Crow listened contemplatively as Penelope explained that she was going to use the angle of ending the war to convince Mia to let her leave early. After speaking with the baroness, himself, he took her to be the sort of person who would actually care about something like that, so the knight’s plan could work. As long as she didn’t need to get the permission of the other two barons—the ones whom appeared to be more warmongering in the thief’s opinion—she hopefully wouldn’t have a problem getting away.

As Penelope went on to question him about how they should explain his sudden reappearance to her comrades, Crow knitted his brow in thought. He hadn’t thought much about it before, but he supposed it would look strange for him to suddenly reappear in the battalion’s camp barely a week after he had left for the inner kingdom. Like the rest of the nobles he’d encountered lately, the knights on the warfront had probably assumed that the king had sent John to arrest him. They must have been expecting an announcement for his execution by now, so his return was likely going to cause some confusion amongst them.

Regardless, he didn’t think it was going to be too big of a problem for them to deal with.

“I don’t think we’ll have to explain anything at all,” he said with a shrug, pulling out the paper his father had given him before they had left the castle. “They can’t touch me as long as I’ve got this, and we technically don’t owe them anything. If anyone pesters us about it, we can just tell them that the king is going to be giving an explanation soon enough.” He returned the paper to his tunic pocket and turned to her with a smile. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter if we said something to Olivia or Gavin though. They’ve kept plenty of our other secrets, so I trust that they would go running their mouths about this.”