“Holy shite,” Torin whispered, his arm tightening around me. “Is that?—”
The unicorn’s hooves made no sound as it pranced lightly into the clearing, the grass seeming to brighten under its steps. It came to a halt a few feet from us, head held high.
Then, slowly, it lowered its head.
Bowed.
Once.
A simple, graceful nod that felt, somehow, like …acknowledgment.
My throat went tight. I had the wild, irrational sensation that it could see straight through me—threads and all. It felt like standing in front of something pure. Something old and powerful and utterly uninterested in human nonsense, except that, for this one brief moment, it had decided we were worth a look.
Heat flooded my eyes. I gripped Torin’s hand where it rested on my hip.
“Are we hallucinating?” he asked hoarsely.
“If we are, we’re having the same hallucination,” I whispered.
The unicorn held our gaze for another heartbeat, then gave the tiniest toss of its head, mane rippling like water. It turned, hooves barely kissing the ground, and trotted back toward the trees.
As it reached the shadow of the branches, its body began to glow brighter, edges blurring, until it dissolved back into mist and light and then—nothing. Just the ordinary green of the forest, the faint rustle of leaves, and the birdsong returned.
“Okay,”Bracken said finally, sounding slightly hysterical.“Okay. All right. No, that’s fine. That’s…that’s just a unicorn. It’s only the rarest bloody magickal creature in existence. No big deal. Totally normal Sunday.”
I exhaled a shaky laugh that came out half-sob. “Did that…just happen?”
Torin turned to me, his face alight in a way I’d never seen before. With pure, childlike wonder.
“Liora,” he said, voice thick. “We just saw a unicorn.”
“We did,” I said, my own chest too tight to contain it all. Awe, joy, terror, excitement—they all tangled together in one glorious mess.
His free hand came up to cradle my cheek, thumb brushing my skin. “I knew there was magick here, but…that…” He shook his head, laughing in disbelief. “That was …beautiful.”
“It chose to show itself,”Bracken babbled from his branch, pacing.“They don’t do that. Not to just anyone. I need to sit down.”
I leaned into Torin, resting my forehead against his chest, trying to steady my breathing. “What does it mean?” I whispered. “Why would a unicorn just…appear? And bow?”
“Maybe it was saying hello,” Torin said softly, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Maybe it was…blessing the place. Or you.”
“Us,” I corrected automatically. “You saw it too.”
What did it mean that it appeared to both of us? Was it giving us its blessing? The way it had nodded?Because how right did it feel to be in Torin’s arms in that moment?
We stood there for a long moment, clinging to each other in the quiet, the afterglow of impossible magick humming in the air.
I laughed, a little hysterical, and tightened my arms around Torin just once more before pulling back.
“I have to get ready for dinner,” I said, still breathless. “And at some point, I need to process the fact that we were just casually visited by a top-tier magickal creature in the front garden.”
“Go,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “I’ll …finish this.” He gestured vaguely at the wood pile, like his brain hadn’t quite rebooted either. “We can freak out properly later.”
“Deal,” I said.
As I headed for the house, my legs a little wobbly, I glanced back once more at the edge of the trees.
Nothing but shadows and light and ordinary birdsong.