Crow nodded when Penelope said she wasn’t sure what she would be doing today. Knowing her, he was sure she would find some way to keep herself busy. He had noticed a long time ago that sitting idly just caused her more stress when there were things to be done. When they were in Younis, she had been the one to keep them moving when he had wanted to take extra time to rest before they reached the castle. On the warfront, she seemed to have a hand in every decision and project the knights put together. Thinking about it now, her need to act was the reason they were together again too. He absently toyed with a cluster of grapes on his plate, a smile playing on his lip as it struck him that it was her insistence on keeping him and his thieves safe from her battalion that had brought them back into each other’s lives.

When she echoed what he’d said about his day off, the viceroy nodded again. “He said I shouldn’t have to work when today is meant for celebrations,” he reiterated, quoting the words his father had used at the end of his lesson the day before. “I think he really did it because he doesn’t want to let me have an excuse not to get ready for the party tonight.” His smile turned more amused. “I did come from the outer villages, so he probably thinks I’ll forego taking a bath if I get tired after a long lesson. And he wouldn’t be wrong. I’d much rather take a nap if I had to choose just one. This way, it’s a win-win. I get a day to rest, and I’ll be presentable as his representative at the party.”

As Penelope brought up the dancing he would have to do later that evening, Crow made a face. He had enjoyed dancing with the knight in the privacy of Naida’s bedchamber, but the thought of indulging other noblewomen he neither knew well nor liked made him shudder. The ones he had been speaking with lately weren’t nearly as bold as Elizabeth—who finally seemed to have backed off since he had grown so hostile toward her—but he still didn’t want to give them any more of his time than he already had.

The women in the palace were manipulative liars. They blushed and batted their eyelashes at him as if they sincerely wanted him to court them, but he knew they were just after the prestige of his new title. They probably thought he was an easier target than other powerful noblemen because he had been a poor peasant boy who had been surrounded by poor peasant girls who couldn’t match their artificially accentuated beauty. They always wore the finest dresses and colored their skin with the finest cosmetics to appeal to his taste whenever they shared a meal with him. He was sure they thought they were clever in their efforts to entice him, but he just thought they were all arrogant shrews.

“I’ll be glad when I never have to humor my ‘admirers’ again,” he sighed, plucking a grape from the cluster and popping it into his mouth. “It’s much more exhausting being a bachelor in the inner kingdom than it ever was in the outer villages.”