Isla's POV
The horse was enormous.
This was seventeen hands of warm, breathing, chestnut-colored muscle standing three feet from my face, watching me with an eye the size of a plum and the quiet judgment of a creature that had already decided I was not a serious person.
"Her name is Klára," Conrad said, running his hand along the mare's neck. His palm moved over her coat. "She's a Kisbéri Félvér. Hungarian half-bred. Sixteen years old, very patient."
We were standing in the stable yard behind the Palais Esterházy's country property in Fertőd—not the Vienna house, but the estate two hours southeast, near the Hungarian border, where Conrad's grandfather had bred his Vizslas and where the family still kept horses because apparently owning a palace in the city wasn't enough. Conrad had sug
