“She’s pretty great,” he said. “And you can probably guess how good she is at infiltrating spots that would be off-limits to anybody else. Her name’s Evie.”
It was like someone had opened a window to let in an almost dizzying amount of fresh air. It suddenly occurred to her that marrying Keith meant stepping out into the wider world, which was something she’d wanted her whole life. She had stolen brief escapes over the years, but they’d always left her feeling guilty and unprepared. Now the Council had willingly handed her the chance to fulfill her dream. Was that all it would have taken, all these years? Just playing nice?
She would get to meet Evie the spider shifter. And a dragon, and a hellhound, and a tiger—
“There’s also Vin,” Keith said. “He’s a little more complicated. I don’t know the full story, and I don’t want to start guessing. It’s his business.”
Then Iris wouldn’t ask him to speculate. She liked that he was willing to keep someone else’s secret.
“Since we’re all shifters,” Keith continued, “we can be open about things we’d have to hide around humans. I could tell them why I was taking the week off. They all had a lot of advice.”
It was strange to think about a bunch of people, miles away from here, who all knew that she and Keith were meeting right now. She hadn’t said a word about the proposed match, not even to her sister. There’d been no way to talk about it without revealing how terrified she was, so she hadn’t tried. Now she wondered what advice Seraphina might have given her, if she’d had the courage to ask.
“What did they say?”
“They couldn’t get over how strange it was—by their standards—for me to marry someone I didn’t know very well. And I was just thinking ... if you wanted to, we could take a little time before the wedding. Get to know each other a little better.”
Iris couldn’t imagine how that would work when she would always need to pretend to be someone else. Their courtship could never be more than a polite circling of each other, with her never letting him see her messy depths. (If Keith had depths, they were probably spotless and tidy.) It would just give him time to pry into parts of her past that were too painful for her to remember.
And what if she slipped up? What if he figured out who she really was, deep down, and didn’t want to marry someone whose soul was still in tatters?
Her unicorn butted in:Do it. Say yes. It can’t hurt anything.
It might, Iris said back.It might hurt me.
That was definitely true. If he left her here after all, it would crush the surge of hope she’d felt a moment ago. No new life. No wider horizons. She felt sick at the idea of him turning her down.
But him accepting her and marrying her right away could be just as terrifying.
He’s our mate,her unicorn insisted.He wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.
Probably not. Not intentionally, anyway. Was that enough? Could she trust that whatever connection was between them—or at least between him and the person sheshouldhave been—would protect her from all the ways this could go wrong?
She didn’t know the answer to that question. But she knew that she didn’t want to watch that hopeful, excited light in his eyes dim again, so there was only one thing she was going to say.
“I think that would be fine. I’d—like to get to know you. And—” She reached frantically for some rationale the Council would find acceptable. “And it’s a nice gesture towards your colleagues. It shows them that you respect their opinions.”
That was probably why he’d suggested the idea in the first place, since it wouldn’t have been exactly tribute-like to buck tradition on a whim. But she was sure his team already knew how much he liked and respected them. No one could miss how he’d lit up at the chance to talk about them. The happiness had briefly transformed his face, making him into someone else entirely.
“We can take a couple of days, then,” Keith said. His smile was cautious but real. “A week, maybe?”
“A week sounds fine.”
“A week sounds fine for what?”
It was Lady Marianne, Iris knew without even turning around: those cool, silvery tones were unmistakable. She and Keith both jerked at the sound, like misbehaving kids caught by an unamused adult.
Iris knew why she felt that way—she always felt that way—but it was wrong for Marianne to put Keith in the same position. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
She felt a strange flareup of defensiveness, and it made her step forward even though her heart was pounding.
“Keith and I would like to take a week before the wedding to get better acquainted with each other.”
If she’d let Keith explain it, he would’ve probably made it clear that it was his idea, just so the lion’s share of Lady Marianne’s disapproval would fall on him instead of her. But that wasn’t fair, not when Iris had agreed to the plan. She wanted them to present a united front.
And Lady Mariannediddisapprove. That much was obvious from her tightly pursed lips.
“That’s whatthismeeting was supposed to accomplish,” she said.
