Iris saved him.
“It’s what Lady Marianne thought was best,” she said, in an innocent and even slightly shocked tone, like she couldn’t believe that Blake was questioning the Silver Council’s judgment. “I’m sure she considered a lot of complex factors about Keith’s role as tribute, and she didn’t share all of her thinking with us. What would put his colleagues at ease was just one part of it. She may have also decided Keith could use a week at home. We ask a lot out of our tributes, and they don’t get many chances to rest.”
This was complete nonsense invented on the spur of the moment, obviously, but it was absolutelyinspirednonsense. Keith was left a little in awe.
Iris’s years of rebellion had obviously left her better prepared for this kind of thing than his own years of uptight rule-following. He needed to learn a few of her tricks.
Blake took a deep breath. “Obviously the Council knows best,” he said with a strained-looking smile. “It would just be unfortunate if anyone read anything into such an unorthodox arrangement.”
So that was the heart of the matter, at least as far as Blake was concerned. It was all about keeping up appearances. Even for an Abbott doing his best to nail down a Council position, it seemed a little excessive. After all, no matter what people in the village thought of their week-long engagement, Iris was still marrying a tribute. Keith didn’t mean to sound vain, but everyone here would think that was a pretty good deal.
Blake might be so obsessed with his image that even a minor hiccup like this worried him, but Keith was guessing Seraphina’s concern was more personal and empathetic. She was looking back and forth between him and Iris like they were two puzzle pieces she was trying to fit together and she couldn’t make them click into place. She knew the real Iris, and she couldn’t imagine that Iris’s true mate would be as buttoned-up and proper as Keith was pretending to be.
Thankfully, the conversation moved on. (Blake still had to fit in a muttered, “I just don’t know what Lady Marianne wasthinking,” but they all let it pass.) Iris presented a few setups for Blake to spout off about Abbott family history, and Keith asked Seraphina some questions about her work chronicling community history. By the time they got to the cheese and fruit course, the atmosphere in the room had at least gone back to the feeling that everyone was trying hard to make a good impression.
After a while, though, Keith was mostly just distracted by the fact that underneath the table, Iris’s foot was resting against his.
The real dessert was waiting for them back at the cottage.
12
It turned out thateven though daring acts of unprecedented intimacy were easy when you were swept up in the moment, they were a lot harder when you’d spent several hourswaitingto get swept up in the moment. Iris wanted this more than anything, but having to wait for it all evening had let her anxiety mount up alongside her anticipation.
Her body felt like a tense cage with butterflies fluttering around inside. She couldn’t even make herself look directly at Keith: instead, her gaze flitted around the bedroom.
The problem was that she didn’t know what she wasdoing. The Silver Council advised strict abstinence until marriage to your assigned match. They even discouraged masturbation. These prohibitions had been part of their culture for so long that even humans had picked up on them: in some muddled way, they knew there was a connection between unicorns and virginity.
It wasn’t because of religious concepts like sin and sanctity. It was because the Council valued stability above all else. Marriage was an important building block for society, so each one had to be as strong and perfect as possible.
Happy marriages were more stable than unhappy ones. And what bred unhappiness? Discontent. And what bred discontent? Comparison. If there was no other side of the hill, you had to be content with your own grass, green or not. Maybe you wouldn’t even know grasscouldbe green.
Sex was supposed to be worked out within the marriage itself, with no one else butting in to shape expectations about what should happen or how good it would be. Ideally, to the Council, you wouldn’t even be able to lie there and think,I could do this a lot faster myself.
Iris had always thought it was about 80% bullshit. If the sex was unsatisfying at first, couldn’t the people involved work on it? Talk to each other about it? Try something new? Humans seemed to deal with all of this just fine.
Well, maybe notfine, but they dealt with it all the same.
