His father. Once, Eragos had thought Valos was the center of all wisdom. Now he was not certain that he'd understood half of what his father tried to tell him. The other half seemed wrong-headed somehow, as did... this reticence in him, to face his brother with anyone backing him. It seemed right, and yet... some small part of him was certain that it was not.
By the violence in her voice, he was reminded of himself, boldly arguing that each and each greater challenge must have been met by no one else's steel. How many times had he argued himself into stitches? Into the sick wagon, again and again, because he was not careful enough with his own life. So to hear his own words spoken back to him - with far more heat than he'd ever given to her, he thought - was enough for a smile. It was not a particularly grand smile, nor a particularly happy one, but he did smile at the dark wall. Over and over again he'd asked himself why he argued so mightily with her.
Over and over, he'd reminded himself that he loved her. It was not the love that...
...it was love. Pure, simple, unadulterated. She knew that as well as he did. That each time he spoke her title before her name, he may as well have been shouting it to her, across the years and miles that separated them always. I love you. She would not hear, or could not hear, and she was afraid. He must have been the only one who was not afraid. Or perhaps, more accurately, he was the only one who was not afraid for anyone. Including himself. It was concern for the future, but not fear. Never fear. As long as he'd been alive he'd feared something. The end, or her end, or Eithne's end, or... a thousand other things. The time for fear was done.
Perhaps he'd burned it out of himself.
Violating orders. Breaking covenants. It was not the same. Honor demanded that a knight fight, that he shake the heavens with his sword, and if all the ills that clung to the belly of the light tumbled out of the sky he would face them individually by accepting volunteers. Eragos felt as though he'd always been fighting battles without truly coming any closer to winning the war. There would be other troubles in the Free Cities, always, but there would be only one Eragos Feareborne. Only one Eithne Savastian. Only one Vera of Beit-Orane. Only one Sleeping Tiger. Only one Grees.
The list stopped there, and he nodded to himself. Only once. Love, but laced with fear. And he hadn't burned it out of himself.
She had.
Over-estimating his own importance, just as he'd placed the wrong emphasis on hers. They were nothing if they did not set out to face those sinking demons wherever they presented themselves. She was right. And his father might not have been wrong, but he was done thinking about his father, wasn't he? What he was doing, worrying over here, was no more or less selfish than she had been in worrying over him. All those years he'd thought of himself as a boulder, constantly seeking a clear path on which he could roll down the hill, and the truth was nothing close to it at all. He would have followed her anywhere.
Just as she was willing to follow him anywhere.
"If I say that I am sorry," and he turned to face her, face as serious as the grave. "Will you stop shouting, Vera?"