Shifting to lay more comfortably on the bed, Crow propped one arm underneath his head while Penelope told him her ideas about how he could get out of the castle without drawing attention to himself. As she started by telling him to change clothes, he blinked and looked down at himself. Though he would never admit it out loud, perhaps he had gotten a [i]little[/i] soft since he’d taken the title as viceroy, because he hadn’t even realized that the tunic he was wearing now would make him stand out. Careless. In the outer villages, he had always been conscious of his appearance—not in a vain way, but rather because he’d needed to blend in with the other peasants whenever knights were around. It disturbed him to know that his old habits were already beginning to fade as he grew more accustomed to the security of living in the palace.

As Penelope went on to tease him about not bumping into anything, Crow rolled his eyes at her in an exaggerated fashion. Even if he had gotten a bit more relaxed about minding his appearance lately, his physical tendencies would take much longer to break down. He felt quite certain that he could leave without alerting the guards. Besides that, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to just lie and tell them that he wanted to get some fresh air. His father had given him a rather loose tether by forbidding him from leaving the inner kingdom, after all. Though he couldn’t return to the outer villages, there were plenty of places he could go outside the palace walls that would keep him busy.

“I don’t think you’ll need to do that,” he said with an amused smirk when Penelope offered to distract the guards for him. “I may not be allowed to go home, but I have free reign of the cities around the castle. As long as we aren’t seen leaving together, I’m sure there won’t be any issue.”

In the next moment the knight’s eyes lit up, and Crow raised a brow, curious to find out what had gotten her so excited. As she brought up the idea of bringing him to her hometown, he returned her smile eagerly. He hadn’t been overly interested in most places in the inner kingdom since noble culture was a bore, but he did want to see the part of it where she had grown up. It was something he hadn’t thought they would be able to do before, but now that he was a noble too, there was nothing stopping them from going together.

“Well, it’s about time you invited me back to your place,” he joked, trailing his hand from her shoulders down to the small of her back and casting her a fond grin. “I’d love to go to Bellmare with you.”

As she pointed out that they needed to head to the Great Hall so they wouldn’t miss breakfast, the viceroy nodded. “On the bright side, maybe we waited long enough that Liz got tired of waiting for me and left,” he mused, sitting up and giving a small shudder. “I just hope she goes back to Colchester soon. If I don’t see her face again as long as I live, I’ll be happy.”