Vera knew who he was. Behind Eragos' vague references to others, he stood as a memory on fire. Talon. Vera could count on her hand the times he spoke on his brother, yet somehow the tone in Eragos' voice could mark Talon without name or description.
Determination that bled through Eragos forced her into the present. She was drawn away from memories because she recognized that determination. She recognized how the thought of his brother consumed him. There was a piece of that inside her.
Eragos had wanted to fight Talon since Oisea. After fighting Seca as a young woman, after delivering her that famous scar and nearly killing her, Vera had continued to despise her. But Vera had not raised a blade against her sister again. Why was she so different from him? Why had Vera not sought Seca out for her betrayals and fought her again?
Because the High Lord Gavrie was ultimately responsible. Because she had wanted to prove his guilt, and Seca's, before the Court and see them punished by the Free Cities. The thought made her chest ache again, almost brutally, with loss. A trial should have been enough in the world she'd tried to build with the White Riders and High Lord Arand.
They were not standing in Hatharida's shadow. Not any more. Eragos used I a great deal, but Vera remembered the lights in the trees, the Grey Riders with arrows, as Eragos and Talon fought with swords. She remembered frantically grabbing for his tunic under the earth.
Losing Eragos was not something she could stand.
"Alone?" Vera asked, softly. "Do you think that's how it will be? Another fair match of steel? Talon wants you dead."
No one would face an enemy from Beit-Orane who truly stood without help. Honor was only a convenience to their enemies. Talon might have seemed to honor the rules of combat in Hatharida, holding off his archers for an honest test of metal, but if Eragos had slain him there? Vera knew in her heart that nothing would have held the others back.
"Your brother wants you dead," she said again. "So does Beit-Orane. That's not something to charge into..."
The heaviness of grief made it difficult to tell him the Captain would want them back in Simanel, to say she did not want to see another city fall. She did not think rushing the gates of Eistocene would save the country now. But that wasn't what he meant, was it?
Grace gave her the ease to gently touch her free hand to his cheek. Vera should have started an argument. Instead she searched his eyes, wondering if his temper would flare in them.