When he sat, Vera did her best not to acknowledge it. He'd get up again if she did, wouldn't he? Perhaps he was possessed of more maturity than she was, having more years than her. She had been wrong about him when she first tossed him in with a group of treacherous mercenaries, after all.
Vera leaned back in her chair and felt comfort in the sound of creaking wood. The truth of her mission was grittier than a noble quest to save a monarch and attend a wedding. She cared about her charges, but the princess was still a means to an end. Vera couldn't allow herself to believe that getting to a destination was going to magically unravel that ending. The Beiten-K'danav sent her here to seal a peace treaty, not just to guard. She couldn't sacrifice one for the other or she ran a high risk of failure.
Nothing but the outcome she came for would do. She wondered how that all fit in to the Rider's code. She wondered why it'd taken so long for her to think of the Rider's code since they rode out toward the Gate.
"You can tell yourself he was there to die, but I have very little regard for fate. Whether it works in my favor or not," Vera said. "Control is always more important than might. The numbers brought to that marketplace were more than made up for in our own dedication and skill. You struck them down with lightning, Eragos. If I had needed them dead, I'd have picked most of them off from a distance."
Vera had been taught that if one was strong enough to take a life, one had to be strong enough to deal with the responsibility of it. Vera had desired to kill those men far more than Eragos did. She wasn't in a place to absolve him. She wasn't even sure what her own forgiveness meant. He wasn't wrong in saying that they deserved whatever it was they received. She could have cared less that Galatin was dead if it weren't for his station amidst this country's governing class.
Means to an end.
She ran a hand through her hair.
"It's over," Vera said, partly to herself. There was no use in beating a dead knight into the ground. If her anger didn't fade, she would use it later. Perhaps if she needed to find another healer for Eragos... "I'm just glad we didn't lose you."