It had been the happiest wedding he’d ever seen. He hadn’t even known that weddings could look like that, let alonefeellike that.
“That’s great,” Cooper said. “I love weddings. Who’s getting married?”
“I am.”
And the wedding won’t be anything like yours.
Cooper stared at him. Finally he said, “Run that one by me again?”
Yeah, he should have known he couldn’t get away with that short an explanation. It was almost a relief. He let himself collapse into a chair.
“You know I was sent to the Marshals as a kind of tribute,” Keith said.
Cooper nodded.
“Well, I didn’t have much choice in that. I wanted to come,” he added hastily, because the last thing he wanted was for Cooper to think he was unhappy here, “but it wasn’t like I chose a job posting and filled out an application. The Silver Council picked the post for me, and when I agreed, they made all the arrangements.”
“The Silver Council. That’s a unicorn thing?”
“It’stheunicorn thing. There aren’t that many of us these days, and the Silver Council’s our only government. I grew up in Purity, the central village, with the Councilright there, so it was always pretty intense.”
He stopped himself from going into even more dry political detail; there was no way Cooper wanted a detailed breakdown of unicorn civil ordinances.
“Unicorn society isn’t part of the wider world. And for the most part, aside from the tributes and some business arrangements, unicorns don’t mix with it. Home is ... really different from here. They don’t like pop culture or desserts or asking questions.”
The whole office knew some of that, of course, but Keith had let them coast along on the assumption that it was sort of like coming from a very small, very old-fashioned town.
Our Amish unicorn, out on his rumspringa—that was what his teammate Simon had called him once.
We don’t get a rumspringa, Keith had said dryly. But he’d left it there. He hadn’t tried to explain that he was allowed out into the world specificallybecausethey thought he would never turn it into a chance to sow some wild oats and try on some different values.
Now he had his work cut out for him trying to explain exactly how rigid the unicorn world was, and he only had himself to blame.
“They don’t like freewheeling passion, either. The Silver Council also chooses our spouses.”
“Keith—”
“We don’t have to agree,” he said quickly. “It’s not like we’re legally obligated to marry whoever they pick, bam, that’s it. People can say no.”
They could, but for the most part, they didn’t. Admittedly, Keith hadn’t been home in a long time, but he used to be privy to a lot of local Council business. He could remember exactly three occasions when someone had turned down a match ... and only one time, a case of incompatible sexual orientations, when the Council hadn’t strongly disapproved of it.
There was a very, very narrow range of acceptable reasons for declining, and anything else ensured that the Council would look askance at you in the future.
Still, you did always have a choice. Technically.
“And I get to meet her first,” he added.
“You get to meet her,” Cooper repeated. “Before you marry her. Well, that’s generous of them. Do you get to actually get toknowher?”
Keith shook his head. “Usually it’s just one meeting and then wedding bells. Only without the bells, because the Silver Council thinks bells are loud and garish.”
“I like bells. And I know every culture does things differently, but only one meeting seems rushed to me. Especially when you’re being paired off by the government. That’s a lot colder than, say, your friends and family finding somebody for you. Who’s looking out for you in this scenario? How is thetown councilsupposed to know whether or not this woman’s going to make you happy?”
“It’s not about being happy,” Keith said. “That’s just a bonus. It’s about ... stability.”
It was about the Silver Council being in control, the way it had always been in control. It was about nothing ever changing. He knew that.
But his home was his home. He’d been gone a long time, but he didn’t know that he wanted to sever ties completely. He at least needed to consider the match, even if he couldn’t go through with it.
