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When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.
"If he can be okay being alive at all, I don't think he can do it in the inescapable dungeons of Cair Paravel."
"That would probably be a higher bar to clear, yeah. Can it be better? We could bring him books to pass the time, if nothing else."
"I think this might be the first time we've had this kind of - ongoing problem with no good solution. I don't like it."
"I don't either. Maybe once you've found out what we need to know about the tunnels and so on we can find out if he's at least unconscious while he's heart-stabbed."
"Which, if he's actually immortal and there's actually no solution, won't really help, but if there's a solution and it just takes us fifty years it could help a lot."
And eventually sleep. And unrelated tasks, because they have a kingdom to rule.
But a few days later, she finds herself with free time and no pressing tasks to fill it, and she returns to the dungeon.
There is Winter, just as she left him, sitting on the floor facing the bare stone wall.
But she already knew that. She walks up to the bars and stands there for a moment, waiting to see if he's noticed her.
After a minute: "Good morning, your majesty. Or is it night? I've lost track already."
He sighs. "I'll show you the entrances. If you are not afraid to give me a map and some paper and a pen."
"...I respect the threat you could be if you wanted to. I believe that you don't want to." She pauses reflectively, then adds, "Also, the damage you can do from within my inescapable dungeons is somewhat limited."
