Crow studied Penelope with a concerned expression when she just nodded in response to his observation. He had thought she would find the news just as interesting as he did, but instead, it seemed to have struck some sort of raw nerve in her. He wondered why. In his mind, the knowledge that both sets of their parents had known each other before was fascinating. All their lives, they had been so close to each other, yet so far. However, it seemed to be a good thing that they had taken two decades to meet.

When she was younger, she had been training to become a knight of Brerra, while he had been raiding the nobles of the kingdom. If they had ever crossed paths before their mission to Younis, they would have ended up fighting—maybe not in the literal sense of the word, since he didn’t know how to fight very well back then, but they certainly wouldn’t have gotten along. Every big incident in their lives had drawn them together at exactly the right moment, from his arrest to the previous king’s mission and even to the war that had brought them back into each other’s lives yet again.

And now, after all that, they had both been approached at separate times by the gods of two kingdoms. It was hard to deny that it seemed like their lives had been sculpted to fulfill some greater purpose. The thought made him feel both nervous and excited. It reminded him of the tales he had been told by the people of the outer villages about the heroes of old. Part of him was worried about what that would mean for the rest of their lives, since the men and women from those stories never really got to ‘settle down’ the way that he and Penelope wanted to, but another part of him was eager to see where the fates were going to take them next, because it was surely going to be exciting.

Suddenly, Crow was pulled from his fantasizing when he felt Penelope’s hand slip out of his. He turned to her in surprise, unsure why she was putting distance between them. She had just met a god and seen her dead mother for the first time. Of course, that had to have been overwhelming, but it had been a good thing, right? She had seemed happy enough when she’d been telling him about it earlier. He wondered what had changed to make her look so melancholic.

The thief glanced briefly at John as the older knight spoke up and then turned to look at Penelope again. “Hey, are you alright?” he asked softly, reaching out to rest a tentative hand on her back. “Did something else happen that you haven’t told me about?”