As Crow had been expecting, he noticed right away that Penelope was observing him more closely than she usually did. He breathed an internal sigh as he sat down across from her at the table. The last thing he wanted was for her to get more involved than she already was. She had plenty of her own worries to tend to without being dragged down in his, and since there was no way for her to magically stop the nightmares that plagued his sleep, her concern would do no good for either of them.

At her comment about how late he’d arrived for breakfast, the viceroy shrugged without saying anything. After all, touching on that subject would mean that he would have to admit the reason why he hadn’t eaten earlier. He didn’t want to tell her that he had stayed in bed all morning because of how shaken up he’d been, nor the fact that he had only come to the Great Hall because he knew he needed to eat before meeting with her father later.

Unfortunately, she didn’t give him as much room to dodge around the topic as he would have liked. At her follow-up question, Crow looked away from her to let his gaze wander over the few other people in the room, as if they were suddenly interesting. “I slept through the night,” he answered vaguely, hoping she would assume he meant that he hadn’t had any more nightmares. At least this way, he hadn’t openly lied to her about it. He [i]had[/i] slept until the early morning before he’d awoken in a cold sweat.

“How did you sleep?” he added, glancing back at her in prompt to change the subject.