“I was wondering,” Preston mused as he swallowed the last bite of food that he had tested on the viceroy’s plate. “The king gave you the choice to choose some of your guards, and Penelope is a knight. Why didn’t you ask for her to come with you to Younis tomorrow?”

“It would have been pointless,” Crow shrugged, digging into his food as soon as the attendant was done. “He wouldn’t have permitted her to join, because he would have seen her as a distraction to me. One of the conditions he made to allow me to court her was that I wouldn’t let it affect my work. I also didn’t want to ask him for too much up front and risk getting denied everything I wanted.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Preston frowned thoughtfully. “Being the king’s ward comes with quite a few tethers, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Crow nodded. Being the king’s [i]son[/i] came with more, but he kept that detail to himself. Although he trusted Preston to keep quiet about the information, he didn’t want to let it change the way the servant looked at him. At the moment, they had developed a close camaraderie over their shared past in Myrefall and the fact that they’d had similar upbringings as peasants. He didn’t know much about how the taciturn boy viewed the members of nobility, but if he was as spiteful as most other villagers, he might resent him for his lineage.

The former thief was drawn from his thoughts when he heard Penelope’s voice beside him, offering Preston a greeting. He turned to her with a smile, glad to see that she hadn’t missed supper. After spending the whole day apart, he was eager to catch up with her. “I’ll forgive you this time,” he teased, pressing a playful kiss to her temple when she sat down beside him. He was still reveling in the fact that they could get away with such casual touches in front of the other people in the castle.

At her following question, he shook his head. “I think we scared everyone away,” he grinned. “Today was the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to sit down at an empty table without being approached by anyone. It was heavenly.” He picked up his drink and took a sip before going on, “Apart from making me wait, how was your trip to Bellmare?”