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“Of course I would!” He was so curious to know where Orion had formed himself, where Orion had been a little unicorn.

Orion cracked up, shaking his head and holding out his hand. It was a little weird, that Orion had faith his rooms were still there, still as he’d left them.

Of course they are. I locked the door. They can’t get in.

Orion! That’s devious. And sort of wonderful.

The doorway was at the very top of a tower, the door glowing around the edges with a white light that seemed to pulse. Orion held his hand and simply walked through.

“That’s a really neat trick.”

“Yeah. It’s my own invention.”

Cullen looked about, and he saw a gorgeous mural covering the walls, reminiscent of something in an old Tuscan villa, but it had unicorns and pixies and plants Cullen had never seen before.

There was a bed big enough for an actual horse, and a little table that held what looked like a sundial, and tons of other knickknacks and books. The books all looked to be hand-written, or illuminated, he thought it was called. And they were gorgeous.

“These are wild.”

“This one is fairy tales,” Orion said, handing him a heavy leather-bound volume. “We should take it for our butterfly.”

“Oh, but we’ll bring her here, right?” Cullen asked. He couldn’t imagine not coming back.

“We will. I’ll come far more often now. I’ve just been…bitter. I hate that. I’m a unicorn. I’m about love.”

“The magic is thin in the human world, love. They forget about it. It starts to hurt after a while.” Cullen went to sit on the bed, and he patted it to let Orion sit next to him. “Have I ever told you about Hawk?”

“I’ve met him, love.” Orion gave him a quizzical look but came to sit.

“I know, dork. Anyway, we think he was born in the dragonlands and then went to the human world somehow.”

“You think?”

“He’s a little vague on his origins, but that’s the thought.” Cullen sighed, his heart aching for people who couldn’t remember how to be magical. “He lived among humans for a long, long time, and it made him a little nuts.”

“Yeah?” Orion leaned against him.

“Yeah. He slept for hundreds of years at a time and would forget so many things. Like whole swaths of memories.”

“Damn.” Orion rubbed his leg, comforting him. Him! And he wasn’t the one having bad memories.

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know you aren’t the only one.”

“That’s both sad and reassuring. I’ll have to talk to him about it.”

“You will. He’s very open.”

“Thank you, love. I hate to feel…ungrateful. I know my fathers love me. But I just wish I had talked to them sooner, I suppose.”

Cullen snorted. “The brothers and I have a pact not to let anything simmer more than one day. With all of us so close together, it could get really hinky, real fast.”

“Oh, goddess. I join that pact. I don’t want anything to stretch out with you or the family.”

“Good.” Cullen kissed his shoulder. “I like your dads, but you have to remember they live here. They haven’t ever been over there, have they?”

Orion pondered that. “No. No, they haven’t.”

“This is a rarefied world. They all are, in their own ways, yeah? They all have their light and their dark, but the humans? They lose their magic. It grows and then it ebbs. I don’t think anybody knows why.” Cullen shrugged. “Maybe it’s greed? Maybe envy? Maybe it’s just simply that they end up hating each other, and the magic can’t hold. I don’t know; I’m just a dragon. There’s horrific stuff everywhere. It just doesn’t seem to get fed as easily in the other realms. The humans feed it. I don’t have a good reason why. I wish I did.”