If she is defensive and prickly, he is aggressive and inexorable. Her unhappiness only seems to make him more irritable and she watches as his annoyance reshapes his face, setting off warning bells in her mind. Given the timing of his approach, of his uptick in attention, and of the general nature of the world, Isla had already been forming an assumption of what he was going to ask, and she already knew that her answer would be no.

But he doesn't ask for a child.

What he does ask for is so shocking to her that she stands there silently for a long moment, regarding him with furrowed, suspicious brow and a deepening frown. Teach him how to talk to mares? What on the good green earth around them was he talking about?

She might have opted to make fun of him for even suggesting that she - as his unwilling captive - should teach him how to woo others, but he dangled bait before her nose that made it seem unwise to taunt him now. Her freedom. Granted, it would be at the expense of some other unlucky girl who ended up cajoled here by an otherwise unrepentant captor, but at least it would be freedom.

And perhaps, she considered, it would mean that he wouldn't be quite so unrepentant in the future.

She broke her silence with a swish of her matted tail and a disbelieving shake of her read hair before fixing the young stallion with another piercing gaze. "Manners are a place to start." She began drolly, eyeing him tensely. "And telling them to shut up will not often get you what you want."

Isla drew in a breath and considered him for a moment longer. There was a difference between talking to mares companionably and attempting to woo them, but in her limited estimation, she assumed that wooing was still far above his skill level. "Are you attempting to woo them, or just manage to have a normal conversation?"