Still, he couldn’t deny that this role made him uncomfortable. It was like an itchy, ill-fitting suit. No one in his real life held their breath waiting for his approval.
He’d never had to deal with the way a lot of unicorns deferred to tributes. The Silver Council obviously didn’t cede authority to someone they’d appointed themselves—that probably went double for someone whose diapers they’d once changed—and his time with anyone else had always been limited. Besides, back then he hadn’t been a full tribute, even if his destiny had loomed over him. Having this much authority over what people did with their own lives was new to him, and he didn’t like it.
On the bright side, Blake Abbott made surprisingly good gin-and-tonics for someone who almost never drank.
With anybody else, Keith would be tempted to think that meant Blake and Seraphina were a tiny bit less rule-abiding than they seemed, but he had the sneaking suspicion that it was just that no one in this house let themselves be less than perfect at anything, even if they were only going to do it once.
They arranged themselves on the uncomfortable chairs and began to force some conversation.
“Please pass on our compliments to your family,” Seraphina said to Keith. She smoothed her skirt over her legs, and a kind of awkward sincerity crept into her voice. “I’ve always admired your parents. It must really be something to come from such a long line of tributes.”
Sure. It meant that he’d borne the weight of all their expectations but never felt the warmth of their approval.
“Your father’s in Egypt now, isn’t he?” Seraphina continued. “I’ve been reading some of the papers he’s published on his work at the consulate.”
“If you mean the ones in Arabic, you’ve been able to keep up with more of his work than I have,” Keith said, forcing a smile. “I’ve never been good at learning other languages.”
Iris said, “Seraphina’s excellent with them. She learned Spanish, French, and Latin in school, but she’s taught herself Arabic and Japanese, too.”
It was the most she had said since they’d arrived, and Keith had to keep himself from doing a double-take at how artificial she sounded. It shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, since he’d known that she was going to be playing a part just like he was.
And it should have been familiar to him, since it was the one she’d been playing when they first met. But the real Iris was so much more vivid than the plastic sheen she was offering now that to go back to this was jarring.
He shook himself out of it and focused on what she was saying.
“That’s very impressive,” he said to Seraphina.
“Less so when it’s easy for me,” Seraphina said, with a gracious smile, “and when I enjoy it so much. It’s probably more a labor of love than a meaningful responsibility. But if you’d like it, I’d be happy to translate some of your father’s papers for you.”
“I’d like that very much,” Keith said honestly. He didn’t know why he’d never thought of hiring a translator. He guessed it said something about how distant he felt from his family these days, but it would be nice to reconnect at least a little. “I appreciate your help.”
For the most part, the cocktail hour conversation was polite and circuitous. So much so, in fact, that it took Keith until dinnertime to realize that there was a strange tension in the air. He and Iris weren’t the only ones who were acting a little stilted.
Their first course was delicately fried calamari with spicy scallion sauce, and then, Seraphina announced, they would move on to a salad with beets and pistachios. The main course would be duck and new potatoes, and then—as Iris had predicted—there’d be cheese and fruit.
It all sounded delicious, but it also sounded like it would take a while. He suddenly wished this was just a quick, casual pizza night.
Good luck with that. I don’t think anyone in Purity hasevermade a pizza.
He glanced at Iris, and warmth spread through him.
Well, maybe one person.
Blake said, “I had a secondhand account from Seraphina, of course, but I’m not sure I understood it. Lady Marianne gave you a ... waiting period?”
He said the last part like he was trying, very carefully, to say some foreign words without pronouncing them wrong.
Ah, so this was the source of tension. Blake didn’t want to question a tribute, but he couldn’t help thinking that by bending tradition, they were Doing Things Wrong.
“Just a week,” Iris said.
Keith still couldn’t get used to her voice like this: mellifluous and fake andwrong.
“But that’s very unusual.”
Yes, it is, but you didn’t see how scared Iris looked when she first realized we were mates. I had to come up with some kind of way to buy us some time.
He couldn’t saythat, of course. Iris had asked him to keep up a good front and pretend they were as perfect as the Council thought they were. He opted for the clumsier explanation they’d given Marianne:
