Now alone with Mia, Crow took a moment to assess just who he was dealing with. Right away, he got the impression that he was going to have to be careful about what he said to this baroness. She had a stern and calculating demeanor that made him feel like she would be able to see through him if he wasn’t cautious enough with his words. Luckily, he was usually good at lying under pressure, so it wasn’t an overly concerning issue. He was just going to have to focus on staying alert enough to keep from giving anything away. After all, this woman was Penelope’s direct superior. She was the last person the knight would want to learn about their unorthodox relationship.

As Mia sat down and began to speak to him, Crow studied her warily. He wasn’t sure he liked the way she used his name when she addressed him. Knights never did that. They always called him “thief” or “cur” or whatever other insults their tiny brains could come up with. For this woman to call him by anything even remotely more respectful than those names was strange, and he had a feeling she was only bothering to do so to make him lower his guard around her.

[i]Too bad I don’t care about kind treatment from nobles,[/i] he thought with a faint upward turn of his lip. This baroness could be as friendly or as cruel to him as she wanted. It wouldn’t change the fact that he was determined not to give her any honest answers.

At Mia’s abrupt change in approach, Crow nearly snorted in amusement. It was clear to him what she was trying to do. She wanted to persuade him to give her answers under the threat of resorting to more extreme measures, while setting herself up to seem like a kind and trustworthy confidant at the same time. [i]Not bad, but not good enough.[/i] If she wanted to get him to admit that he and Penelope had been working together for a long time, she had another thing coming.

“Really? [i]That’s[/i] the question you’re going with?” the thief laughed and raised his bound hand. “You’ve got the most infamous thief in the kingdom chained to a bed, and your first thought is to question him about his dealings with some knight?” He met her gaze across the tent with a grin. “You have some interesting priorities, love.”

Letting his hand fall back down on the bed, he went on, “I suppose you’re expecting me to tell you that we’ve been secretly meeting behind your back for some time, right? Or maybe that we’ve even been doing a little more than simply [i]working[/i] together.” He held the baroness’s gaze with a mischievous expression. “Well, as much as I’d love to string you along with some story about how your right hand is sleeping with a criminal, I do hate that other knight of yours… Layth, was it?” He shook his head. “So, to answer your question truthfully, we just happened to cross paths about two weeks ago. That’s all there is to it.”