Crow closed his eyes and met Penelope’s lips when she kissed him, trailing his hand further down from her neck to rest at her hip. Being with her like this reminded him why it was worth it for him to lose his peasant status and enter into the world of nobility. Once he accepted the title of viceroy, all the barriers that existed between them would finally disappear forever. There would be no more difference in status, no more reason for her to lose everything she cared about, and no more bounty hunters chasing after him. Even though it wasn’t the future he dreamed about, he was excited to know that he would no longer have to wait until the end of the war to be with her, and he could truly give her the life she deserved.

As Penelope went on to say that she had changed too, Crow opened his eyes again to meet her gaze. Her words brought an amused smile to his lips. Thinking back on how she had acted toward him when they first met long ago, she certainly seemed to have changed a lot. He remembered how she had looked down upon him for stealing and even seemed to look down upon him as a person for what he did—though, to be fair, he’d been even more disagreeable than usual after spending a year locked up in prison. Now, she was able to look past what he did for a living to see who he really was underneath his title as a thief, and she knew the difference between blindly following the law and having a real sense of justice.

Crow turned his head slightly to press a fond kiss to the palm of her hand. “Of course,” he smirked when she said she had been able to do more to help people than she had before. “You figured out something that most knights never learn in their entire lifetimes: People can help others without letting the law guide their every action.” He touched another quick kiss to her lips. “I think it’s a [i]great[/i] change.”

Settling down a bit more comfortably on the bed, he yawned and let his eyelids droop closed again. “It won’t be much longer before we get to sleep like this every night,” he murmured with a faint smile, pulling her close to himself in an affectionate embrace as he imagined their new future together in the inner kingdom. “I can’t wait for that.”