The sound washed over me like a gentle wave, and I saw his lips move as he lifted me into the air, sitting me on the top of an upside-down trough.
“Hands off!” Thackery's lips snapped like a whip. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Escorting her out before the three other assassins against the wall decide to take their shot.”
“Three other assassins?” Thackery was dumbfounded. “I could have handled them. No one asked for your help.”
“I couldn’t resist,” the unicorn said with a grin, “strange, most women find me irresistible.”
As he said the words, he seemed to come into sharper focus.
“Wren, are you okay?” Thackery asked. “It must have been a terrible shock.”
I did feel unusual, but it wasn’t from the shock of seeing a man I’d known since childhood killed in front of me. I felt like I was under some kind of spell, more intense than any I’d ever felt before.
“It’s probably my aura,” the unicorn said. “It has that effect on the feminine mind.”
“Can't you... redirect it or something?” Thackery demanded.
“Once a woman feels it, there’s no way to stop it—well, not in a public place, but you wouldn’t like that option.”
Thackery raised his fists. “What did you say about the princess?”
The unicorn smiled. “No offense intended.”
“This was a terrible idea,” Thackery admitted, lowering his hands.
“I should say, you came to find a unicorn and brought a shiny virgin with you. To do what? Test the rumors? That’s the kind of thick-headedness likely to start a war.” The unicorn threw both hands into his long silver hair, pulling at it roughly. It was good to see that he was capable of frustration, that he wasn’t perfect.
I tried not to laugh but found that I already was.
He dropped his hands to his side and his hair tumbled onto the sides of his face, cloaking the high cheekbones in shadow. Only his eyes stood out from the monochromatic portrait. Blue, but almost white—with a strange red tinge at the edges. It was what the sky looks like at dusk, an inch from a lightning bolt, and with an icy kind of electricity.
“Do I amuse you?” the unicorn asked in a low voice.
My life amuses me, I wanted to say, but that would sound stupid. My life was a mess and had ended before it had even begun. It would take a dark and twisted soul to find mirth in that.
And yet I did.
“Will I ever stop feeling like this?” My heart was thudding like I had just witnessed an earthquake.
He glanced sideways at Thackery. “I don't think we'll be spending enough time together for you to get used to the feeling, I'm afraid.”
That was strange. He'd released my hand, but I could still feel his pulse against my palm. What did he mean we wouldn't be spending enough time together? I wasn’t sure I could get used to this feeling—but I also didn’t want it to end.
“Maybe we can find someone else to help us,” Thackery said.
It was in that moment that the embers of anger I'd stoked inside myself reignited. Sparks crawled up my insides, rekindling a fire, trying to choke out everything else. The fog around my mind evaporated.
“You,” I hissed, pointing at the unicorn.
“Me?” he asked in a playful tone. Before I could react, he put his hands around my hips and lifted me gently back to the ground. My skin stayed warm where he touched me.
“Do you have a name, unicorn?” I demanded.
The boy unicorn recoiled, as though I'd struck him with an open hand and then kissed his bloody lip. I wanted to do both, but at least I'd cleared my thoughts enough to make the distinction between the two.
I swung my hand to slap him, and he flowed like water around it with an intoxicating chuckle. “That’s new. I usually don’t get slapped until... after.”
I didn’t have time for this. I barely had time for anything anymore.
“Well?” I snapped.
“My name is Calen,” the boy said, his voice soft as a summer breeze.
It made my very center twist up.
“What did you do to me?” I accused.
Calen flipped his bangs from his face. The world lit up as if someone had turned on the sun.
“Take off this infatuation spell!” I shouted.
Bids flew from trees as far as a hundred yards from me, and I still didn't try to curb the sound of my voice.
With the grace of a prima ballerina, Calen threw his head back, but instead of leaping forward with graceful dance moves, he merely laughed.
“If only I could, but you seem to be fending it off—somehow.” Calen raised a curious eyebrow. “You really have no education on magical beings?” he asked.
“You mean, apart from mages?” I spouted back. I had read all of the stories of course, but nothing could prepare me for this. He walked on two legs like a man and talked like a man, but he was as far from mankind as soggy green moss was from a tree.
This time when Calen laughed, it was more frightening.
“How little you know then,” Calen said. His eyes narrowed to slits. He tilted his head, and the angles of the world seemed to change.
“Your vanity is showing Princess,” Calen chided, but I couldn't strike back, the horizon still felt off-kilter. “Mages aren't magical beings at all.”
Thackery made a squawking sound in protest, but Calen silenced him with half a wave of his hand. I couldn't tell if it was mere body language or influence, but whatever put Thackery in his place felt like magic.
“There's a difference between you and I, even more so between your boyfriend and I,” Calen said, jutting his shoulder to a red-faced Thackery.
“Four hooves, and a fur coat?” I asked.
“That’s merely one of my forms,” he replied.
That was something akin to saying the moon was a form of the sun.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I countered.
Thackery was fuming.
“Are you sure?” Calen asked.
“Yes,” I said bluntly. “Let’s stick to the topic at hand, shall we?
Calen winked and I felt heat flood my neck and chest. “Ah yes, I was explaining mages. Mages are like a ferryboat—picking up magic from somewhere, and depositing it somewhere else.”
“You’re calling me a boat?” I asked.
“Exactly. Now a unicorn, that’s more like the water the boat floats on. I, I am like magic water—care to go for a swim?”
He came two steps closer to me, all his charm from earlier vanished and replaced with animalistic need. It vanished in a second.
“Learn to recognize the difference,” he told me before walking away.
I watched his firm backside as Calen headed back the direction we'd come. I was left open-mouth staring after him.
How dare he.
“Unicorn!” Thackery bellowed, and it was so very much like his father, I couldn't stop the cringe that sprung from my spine.
“We have business, and it involves you.” He said with a challenge.
Calen stopped and spun in an instant, seeming to hover in the air above the ground like a ghost. “I don't dally in the affairs of men. Whatever it is you've heard about me is wrong.”
He floated forward another step.
“I heard you'd lost something rather important to you,” Thackery said.
I hadn't noticed, but he'd unwrapped the darkened artifact. I heard the sound of the canvas sack hitting the dirt and a second later he lifted the dark blade, glowing menacingly in his hand.
Calen froze, his features drastically altered from how he'd looked only moments before. His jaw seemed to be carved from stone that had weathered centuries.
“Where did you get that blade, boy?” He demanded of Thackery, not taking his eyes off of it.
“From the same man who took your horn,” Thackery replied. “Hashir the Collector. He has something else we're looking for. Something important. The blade is yours if you help us get it bac
k from him.”
“What exactly did he take from you?” Calen asked.
“Something that we boats need before we run out of magic,” Thackery admitted, already telling Calen more than he should.
“Oh?” Calen asked, obviously not paying attention.
“The rune Heart of Spellshallow is gone,” I said.
Calen’s gaze probing, but his eyes were flashing with possibilities I couldn't keep up. “Why should I care?”
“It was stolen,” I told Calen.
“Security always was a bit lax in Spellshallow. That’s what happens when you leave your magical items lying about.” His face fell forward this time, jerking his whole body as he roared with laughter. “The honor system was always destined to fail. I've been alive a good while, and I can tell you with certainty that there's no such thing as a truly honorable man.”
“You haven’t met everyone,” I mumbled.
“On the contrary, dear Princess, I have met entirely too many men. And they never cease to amaze me in the absolute worst ways possible. Given your present state, I can't imagine you've met many honorable men either. At least not one you deemed good enough for you.”
I swallowed, accepting his criticism. “Will you help us?”
Calen considered, but didn't budge. “Oh dear mage,” Calen said in a mocking tone. “I have accepted my fate. Why should I risk it to help you?” His silver eyelashes crashed together like two thick lines of ice. What was behind was focused and cold.
“Come with us,” I added. My body ached for his touch once more.
“You'll just get yourself killed,” Calen said, but his eyes had already gone far away, as if viewing a vision of the future.
“Aren’t you bored with this?” Thackery asked. “From what I hear, you're immortal. If you weren't, I'd wager you'd have drunken your life away by now. If we die, so what? At least it will give you a little adventure.”
So what? The largest country in the Realm of Mages would cease to exist and my entire family would be killed—and that was just to start with. Thackery sounded so flippant about our ultimate failure and demise. Had he given up before we'd even started?
It had been his idea to seek the help of the unicorn. He’d said that rumors of the unicorn had filled the western border where Thackery used to patrol. No one truly believed it until Hashir himself had come to trade with Lord Barkus. After an evening of feasting and celebration, Hashir had shown his host the horn. The Collector displayed it proudly again over tea in the garden, along with the black blade. The horn was not for sale, but Lord Barkus had paid a dear price for that blade. Thackery claimed it had been divine providence that had allowed him to steal the sword.
It sounded more like luck to me. Before I could get the details sorted out in my mind, Calen was inches away from my face, the scent of him intoxicating.
“Adventure you say…” He looked me up and down then. “I wonder…”
With a long finger, Calen trailed the edge of my face. Following my lines with more precision and lightness than an artist's brush. Where he touched, I felt my skin prickle and blush as though I was his canvas and he was merely painting me whatever color he chose.
“What are you doing?” I asked in a bewildered voice. The peripherals of the world seemed to fade away, leaving only his face and mine.
I tried to stop it, I knew I should, but the traitorous part of me didn't want to. I needed to forget. I wanted to feel on fire, the way I knew I could when his strange blue eyes were trained on my lips.
“I’ve never met a woman I didn’t like, but few can hold my interest for long,” Calen said flatly. “You’ve heard the rumors about unicorns…” There was something else between the words—a warning maybe—hinting at forbidden desires.
“I thought your kind had abandoned the Realm of Mages?” I asked. Yet there he was, right in front of me. In a move so fast I missed it, Calen was clutching my chin in his cool palm.
“Get your hands off her!” Thackery rushed forward and then was rolling away in the dirt as Calen dismissed him with a flick of his arm.
“What else have you heard?” he asked, his tone dismissive. “About what happens to the young women they meet?”
My very being quivered at the thought.
He was just messing with my head.
“So, you have heard the tales,” Calen mused.
His eyes were delighted then, and yet something in them was terrifying and tragic.
Calen withdrew his hand from my face as though my flush had suddenly burned him. The sudden absence of his touch left me suddenly feeling hollow.
“This can’t be real,” I breathed out. Reaching toward anything I could grasp with my mind, trying to pull myself back to reality.
“You think not?” He asked, “I am blood, and bone, and lust. I am more real than the unicorns you have dreamt of.”
How could he know that? As a small girl, I had fantasized about riding a unicorn through the forest. A sleek white horse with a silver horn and flowing main atop a coat the color of moonlight. Now that I could see something of that vision in Calen’s human form, my fantasy was suddenly very different.
“Come now. Surely you know what happens to a girl who finds a unicorn?” Calen asked.
“She falls in love and loses herself forever...” I whispered.
His hands were on my face again, shielding the sides, making me look at him and nothing else. Thackery was swearing, his boots scraping on the dirt as he charged, swinging the black blade high through the air. “Get the hell away from her!”
Calen removed one hand from my temple and caught the sword as it descended. He ripped it free of Thackery’s hand. Spinning it in the air, he smashed the pommel into the side of Thackery’s face. Falling to the ground, an angry red mark blossomed across his jaw.
Thackery rolled back to his feet, slower this time. Calen stalled him with a raised hand.
“I have accepted your sword and therefore your deal. Be at peace or I will knock you senseless.”
I gave Thackery a warning glance. There was no doubt in my mind that Calen would kill him if he continued to attack him.
“Your princess is quite safe with me. I swore off virgins long ago. Of course, it’s been a challenge convincing them to swear off me.”
My eyes narrowed and anger once again coursed through my blood, releasing me of his spell.
Thackery’s hand’s twitched towards the steel sword at his side.
“Unless you want to try to take it back and kill me with it?” Calen’s eyes seemed to want him to do just that. He even offered the blade forward in a mocking way.
The corner of Thackery’s mouth twitched—he wanted to grab the blade, kill the unicorn and keep me for himself. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to take the blade, kill Calen, and kiss me in triumph.
I made my decision. Without a word, I rushed forward and kissed Calen full on the mouth. He dropped the dark sword in surprise.
Chapter 6.
Calen
I could go on and on about women and wine, the variety of earthy sweetness that a rare vintage has and the full-bodied bouquet of one aged to perfection—but I prefer whiskey. Wren tasted like tea with too much sugar and milk. A memory licked at the back of my tongue, as if I had been kissed twice.
It wouldn't be me who pulled away first, though I knew better than to lead her on. I was a complete scoundrel to allow her to kiss me like this. When I first saw her, I knew she had lost the magic she had been carrying, but there was a subtle magic in her mouth—an electric spark in her smooth lips, and a deep well of power in her soul. No one would have taught her how to reach it, of course, but it was there—calling to me in a way I wished it hadn’t. Suddenly I was afraid of not having those lips on mine, or what would happen if I reached inside and took her hidden magic for myself.
Instead I ran my hands down her thin shoulders, curving across her waist to cup her round behind. I squeezed. Wren stopped kissing me, the absence of her racing pulse becam
e a terrible silence to my ears.
Anger filled those perfect, alluring eyes. Her look turned into one of disgust, then reflected back at herself, then me again. Her mouth hardened and she slapped me.
“You kissed me, remember?” I said, barely feeling the blow.
I sighed. This Princess couldn't decide whether to stoke the fire growing inside her or drown it with water. I wondered which side would eventually win out. At that moment, there was nothing else in the world that interested me as much.
“Don’t forget, the world is ending…” I said with a smile.
Her blood began to boil.
“You tricked me!” She shouted, still close enough to kiss.
“I’ve tricked myself,” I replied.
My world has been slowly ending since I could remember. Every day spent hornless was another one closer to losing my identity.
“Wren,” the Mage called to her.
His voice was low like he was trying to lure a wild horse toward the bridal. The sparks in her eyes dimmed, but her face still glowed ember red. Cheeks like paper a second from ash as she raised her chin.
“If we stand here much longer the assassins will make another attempt,” I heard myself say. What was I thinking? Was I actually going to help these two?
I tried to move around the girl, but she blocked my path—maddening.
“Let’s be clear about a few things,” I began, “I’m only in this to retrieve my horn. I don't mind if you come along provided you don’t get any blood on my boots when you inevitably meet your end. The workmanship is simply impossible to recreate in this realm.”
I motioned to my boots. The soft leather was cut from the tan-red hide of a type of fawn that didn’t exist here. They were light as a feather, completely watertight, and the only thing I had left from my home. True, blood had been spilled on them many times and never stained, but they were still irreplaceable.
“You're joking,” the Princess said, a pucker returning to her ridiculous red-kissed lips. I could still feel the damn things.
“The second thing you should know is that I never joke,” I added with a smile, “and the third thing is, my dear Wren, we aren't a team. I won't be holding your hand, not unless you're ready to put out, and probably not then either.”
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