“You don’t have to do this,” Ivy protested, as Hugh drew her down the corridor. “You shouldn’t do this, Hugh. If I don’t know, then I can’t betray you.”

“I’m not worried about that.” He kept a firm hold of her hand, unlocking a door with the other. “And you need to know.”

The door swung open, revealing a set of plain wooden steps leading down into darkness. Hugh descended without hesitation, pulling her after him. Ivy clung to his hand, his fingers strong and reassuring around her own.

Her boot unexpectedly sank into something soft and springy rather than echoing from another wooden step. Ivy stumbled, only Hugh’s grip saving her from falling flat on her face. She put out a hand to catch herself, but her fingers encountered rustling leaves instead of a wall.

“What the—?” Ivy reached out again, tentatively, and felt something that she could have sworn was the rough bark of a tree. “What is this?”

A click, and the room filled with a soft blue light. It was dim and diffuse, but seemed dazzling after the pitch blackness. It illuminated the sharp planes of Hugh’s face like moonlight, silvering his cheekbones and tracing the curve of his lips. There was something vulnerable about his eyes that she’d never seen before.

“This is where I shift,” he said.

Ivy stared around. Her first impression was that they stood, impossibly, in a forest glade. A full moon glimmered through the branches overhead, riding high in a pitch-black sky speckled with distant stars. Soft spring grass rustled under her feet.

But…it was all fake.

The air was dry and sterile rather than filled with the lush green scent of growing plants. The grass underfoot was plastic. The tree trunks were real, but only fabric leaves hung motionless from their branches. The moon was just a light bulb in a paper globe shade; the stars, glowing paint.

“You shift here?” She revolved on the spot, taking in all the carefully-detailed fakery. “Why?”

“I can’t risk being seen. I can hide myself from human eyes, but other shifters would still be able to see me. So I built this. So I could pretend.” Hugh smiled his edged, bitter smile. “Pathetic, I know.”

She’d never stood in a room so permeated with sadness. The thought of him down here all alone, trying to pretend that fake grass was real and that the ceiling was full of stars…her throat closed up.

“Why?” she whispered again.

He released her hand at last. He walked to the center of the room—it only took two steps—and turned to face her.

“Because this is what I am,” he said.

He shimmered…and the sad glow of the light bulb moon washed away, replaced by a truer, softer light.

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?”

Ivy’s heart contracted at the thought of his shining beauty being snuffed out. But Gaze was a monster. If anyone would kill a unicorn, he would.

“I’ll never tell,” she vowed. “But you shouldn’t have trusted me with this, Hugh. It’s too big. I wish you hadn’t—“

The words died on her tongue. No matter what, she couldn’t regret that perfect moment. She couldn’t regret seeing his true self.

Hugh put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunching a little. He still didn’t quite look at her.

“I didn’t show you in order to explain why Gaze wants me.” There was a rough catch in his voice. “I showed you so that you’ll understand why I can’t…Ivy, you must know the big thing about unicorns. What all the legends and myths say.”

For a moment, she thought he was still talking about his horn. Then it struck her. The other thing about unicorns.

The reason why he’d put his head in her lap.

“You like virgins,” she said, and immediately wished the fake grass would swallow her up. “Um. That came out wrong.”

“It’s not so much a matter of liking virgins.” A faint flush stained his sharp cheekbones. “But being around anyone who isn’t chaste gives me a screaming headache. Even people who have been celibate for decades still make me flinch a little. Virgins are the only people I can touch without pain.”

She digested this for a moment. “You can touch Hope, right?”

“And this is really not where I was expecting this conversation to go,” he muttered. “Yes, Ivy. Your little sister is definitely still a virgin. Anyone else whose sex life you’d like to enquire about?”

“Um.” She was certain she was red as a brick. “Yours. If you…how do you…?”

“I don’t.”

All that masculine beauty, and he was just as untouched as she was?

“Ever?” Ivy said in disbelief.

“Ever.” He met her eyes at last, and the raw, desperate hunger in them stole the breath from her lungs. “I want you, Ivy. So badly that it’s all I can do not to take you up against a wall here and now. But I can’t. I’d lose my unicorn.”

She blinked. “Is that supposed to be a metaphor?”

“No. If I—if I made love to you, it would kill my unicorn. Literally.”

She stared at him.

He let out a harsh bark of laughter, raking both hands through his hair. “And my bloody suicidal beast just said, It would be worth it.”

“Let me get this straight,” Ivy said slowly. “If we have sex, you’d never be able to shift again?”

“Worse than that,” he said in a low voice. “I’d lose my powers. Lose my ability to heal. Hell, I might even lose the connection to you. I don’t know. But I do know I wouldn’t be a shifter anymore.”

“Wait. Wait.” Ivy held up her hands, her mind reeling. “I need a minute.”

She paced from fake tree to fake tree, struggling to wrap her head around everything that he’d told her. What he was, what he’d risked to show her, what he still risked just by being near her…

“Okay,” she said, turning back to Hugh with her hands on her hips. “So what about anal?”