The memory of the darling little beastie being thoroughly cleaned by her dam made Delia smile with incredulous delight. And she’s mine! Which means that rather than sitting here in my cups feeling sorry for myself because my brother-in-law regards me as a sister, I should be thinking of a name for her.

She glanced down at the cup in her hand—one of a set of six she and Kordas had made off with. Something to do with honey or mead? Isla’s mount was “Sundrop,” after Isla’s favorite flower.

I know! she decided, swallowing the last of her drink. Daystar. Star for short. It had a nice sound to it.

And on that positive note, and feeling better just thinking about that lovely creature who was now her very own, she went to bed.

2

“Well, at least this time you don’t stink,” Isla said, as Kordas entered their suite. She was sitting by the fire, and had clearly been prepared to wait as long as it took for him to get back from his errand. “Something to be said for the rain.”

“More to be said for it staying warm until we were just about back inside,” Kordas replied. “Is that a hot toddy?” he added, staring hopefully at a steaming pitcher on the table beside her.

She laughed. “It is. Go strip off and get into the robe I’ve left out for you, and you can have some.”

“Yes, oh most benevolent of mistresses,” he responded, and did as he had been ordered. This did require going up two floors—suites in the towers were made up of vertical sets of rooms rather than horizontal ones, with a staircase going up along one wall—but the prospect of a lovely fire and a cup of spiced and spiked mead was enough to carry him up to the wardrobe floor, where Isla had, indeed, left out a nice warm (and thankfully dry) robe for him. He left his possibly ruined clothing in the proper place; Isla would have given him a piece of her mind about making extra work for the servants if he’d just left it on the floor. Isla was imperious in her own way, but there was nobody Kordas would have rather been ordered around by.

As he padded back down the stairs in bare feet, he saw Isla had already poured two cups and was holding one out to him.

“Are you in need of a bath?” she asked, sitting back down in her chair by the fire. This was diplomacy on her part; she could have leaned over and obviously sniffed him, then given him a Look. Isla was so skilled in projecting her meaning by precise expressions that it was nearly an entire language of its own.