“Ugh,”Bracken groaned from somewhere up in the nearest tree.“Get a room.”
“Go away,” I hissed under my breath.
“I live here,” he chittered back.“I’m trapped in a forest romance.”
Torin’s lips twitched. “I’m assuming you’re talking to Bracken and not me?”
“He doesn’t like being third wheel to my hormones,” I muttered.
Torin’s eyes darkened, his gaze dropping briefly to my mouth before meeting my eyes again. “Are your hormones doing something right now, Liora?”
“Yes,” I blurted. “They are doing many things. All of them inappropriate to discuss while the squirrel is listening.”
“Thank the goddess,”Bracken murmured.
Torin laughed, delighted. “Good to know.”
He leaned in, not quite touching me, the heat of his body washing over me like a physical thing. “For what it’s worth, every time you walk by in those tight jeans, my brain turns to sawdust. So we’re even.”
Something in my chest fluttered, wild and reckless. I swallowed. “We should probably…go inside. I need to get ready. The girls invited me to dinner at the castle.”
“Fancy,” he said, still too close. It was becoming increasingly hard to breathe.
“Yeah. Sophie says it’s for the Order. Witchy girls’ night.”
His expression stilled. “Is that a good thing? Are you excited?” We still hadn’t talked too much more about the Order, after I’d told Torin I needed more time to learn about it and absorb just what my role was going to be.
“Terrified,” I admitted. “And excited. It’s been a while since I had proper friends in my life.”
He studied my face, something flickering in his eyes. “They’d be daft not to love you.”
I blinked rapidly, emotion catching me off guard. “Stop saying nice things. I’m still trying to be mad at you for weaponizing your torso.”
He opened his mouth, probably to say something else infuriating and sweet, when the air…changed.
It was subtle at first. A prickle on the back of my neck that sent the hairs on my arms lifting. The breeze stilled. The birdsong that usually filled the clearing quieted, like the forest was holding its breath.
“Do you feel that?” I whispered.
Torin’s muscles tensed under my hands. I realized I had, at some point, grabbed his forearms. “Aye,” he murmured. “Something’s…different.”
Bracken scrambled down the tree in a flurry of claws and bark, landing on a lower branch, tail puffed.“What the?—”
The light in the clearing shifted, brightening, going almost pearlescent. A soft glow coalesced at the edge of the trees, like fog gathering in one spot, swirling tighter and tighter.
My heart pounded. “Torin…”
He slid an arm around my waist, pulling me against him instinctively. I clung to him, eyes wide, as the glow elongated, took shape.
A horse stepped out of the trees.
Except it wasn’t a horse.
It was … impossibly, undeniably … a unicorn.
Its coat was a luminous white, not just pale but radiant, like moonlight made flesh. A spiraled horn, long and slender, rose from its forehead, shimmering with faint iridescent light. Its mane and tail flowed like silk, each movement slow and graceful, and its eyes—luminous, deep, ancient—took us in with unnerving intelligence.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.