As Crow walked down the hallway with Preston, he noticed that the guards they passed seemed even grumpier than usual. Instead of casting him cold looks, they avoided his gaze completely, as if they wouldn’t be able to restrain themselves from coming at him if they looked into his eyes. Their tension made him cautious, and he made sure to keep them within his sight as much as possible just to be safe. He wished he was able to carry the daggers he’d taken from the thieves’ camp, but in the clothes he was currently wearing, there was nowhere that he could easily hide the blades.

After a while of walking in silence, Crow casted Preston a sideways glance. Since the boy was going to be his personal attendant for the foreseeable future, they were probably going to spend quite a bit of time together. However, he still knew next to nothing about him. Thinking about it now, the viceroy realized that all he knew was that his attendant’s name was Preston Bossard and that he was a servant of the palace. Everything else about the boy was still a mystery.

“So,” he spoke up, turning to meet Preston’s gaze with a curious expression. “Have you always worked at the castle?”

The attendant looked up at him, seeming mildly surprised that he wanted to know anything about him. “Not always,” he answered after a moment. “But for most of my life, yes.”

Crow noticed that the boy only answered his question with a bare minimum of details, though he couldn’t tell if it was because he was shy or if it was because he didn’t feel comfortable talking about himself in front of a superior. Somehow, he found the latter idea off-putting. Just yesterday, he had ranked far below the servant, since he had been a criminal, and criminals were seen as the lowest members of society in Brerra. The attendant shouldn’t have been nervous around him.

Suddenly recalling how frightened Preston had been when he’d tried to dismiss him when they had first met, he decided to ask another question: “What did you do for work before you were assigned to be my attendant?”

“Well,” Preston said thoughtfully. “I was just a general servant, so I mostly cleaned around the castle, washed dishes during meals, and took care of the horses in the stable.”

“That sounds dull,” Crow shook his head.

“It was,” the boy’s lip curved upward slightly in a faint smirk.

“If you weren’t born as a serf, and you didn’t enjoy the work, then why did you choose to come here and become a servant?” Crow queried, pressing for a little more information.

At that, the boy hesitated slightly, and the viceroy wondered if he’d pushed him a bit too far. However, in the next moment, he answered in a low voice: “Because peasants who serve the king have much better lives than those who live in the outer villages.”

Crow blinked, not expecting a reply like that. “I don’t think so,” he shrugged. “I’ve lived my whole life on the border, and I was perfectly happy. You don’t need luxury to enjoy your life.”

“You don’t get it,” Preston sighed, lowering his gaze. “I didn’t come here for the luxury. I just saw how awful life was in my village and wanted to find something better. For most peasants, this is as good as it gets.”

Crow studied him quietly for a moment. “I’m not trying to say you made a bad decision by coming here, but life in the outer villages doesn’t have to be bad either,” he said, tentatively defending his homeland. “We just made the most of what we had and learned to appreciate the simple things in life.”

“I guess,” Preston didn’t seem to believe him. He wavered before adding, “The people in my village tried to do that too, but it’s hard to make the most of your life when it’s always cut short.”

Crow faltered at that. He stared at the attendant with newfound intrigue. The boy’s story sounded eerily familiar to his own. [i]Could he be…?[/i] “If you don’t mind my asking: Which village are you from?” he asked suddenly.

Preston looked up at him with a frown, “Myrefall.”

“No way,” Crow’s eyes widened. He brought a hand to his chest. “That’s where I’m from too.”

“Really?” Now it was Preston’s turn to look surprised.

“Yeah,” Crow grinned.

For the rest of their walk to the Great Hall, Crow and Preston spoke eagerly with each other about their shared home village. They both found kinship in knowing that they had similar experiences during their childhoods and had seen the same hardship of losing people they had cared about to the illness that plagued Myrefall. By the time they reached the dining area, Crow felt much closer to the attendant than before and found that he no longer minded his presence.

Crow stepped into the Great Hall through the door that the servant had been holding open for him and took a look around. Like every other time he’d been in this room, it was full of noblemen and women who were sitting around at various tables to eat and talk amongst each other. This time, they didn’t make him as nervous though. He was slowly getting used to being around standing in the midst of large groups of nobles, so he didn’t feel the urge to run away as strongly as he had before.

The viceroy was just about to make his way over to an empty table he’d spotted, when he caught sight of his sister on the other side of the room. She had her hand in the air and was waving eagerly to get his attention. A small smile tugged at his lip as he noticed that Penelope was with the princess again. After barely seeing the knight the day before, he wanted to spend more time with her, and this was a perfect opportunity. He made his way through the crowd to join them at their table.