The two female knights headed out towards where breakfast was being served together. Ahead, Gavin spotted them from where he stood besides a few other knights quickly dismissed himself to head over to the two. "Morning." He greeted offering a small smile. Penelope looked up at him and returned his smile, then without warning, pressed a deep kiss to his lips. It clearly took the male knight off guard and Olivia let out a low whistle. 

Penelope finally pulled back. She had been hoping to reaffirm that she had made the right decision through kissing Gavin. There was a small spark that she savored, choosing to ignore the fact that her heart was hammering anywhere close to like it had with Crow. "What was that for?" Gavin asked dazedly. 

"Nothing.. Just.. happy to see you." Penelope responded giving him a soft smile. 

Olivia snickered quietly from behind her and rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm off to get food. Catch you later, Penelope." With that said, she disappeared leaving the couple alone. Gavin, having recovered from her passionate kiss, looked back to Penelope. 

"That watch must have been pretty hard on you, huh?" He said with a small frown. "Your eyes even look a bit red.."

"It was a long night." Penelope told him with a shrug. She felt a small bit of panic at him being so observant and quickly tried to think of a way to change the topic. The last thing she wanted to do was reflect anymore on what had occurred the night before. "Come on let's go get some breakfast."

Switching to focus on food, Gavin easily moved on from asking about how the watch went and joined Penelope as they grabbed a bowl of the porridge that the camp was serving. The night before didn't even feel like it actually happened as she was able to continue on with her day as if nothing had changed, sitting besides Gavin as they enjoyed their meal together. The only reminder was the dull ache in her heart that she had yet to fully shake off. 

As she finished her food, she spotted Tomas making his way up to the two. The other lieutenant smiled warmly as he approached. "Hey, sorry to interrupt you two but uh, I need to borrow Penelope. There's a meeting about to start." He said with an apologetic look. 

"No worries." Gavin mused with an assuring smile. Penelope said goodbye to Gavin before getting up to follow Tomas as he lead the way over to the large tent where the barons and other lieutenants were waiting for them. Upon stepping inside, she felt the room heavy with focus and seriousness. Her eyes landed on her baroness, Mia Chandler, who was leaning back in her spot at the table with a thoughtful expression. On her right was Penelope's uncle, Edward, who had a rather enraged expression. On her left was Bennet, who didn't seem to be paying much attention. Across the table sat Layth and the other two chairs remained open. Hearing them enter the tent, her gaze flickered up and she smiled. "Good. We're all here. We can start. Sit you two, sit." She gestured to the two open chairs. Penelope took the middle side next to her brother while Tomas sat in the open one on her other side. 

"Today we're discussing what to do with those bandits that took some of our weaponry." Mia announced to the others. Penelope felt her heart begin to beat anxiously. "Layth informed me of this yesterday and also gave a.. decent plan." Mia was clearly reluctant to give the male knight praise, even narrowing her eyes slightly. With a small flick of her wrist, she gestured for him to explain it to the others. 

Layth had a pleased expression and sat up a bit straighter. "My plan, is that we set a trap for them. We'll pretend to agree to their ransom and then ambush them when they go to collect the gold. We'll have a few of our knights disguised as commoners so that we blend in, that way they have no way of seeing us coming." He explained. "We'll make an example out of them. And get what was stolen from us back."

"Good!" Edward said with a nod of approval. "That'll teach 'em. And it'll save us time from having to try and track them down ourselves. They can just come to us." 

"So long as the knights can act as believable commoners, I think it'll work.. better than wasting our gold." Bennet mused.

Penelope hid away the alarm that she felt at Layth's plan and the approval it got from their higher ups. [i]Crow wouldn't fall for that. He'll be fine.[/i] She tried to ease her worry but was unable to. Even if the thief could see through the trap, Penelope couldn't just leave it to chance. She had to try and talk the others out of this. 

"It's not bad.. But can we afford it?" Penelope spoke finally, drawing all eyes on her. "We're fighting a war here so can we really afford to be chasing after common criminals? It would be much easier to just give them the gold and get the swords back, without risking any men or taking any focus off the real battles at hand here." 

"I was concerned about that as well." Tomas agreed. His gaze flickered to Mia, clearly waiting to hear her opinion. However, before that could happen, Edward snorted loudly. His gaze was narrowed and focused on Penelope. 

"We can't let such behavior go unpunished!" He declared. "If we did what you suggest, we might as well just give them the rest of our supplies."

"Edward, teeemperr." Mia said with a hint of warning. She turned to look back at Tomas and Penelope, giving them small smiles. "I understand the concern. I was worried about that myself but there is some truth to what Edward says. I don't like to involve myself with chasing criminals but if we paid them, it would be inviting them to steal from us again. It's better we deal with this now while we have a bit of time and strength to spare before the upcoming battle." 

"Exactly." Edward grunted. "I would have thought that the person who dealt with the most infamous thief would understand this."

Penelope shot a defensive glare at her uncle before looking back to Mia. This was bad. It made sense to Penelope why they wanted to handle it this way but it meant they'd be trying to kill the bandits, more specifically Crow who she was rather certain had been apart of the raid. She tried to think of a way to argue against it, to make them back down and just forget about the stolen items. But she couldn't think of anything fast enough. 

"So we're in agreement then." Mia mused, receiving a general murmur of agreement from everyone in the room except Penelope. "Great, then we will set up the trap for the bandits tomorrow. Layth-" She paused looking hesitant. "will be in charge of putting  together the ambush team."

"You should all leave during the night as well. I suspect they're watching us or at least checking in to see when the gold will be placed there so we need to hide our plans to the best of our capabilities." Edward advised. 

"Agreed. Don't speak too much about this plan either. We can't have them catching even the faintest wind of what we're doing... I don't want a single one of them to get away with this." Layth growled determinedly. 

The meeting soon ended with everyone on the same page except for Penelope. The female knight stepped out of the tent, her heartache was suddenly numbed by the worry and fear for Crow's safety. Even though things had changed between them, there was no way the knight could allow herself to just stand back while he was in potential danger. She couldn't stop them from agreeing to Layth's plan so she'd have to find another way to help him. She stood back for a moment, mulling it over. At first, she considered trying to weasel her way into Layth's team but realized that idea wouldn't work well. Layth would likely be reluctant to have her join and not to mention, it would potentially put her in a position where she'd be caught and labeled as a traitor for helping Crow. 

[i]I can't be there... So I need to warn him somehow before it happens..[/i] Penelope thought. Her gaze landed on Olivia in the distance who was flirting with another knight, seemingly enjoying herself in his company. A plan sparked in Penelope and she quickly began to head over to Olivia, the one knight who had ran into Crow.