When Penelope responded to him at first with silence, Crow shifted his weight uneasily. He wasn’t sure what could be going through her head, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know since every option seemed terrible. If he had imagined the mercenary in Bellmare, it meant he couldn’t trust his own eyes anymore, and he might become a danger to the other members of the group. He shuddered at the thought of mistaking Percival or Rayner for an enemy and reacting before anyone could stop him. He didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone.

On the flip side, if he had actually seen a mercenary in the marketplace, then that meant it was possible that he was being watched again. He remembered the things the previous killer had said just as well as Penelope did. During their first trip to Younis, the mercenaries had been tracking them for weeks to sniff out their weaknesses before they finally struck. The thought of that happening again caused a chill to run up his spine. He had more guards this time, but that didn’t negate the fact that mercenaries always seemed to wait to attack until they felt confident that they could take down their targets. Two years ago, the murderers had almost succeeded on two occasions.

The viceroy absently lifted a hand to his side, where the scar from one of the killers’ daggers still decorated his torso. They had narrowly escaped with their lives both times, and both times their success had to be attributed to luck. There was no guarantee that their luck would hold out for another round of ambushes.

Suddenly, Crow blinked when Penelope threw her arms around his middle. As she stated that she didn’t think he’d imagined the man in Bellmare, he winced. There was no good answer either way, but hearing one of the options confirmed wasn’t much better than staying in the dark. At least there was one positive if she was right though: He wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently turning on the people who were close to him on this journey. Thinking about it more thoroughly, he realized that she had some good points too. Whenever his nightmares had taken hold, he’d always had visions of knights and bandits. Mercenaries had never made an appearance in the theatre of his mind, so it was unlikely that he would have conjured one up at the marketplace when it hadn’t happened before.

Relaxing ever so slightly, he returned her embrace, slipping his arms around her back to hold her close. Her assurance that it was possible that the man he’d seen had been innocent wasn’t very convincing to him. The lurker hadn’t looked Brerratic. He had been tall and imposing with the same brawny build as the killers they’d fought against in Younis. By contrast, their own people weren’t usually so brick-like. Even though it was still possible that the man hadn’t been there for malicious purposes, the viceroy wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt as long as they had so little information on him.

At Penelope’s last words, Crow chewed contemplatively on the inside of his cheek. As unsettling as it was, she was right that his father had been trying to end the war on his own terms when they had visited Bellmare. Back then, there had been too many witnesses around for a mercenary to make a move, but now, they were in a small group that would be far easier to overpower. If the man he’d seen had been biding his time, he might not keep waiting in the shadows for much longer. Reflexively, his eyes swept over the trees around them, as if there were enemies stalking them at that very moment.

“I promise you, I will,” he said in a soft voice, pressing his lips to her head in a long kiss. Knowing that she believed he had seen a real mercenary, his guard had climbed back up to its full height. He wouldn’t let it back down until they completed the assignment and returned to the safety of the castle. After all, he hadn’t come this far in both the war and his relationship with the knight just to have his life snuffed out before he could see things through to the end.

As he held her, another thought came to him, and he let out his breath in a resigned sigh. “Do you think I should tell the others about him?” he murmured, pulling back just enough to meet her gaze with a frown.