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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 you keep coming back here, I'm going to be cruel to you eventually."
Well that's... interesting. "I thought you didn't want to hurt anyone."
"I don't. But I'm not..." He trails off; shakes his head. "There will be times when it'll hurt too much and I won't care."
"If I ask you not to come here when I'm like that, are you going to ignore me?"
"I think I can decide for myself when I do and don't want to talk to you."
"And you say you respect my threat," Winter snorts. "Tell me that again after I've had a go at you."
"Yes! This isn't a happy children's story. You are not protected by the power of your inward goodness. And I've not been—" He sighs. "It doesn't matter. You'll find out or you won't. I hope you don't."
"I don't know where you're getting these ideas about my belief in the power of my inward goodness."
She smiles slightly. "I could bring you some books," she adds. "For something to do that isn't sit and think about how unhappy you are."
"Oh, as you please, your majesty," he says with a deliberate lightness.
James sighs. "I'll just go get that map for you before you change your mind, shall I?"
