“All right. What is it? Not campaign manager to political hopeful. Friend to friend.”
He knew better than to believe they could separate the two. But he had no one else to talk to.
“It’s Iris.”
“Did she pick up throat singing? Séances? Collecting werewolf claws?”
He could bring up the incredibly creepy vintage porcelain doll that had been sitting in the bathroom first thing in the morning. Or the fact that he was reasonably sure he heard a musical laugh out in the hallway when the sight of it made him let out a yelp he wasn’t exactly proud of.
“Not yet. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“What is it, then? Just her weird hobbies? Those can be … guided. Smoothed over.”
Finn sighed. He’d always appreciated Henry’s ability to view a situation as an objective outsider. But they were talking about Iris now, not some abstract idea. He didn’t want to hear all the ways she could be altered to better serve a preferred image.
“I’m not trying to change her.”
In fact, the problem was he liked her a little too much just as she was.
“What, then?”
“Tell me more about the arrangement.”
“What do you mean? You get married. After some carefully chosen and executed events. Pretty simple.”
“I mean the process of setting it up. Did you speak to the queen herself?”
“No. From what I understand, Tatiana doesn’t come to the surface.”
“Why, then, would she want a princess to?”
“We’ve covered this. Pollution regulations.”
“Who did you speak to?”
“Maria. She’s the queen’s land dignitary.”
“What did Maria say the queen said about the situation?”
“That she was open to it. What are you trying to get at here? What are you digging for?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“If Iris was forced into this or not.”
“Oh.” Henry’s shoulders slumped a little. “That, I don’t know. But I’d venture a guess that the merfolk are a lot like many other paranormal royal families.”
“Meaning?”
“That there is an expectation of … advantageous weddings for the princes and princesses.”
Finn mulled on that for a moment. “Was Tatiana’s own marriage arranged?”
“Oh, absolutely. That was a big to-do. They’d never even met until the day of their wedding. Tatiana’s consort was an important political figure from a merclan from somewhere off the shores of Greece. So, I would venture to guess that Iris knew her whole life that she might end up married for political gain.”
Maybe that was true.
