“How does that work, by the way?” Cooper said, squinting at the apparent emptiness before him like that would make the village suddenly leap into view. “I’m always curious about this stuff.”
“I only know the basics. It can sense villagers and whatever they’re traveling in, and it automatically lets us in and out. Anyone from Purity can also set up a five-minute window where the barrier is down, so guests can come through.”
“Not that that gets done very often,” Iris said. “The four of you are probably going to attract a lot of stares.”
“I’m used to that on account of my good looks,” Simon said gravely.
“For anything more complicated than that,” Keith said, ignoring him, “like a longer window, you’d need someone who can actually manipulate magic. The village has a couple of those, or at least we did the last time I checked. Iris?”
“Still do,” she said. “My brother-in-law is one of them. So is Lady Marianne—oh, we’ll have to go meet her once you’re inside.”
“Local head of the Silver Council,” Keith clarified. “She gave you permission to visit. Iris is right, we should go introduce you. And it’ll make it obvious to everyone that you’re here legitimately.”
Iz was the only one who seemed to take this explanation in stride. Of course, Iris knew that dragons, like unicorns, often grew up in closed, tight-knit communities that were—for obvious reasons—safeguarded by magic. And from what Keith had said about Iz, she probably had a strong understanding of the strict, formal etiquette someone in Marianne’s position would expect them to follow.
Everyone else looked a little gobsmacked.
Keith seemed to have expected this.
“I know it’s not what you’re used to, but it’ll make things go a lot more smoothly.”
“We’re in favor of things going smoothly, particularly in the lead-up to your wedding,” Evie said. She smiled. “We can deal with different. Lead the way. Do you guys want a ride in? You could give us directions so we head straight to your Lady Marianne.”
Iris didn’tthinkshe visibly tensed up at the prospect of getting in a car, but Keith still knew how she felt. He knew that even though she’d managed to walk through the barrier, she probably wasn’t ready to drive through it ... especially while keeping up a relatively normal façade for strangers.
Keith didn’t miss a beat: “No, we’ll go through on foot. Once you’re through, we’ll shift, and you can follow us to the Council House.”
“Ooh,” Evie said with a little bounce. “I’ve never seen your shift form.”
“Neither have I,” Simon said. “Do you look like a Lisa Frank picture?”
“I have no idea what that means, but I’m going to go ahead and hope not.”
Iris knew. She’d come across some Lisa Frank stationery on one of her ventures to Polis, and she remembered the sparkly, doe-eyed unicorns all covered in rainbows, living in their landscape of hallucinatory pinks and purples.
It wasn’t an image she could square with Keith’s quietly stunning dappled gray shift form, with his silver horn.
“He’s much more tasteful,” she said firmly.
Keith kissed her hair. “Thank you. I’ll take your word for it.”
He walked to the barrier and held out his hands. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like he just had his arms extended into nothingness, but Iris could see how the faint shimmer of the barrier fluctuated around his wrists.
The rest, she knew, was just concentration. Once a village unicorn made contact with the barrier, all they had to do was mentally ask it for the five-minute open window. You would supposedly feel a little click in your mind when it was done.
Iris had never tried. Until now, she hadn’t had anyone on the outside she’d wanted to bring in. She’d been more focused on gettingout.
If the barrier between the unicorn world and the human world was more permeable, if people and ideas crossed it more frequently, then life in Purity would be a lot more interesting and bearable.
Maybe this visit would go well, and everyone who met the Marshals would be favorably impressed with them. Maybe Lady Marianne would decide that their village, at least, could open itself up a little more to outsiders and their ideas.
Iris was still glad to be leaving, but that didn’t mean she no longer cared about what happened here. If there was anyone else here who felt the ways she had always felt, she wanted them to have options. If Blake and Seraphina finally had the kid they’d been trying for, she wanted her little niece or nephew to grow up into the best possible world.
“Done,” Keith announced. “Head on through.”
Simon tossed him a little salute, and the four of them clambered back in their cars and slowly made the off-road turn into an empty landscape that—as she and Keith passed through it—was suddenly revealed to not be empty at all.
Cooper, driving the first car, reflexively tapped the brakes as the outskirts of the village abruptly sprang into view around him, but then he eased back into the drive. Iris could see that he and Evie both looked stunned, though.
