I stopped, panting, my blade drooping in my grip as I stared at the dead Being. It wasn’t the first time I’d killed, not even close, but I had never done it in front of my family before. I didn’t want to look at them; didn’t want them to look at me. Death shouldn’t have touched my foals—they deserved to be home, safe from all the ugliness of the outside world.
“Papa, I’m so sorry!” Colete rushed to me. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no, I’m fine. Why are you sorry?” I was sorry. “Careful!” I quickly ran my blade over my cloak to clean the blood from the metal and sheathed it, then unbuckled my belt and dropped the filthy cloth to the ground.
“I distracted you. It’s my fault she almost got you,” Colete sobbed. Her sides shuddered, and she pressed her forehead into my chest, her feet stamping the ground as her tail swished back and forth in agitation. I hushed her, stroking both sides of her neck.
Londe watched us, his face blank, Marces tucked against his side. Wenn and Tinn looked on but stayed silent. Was my mate upset with me?
“Nothing that has happened is your fault,” I told Colete. “And I would never be angry that you were concerned about me. You stayed with your pater, you stayed safe while I did what had to be done. I killed her, and she can never hurt you again.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Colete whispered. I avoided the angry weals on her shoulders that were just now healed, hoping that one day the scars would fade inside and out, especially now that the damnable being was dead. Not that I wished that my young had to see me kill.
“Can we go?” Marces asked. “It stinks.”
Londe nickered nervously. “That’s an understatement.”
“Yes, let’s go,” I said. I left my cloak there beside the stinking carcass, not wanting to put it back on. Casting back to where I’d seen the other two dots on the map, I led my family on a parallel course to them, not straight at them.
We needed a plan, some time to recover, and I needed to speak with Londe, Tinn, and Wenn. What that wicked beast had spilled in her vitriol just might help us.
An hour later, we found a small hill with tall grass. A good vantage point, some cover if we hunkered down. The ground was soft, dry, and green was all around us. Life. It was a good counterpoint to what we’d just faced. The foals sank down between me and Londe. Marces put his nose in my lap and I stroked his soft muzzle, the hairs tickling my palm.
Wenn and Tinn chittered. Tinn looked at me. “What did you have, before that attack? You knew it was coming.”
“I knew something I was coming,” I corrected him. But he was right. They had come on our journey to help us, and I felt I could trust them. “A friend, a dryad, gave me a map to help me. She couldn’t tell me anything about it, so I wasn’t sure what the symbols on it meant. If the markers were for a place, or people, enemies or friends.”
“And?” Wenn prompted.
“Definitely enemies.”
Tinn’s ears quivered. “A dryad gave you a map. A map that warned you of an enemy right after we left the wildling’s wood.”
That thought had honestly never come to me. I blinked slowly, but… he was right. That foul beast and the master she served were close to the woods inhabited by the wildlings cursed after they harmed dyads. I’d saved a dyad who’d been harmed by humans, preventing her death.
What circuitous magical curse had combined all of these events over the years I’d been cursed with the loss of my horn? It felt like a whole new lifetime, but it had only been two passes of all the seasons.
Long enough for something’s plans to come to fruition, I guess.
‘How long ago did all this start?’ Londe asked.
My horn. The empty piece within me, the soul I’d lost.
“The Beings stole my magic with my horn. Then they stole a lot of other Beings. They especially went after a locus young so they could use him to steal all that power. It’s more than just me. More than just the foals. This is something big.”
“Of course it is,” Londe said. “It always has been. I know what you think, that your soul is gone. That your magic is gone. That you can’t be my mate anymore.”
He slowly gained his feet, then stepped over to me, then knelt again. “If that was true, we couldn’t still be mates. I wouldn’t feel you deep within. I would know your name.”
My heart surged. That had been taken from me, just as surely as my horn, when I’d been banished from my herd and my role as a protector removed. My family taken away.
“Don’t. It’s forbidden.” He would lose his place with the herd.
“There is no magic that could hide any part of you from me, Chasen. You are a protector. You have always been the best of us.” He touched his horn to my forehead, and I felt the love, the bond, as keenly as I felt the missing touch of his horn to mine. “We’ll find out who tried to take our family’s magic, and we will end them. Then we will go home.”
“But—” He’d just broken the biggest taboo of all among the unicorns. “You won’t be able to go—”
“Then we’ll find a new one. But we’ll be together this time. We tried apart. That doesn’t work.”
“Together,” I agreed, looking around at my family and our new friends.
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