Her legs folded like wet noodles. She sank to her knees on the plastic grass, never taking her eyes off that brilliantly white form.
He took a step forward. Where his silver hoof touched the fake turf, the scent of rain-washed earth rose up, impossibly. Fabric leaves seemed to unfurl like butterfly wings, yearning toward his glimmering light. The air hung still, yet she could have sworn she felt a whisper of a spring breeze on her skin, warm and scented with blooming lilacs.
She put out a hand, her fingers trembling. His great, graceful head dipped, the silken mane falling like a waterfall over the powerful arch of his neck. His velvet-soft, pure white muzzle touched her palm.
“Hugh,” she whispered.
His fragrant breath sighed against her skin. As gracefully and easily as the setting moon, he knelt down, his long, strong limbs folding underneath him.
He lay his head in her lap.
A slight, strangled noise escaped her, half-sob, half-laugh. She was Ivy Viverna, the wyvern. The monster.
And a unicorn was resting his head in her lap.
Barely daring to touch him, she traced the sweeping lines of his head. His sapphire eyes drifted closed as she stroked his nose, his cheek, the elegant points of his ears. His fur was softer even than the cat’s had been. His mane flowed like fog through her fingers.
He sighed a little, leaning into her. His pearlescent horn nudged against her shoulder. It was at least three feet long, spiraled like a sea-shell, glimmering with a secret light. Holding her breath, she hesitantly ran her fingers up the hard length. The glow brightened, silver sparks swirling like miniature fireflies in the wake of her touch.
Tears streaked her cheeks. When had she started crying?
She bent her own head, hiding her face in his white mane. Her arms hugged his neck. She pressed herself against his warm hide, breathing in his scent of lilac and rain. She felt like she’d finally stopped after a lifetime of running; finally put down a burden she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying. In the peace that settled over her like a blanket, she heard the soft sound of wind in leaves.
She didn’t know how long they knelt there, while the fake forest grew and whispered around them. It could have been a minute, or a century. She would have been content not to move for the rest of her life. But all too soon he stirred, his ears lowering a little in resignation. He drew back, and she had to let him go.
The unicorn stood—not with a horse’s ungainly scramble, but as smoothly as a falcon taking flight. He dipped his head again, that sweeping horn descending on her like a sword blade. She caught her breath—but the needle-sharp tip just settled lightly on her own forehead.
Light flared, so bright that she had to squeeze her eyes shut against it. When she opened them again, Hugh stood before her, head bowed.
“So,” he said. “Now you know.”
The grass was just plastic again, rough under her palm. The fabric leaves hung limp from dead branches. But she could still feel his light glowing inside her, in some secret center of her heart. She knew that it would be there until the day she died.
“Y-you,” she croaked. She licked her lips, and
tried again. “You’re a unicorn. Literally, a unicorn.”
He raised his head a little, though his eyes were still in shadow. “You probably have some questions.”
“Yes! Like, how can you even exist?” Ivy scrambled to her feet, the strange spell finally breaking. “You can’t be a unicorn! That’s not a real thing!”
Hugh’s mouth quirked. “Says the wyvern.”
“That’s different. We’re just rare. Not fairy tales!”
“I’m a mythic shifter, same as you. Just a little more mythic than most. Unicorns have always been real, Ivy. But we’ve been in hiding for the past seven hundred years or so.”
“Even from other shifters? Why?”
He tapped the center of his forehead, one eyebrow raising ironically. “Give you one guess.”
Ivy hugged herself, struggling to contain her churning emotions as her mind raced. “That’s why Gaze wants you, isn’t it? For your horn.”
“A live unicorn can cure a lot of things. Wounds, poison, critical injuries…but even we have our limits. We can’t restore a lost limb, or lost youth. We can’t fix congenital problems, where the body doesn’t know that anything’s wrong.” His eyes went bleak. “I can’t cure cancer.”
She wanted to hold him again, and stroke away the old anguish shadowing his face. But something about the way that he stood, straight-backed and rigid, kept her hands at her sides. She’d just been closer to him than she ever had been to anyone in her life, but now he seemed as remote and untouchable as the moon.
Hugh shook himself a little, his usual ironic mask sliding back into place. “But a dead unicorn…now that’s more powerful. I’m a walking jackpot, as far as Gaze is concerned. If you were old and dying and rich, what would you give to be restored back to the prime of life?”