She does not know how to place -- let alone name -- the feelings that arise inside her chest, like a hot burst of sunlight in her heart, equal parts painful and bright. There is that aching familiarity again, the sense that she should understand, and at once the sense that she does not need to. That she already does. A calm relief at odds with the thrumming of her pulse in her throat. The sense of waiting, longing, of a journey come to an end.

She drops the conversation.

Now that the path ahead is clear, Ciri presses her heels into her mare's flanks, and shoots forward like a loosed arrow to see it for herself.