“I’m sticking with ‘wise,’” he said solemnly as his friends came up to join them.
“Do we all go in at once?” Iz said. “That seems rude. This isn’t the kind of door you have if you want a bunch of strangers to spill in all at once.”
Iris hadn’t thought of it like that, but then she took another look at the Council House door, and really, Iz was right. It was heavy, imposing, and grim, and it wasn’t like it came with a friendly welcome mat.
“I’ll go in first,” she said. “I can let Lady Marianne—and the rest of the local Council, if they’re in attendance today—know that you’re here, and then I’ll bring you all in.”
“In the meantime, the barbarians will wait quietly outside the gate,” Simon said with a grin. “Keith can make sure we don’t commit any acts of public indecency.”
Cooper leveled a glare at him. “Take this a little more seriously, please, Simon. This place doesn’t see a lot of visitors. Let’s make sure that we don’t convince them that’s a great decision.”
A flicker of something—hurt, maybe?—passed over Simon’s face, but then he just nodded. “Sure. I’ll behave.”
Iris wished she could give him a reassuring smile. She felt like she’d been in his shoes more times than she could count, and she’d always wanted to insist that shedidknow when it was time to take things seriously. But no one ever used to believe her.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
She slipped behind the notably unwelcoming door.
It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight, but her ears immediately picked up on an unusual degree of silence. It was a weekday, and that usually meant a low, beehive-like hum of activity. True, sometimes the other Councilors didn’t join Marianne until the afternoon, but even in the mornings, it was rare for the building to be this quiet. Lady Marianne’s presence tended to fill up a space. Not today, though. Today there was nothing but silence.
Something about it sent a chill up Iris’s spine.
“Lady Marianne?” she called, before she could stop herself.
She winced at the echoing sound of her voice.Nowthe place would ring with noise, she was sure, because Marianne always said it was unbelievably gauche to call for someone instead of simply coming to find them. There was no way Iris was getting out of here without being scolded for that.
But Lady Marianne didn’t appear, even though Iris would have sworn she had a preternatural gift for popping up as soon as anyone made a mistake.
There was no flutter of movement anywhere. No sound.
What was going on? Should she go ahead and bring in Keith and the others?
No, that was silly. Her imagination was running away with her, that was all. And what was she so scared of? What could possibly go wronghere?
She walked down the hall, trying to ignore the fact that the ragged hitch of her breath was still the only noise she could hear. The draperies in the hall even muffled her footsteps. But there was nothing wrong with a little quiet! Why was it bothering her so much?
It’s not the quiet,her unicorn said.You can just feel it. There’s something wrong.
No, there’s not,Iris insisted.Everything’s perfect. I have Keith, and I’m about to leave, and I like his friends, and I don’t even have to upset Seraphina or Lady Marianne, and everything isfine.Some part of me is just scared by all these changes, that’s all, and I’m projecting that onto something perfectly normal.
Her unicorn’s silent skepticism spoke volumes.
Iris said,Even if no one’s here, it’s just because Lady Marianne felt a little under the weather today. Or had to run errands. Or something. NOTHING IS WRONG.
She bit the tip of her tongue to keep from calling out Marianne’s name again.
Instead, she looked into the rooms as she passed them. Empty. Dark. Empty. Dark.
Finally, there was only one left. It was the reception chamber at the far end of the hall, where a week ago—aneternityago—she had waited to find out her match.
Why would Marianne be in there?
A possible answer occurred to Iris, and it chilled her to the bone. Maybe Lady Marianne somehow knew exactly how much Iris had backslid over the last few days, and she was waiting to tell Iris that the wedding was off, that the Council no longer approved. That they had decided that she was bad for Keith and she didn’t deserve him.
She knew it didn’t make any sense. Her nerves were just stretched thin right now, so she was unconsciously making her own horror movies. She would probably open this last door and find that Lady Marianne reallyhadstayed home sick.
She knocked, just in case there was some meeting going on. She didn’t want to just barge in.
