this was.
Tiberon had pulled her aside that morning, and handed her an impossible task.
She was going to figure it out. She just needed another forty minutes. Maybe fifty.
The blood oath sat in her chest like a closed fist. She could feel it, the way you feel a muscle you've pulled but can't stretch. Every time she got close to the words, her throat tightened and her pulse kicked, the magic reminding her that it was there and it was watching and it would stop her heart if she crossed the line.
She put the briefing down.
