Keith noticed the tense. She’d said that about the goldfish, too—Seraphinaused tohave one. He could tell something more was coming, so he waited.
“The goldfish—Sunbeam—she got rid of him after she got married. Blake, her husband—he was always kind of iffy about Sunbeam. He wants a seat on the Council, and you know how they go over your life with a fine-toothed comb. He didn’t want a goldfish to disqualify him. So the next thing I knew, Sunbeam was gone.”
“That’s awful.”
She clearly heard the fervency in his voice, because she looked up from the tank.
“He didn’t make her flush it. I don’t even think he made her give it away, notdirectly, he just—made it hard to argue with him about it, since almost everyone thought she shouldn’t have had a pet in the first place. She found someone in Polis who would take him.”
“It’s still awful. Why couldn’t she just give him to you?”
Iris breathed in. “I asked her the same thing. She said she and Blake talked about it, and they decided it would be a cleaner break if Sunbeam were just ... gone.”
But Iris had clearly cared about him too, and she hadn’t asked for a clean break.
At the end of the day, he guessed it had been Seraphina’s call to make, but he wished she’d made a different one. And he thought he knew why Iris was thinking about all this now. Marriage had changed her sister. Seraphina had gone from boldly venturing out into the human world just to buy Sunbeam a toy castle to turning her back on her fish completely, all because her husband didn’t wantanythingaround that might irritate the Council.
Iris could tell that he liked her fish and wouldn’t ask her to give them up, but she didn’t know if he would try to get rid of something else.
The thought made him sick to his stomach. He would never ask her for that. The things she loved were part of her, and he hated the idea of her ever feeling like she had to chip them away.
He knew there’d been a time in his life when he would have given up his own Sunbeam, if he’d had one; that was how much he’d wanted to be perfect. He didn’t want her to ever feel the way he had back then.
“Maybe a clean break’s better than a messy one,” Keith said, “but it’s better to not have a break at all.”
“She just said she couldn’t jeopardize Blake’s chances.”
Keith said bluntly, “Any job that would ask that of somebody isn’t a job worth having.”
If the Silver Council tried to hint that he should pressure Iris to get rid of her fish, he would refuse point-blank.
And if that meant they rescinded his tribute status and summoned him back home, well ... he would cross that bridge when and if he came to it.
He didn’t want to leave his past behind, but if it came down to choosing between his new life and his old one, he knew what he would pick. He’d just have to hope Iris would consider coming with him.
“Thank you,” she said, giving his hand a brief squeeze. “I’ve never heard anyone say anything like that before.”
Mostly, she just sounded stunned—and a little overcome with emotion—but there was curiosity there, too. If she hadn’t heard anyone talk like that before, she especially hadn’t expected it from a tribute.
But she was thanking him for it. Even though she was one of the Council’s favorites, she wasn’t suspicious of things like independence and affection, which certainly put her far ahead of howhe’dbeen before his team had shaken him up.
With that in mind, he decided to risk being honest.
“I’m not exactly the person the Council thinks I am,” Keith said. “Or the person I used to be. The man Lady Marianne thought she was matching you to ... he doesn’t exist anymore. I know that means I’m sort of an unknown quantity, but I’ll try to be honest so you know what you’re getting, if you, you know, want to get anything.”
Wow, smooth. Why am I allowed to talk to people?
But he saw more hope than amusement in Iris’s amber eyes.
“I’m not who the Council thinks I am either,” she said. “But I don’t know who that makes me. I’ll try to be honest too.” He saw a delicate muscle in her throat leap as she swallowed. “But since we have a whole week, I don’t think we have to deal with all of it right now. You need to call your team, right?”
He did, and he was more than happy to let her change the subject to something that wouldn’t upset her.
“Yeah, I should let them know that Lady Marianne’s invited them over.”
“Which I’m still shocked by,” Iris said.
“Me too. I don’t think the Council’s invited any outsiders in since FDR.”
