Alone at his table, Crow folded his arms on the surface and looked over the crowd of nobles in the Great Hall. He was beginning to recognize a few more faces around the castle. Wayne and Robyn were dining off to his left with a few other men he didn’t know, Percival was seated nearby with a group of knights, and Adam was across the room, casting him infrequent glares as usual. Though not all of them were friendly, he was starting to get used to seeing them in the palace. It was a strange sort of acclimation, but now that some of the unfamiliar faces had names attached, he was beginning to feel a little more at home here.

The viceroy was drawn from his thoughts when he spotted someone approaching his table. Turning to see who it was, he smiled as his eyes fell on Penelope. Though he had spent some time with her earlier at breakfast, his heart still raced with excitement upon seeing her again.

At her comment about his training with her father, Crow snorted and opened his mouth to respond. However, he didn’t get a chance before his gaze landed on a second person walking over to join them. Having been eager to spend a little more time alone with Penelope, he felt a slight twinge of disappointment when Naida sat down next to the knight. He brushed it off quickly though. His sister wasn’t really disrupting anything, since they weren’t talking about anything private, and he [i]did[/i] enjoy her company too. There was no reason to push her away.

“Yes, apparently father decided he would be a good teacher for me,” he answered the princess’s question with a shrug. “I’m not so sure I agree.” He made an exaggerated grimace as he rubbed the spot where John had struck him on his left side. “It felt more like he was using me as a training dummy than teaching me to fight. I’m going to be sore for weeks.”