After spending a surprisingly relaxing afternoon in the company of his half-siblings, Crow excused himself to take the bath he had been neglecting for over a week. Though Naida had said they would just be drinking one bottle of wine together, the mischievous princess had slyly taken out a second one after the first had been emptied. The viceroy’s head felt muddled from the drinks he hadn’t been careful to monitor. He supposed he should have known better than to trust his sister with his sobriety, but at least he wasn’t drunk. He was sure he wouldn’t even feel the wine anymore by the time the party started that evening.

When he arrived at the bathhouse, he blinked in surprise, finding the steamy room packed with other noblemen in various stages of undress. Almost all of them had attendants to accompany them, making the small space feel even more cramped. The former thief lingered in the doorway, suddenly far less eager to strip down and get in the water. He hadn’t minded sharing the pool with a few other people before, but this was overwhelming. While he didn’t recognize most of the men around him, he knew they remembered his face from the wanted posters plastered all over the kingdom. Some were already beginning to whisper and stare. As one who always watched his back around people he would consider enemies, the idea of shedding even the thin protection of clothing in front of those who probably wished to see him dead was nothing short of petrifying. The alcohol clouding his head didn’t make it any easier either.

“Collin?”

Lost in his thoughts, Crow nearly jumped at the sound of a voice behind him. He turned around to see Percival walking up with a frown on his face. In the back of his head, he found it strange that the knight was in the bathhouse when he’d thought the members of the king’s army were supposed to clean themselves in their own quarters. However, his thoughts weren’t quite coherent enough to voice the peculiarity. Instead, he found himself staring rather dumbly as the nobleman approached and came to a stop next to him in the entrance.

“The king opened the bathhouse to the public as a courtesy before the party,” Percival answered the unasked question anyway, seeming to read the viceroy’s mind. “It looks like half the kingdom has decided to take advantage, hm?”

Crow gaped at him for a moment longer before he realized the other man had just addressed him in conversation. “Is that what’s going on?” he turned back to the chaotic scene. “Nobody told me or I would have come here earlier.”

Percival grunted—Crow thought the noise was a universal language among male knights—and casted him a sideways glance, “Better wash fast before they soil the water.”

The viceroy wrinkled his nose, “Gods, that’s disgusting.” It was persuasive though. He followed his acquaintance into the room, where they found an isolated corner to remove their clothes. Though he was still uncomfortable with making himself vulnerable in front of such a large crowd, Crow was privately glad that Percival had shown up when he did. Out of all the men in the castle—excluding Albin and John—the knight was perhaps the only one who had earned enough of his trust to convince him to venture into the pool with so many strangers. He wouldn’t call the other man a friend, but the soldier had expressed enough concern about the state of the outer villages during their previous conversations to be deemed acceptable company by the selective thief.

As they dipped into the warm water, Crow noticed that Percival’s eyes lingered on his scarred torso. The knight had the decency not to comment on his physique though. Instead, they both remained silent as they scrubbed themselves down with soap, moving with haste so they could get out of the bathwater before any more unwashed bodies showed up to dirty it.