Crow stared at Penelope in thinly veiled surprise when she said that she didn’t think he should tell the others about the mercenary in the inner kingdom. Her answer wasn’t what he had expected it to be. Usually, he was the one between the two of them who had a bad habit of keeping secrets and withholding information from others, and she was the one who would reprimand him for putting them at a disadvantage. When he’d asked her if he should tell the other knights about the possible threat, he had thought she would push him to do it.

However, as she explained that they probably wouldn’t believe him if he tried to fill them in, he averted his gaze with a grimace. Among the rest of the group, Preston was the only other person who knew about his recurring nightmares, and he doubted the attendant would tell anyone else after he’d asked him to keep quiet about the issue. Naida would probably trust him because they had grown close over the past month, but the other three were still wildcards—especially the Therouldes. He had never met Rayner before, and Otto struck him as the type to take the things he heard with a grain of salt. As a member of Albin’s council, he would likely be hesitant to believe that a mercenary had punctured the inner kingdom’s defense, because it would reflect poorly on their reigning monarch.

With the other guards’ opinions up in the air, he supposed the compromise that Penelope came up with was their best option. “It’s better than nothing,” he agreed with a halfhearted shrug. Although he’d never had any intention to bring up the mercenary to the others, it vexed him that his word still carried so little weight to at least half the other nobles in their party. It would have been much easier if he could simply tell them that they might be in danger and receive promises that they would all keep a lookout for anything unusual along the way. Instead, he and the knight were back to playing games to nudge the rest of their comrades in the right direction without really announcing what was going on.

Trailing his hands down the length of her arms, Crow located Penelope’s hand again and gave it a squeeze. “We should go back,” he said, glancing in the direction they had come from. “Otto sounded like he’ll be frustrated if we delay the trip much longer.”