Crow knitted his brow in confusion when Penelope said she would have lost everything if she had been blames for the raid. Was she really on such shaky ground with her leaders that they would have forced her to resign? All the thieves had done was take a bit of food and war supplies. He didn’t think it warranted such an extreme punishment, even if she had been blamed for the mess. Although, by her words, it sounded like that wasn’t the reason why she was upset.

He flinched as she went on angrily, but what she said next only further confused him. He and the others had barely taken a fraction of the supplies the knights kept in their camp. It was nowhere close to half. He would have guessed Penelope was exaggerating if she hadn’t added on that all of the night guards had been killed. The allegation made him frown. He and the others hadn’t killed a single person there. Simon had knocked out one physician, but otherwise, they had left the nobles unscathed.

At her final words, he felt a stab of pain, hurt by the accusation. “What? Of course not,” he shook his head. “I was just trying to help you. Besides,” he shifted his weight. “I have no idea what you’re going on about. The raid went as I said before. We just took the things we needed, and we didn’t kill even one of the guards, let alone the whole lot of them.” He grimaced and averted his gaze, going on in a softer tone, “I’m honestly shocked to hear you even accuse me of such a thing. I thought you knew me well enough by now to know I would never do something like that.”