They ate in silence. Thorion picked at his plate before slinking to the corner by the fireplace. Roxanne didn’t blame him for wanting to be alone. She didn’t know what had passed privately between the two beasts, but she was sure of one thing: if the unicorn had been their last resort, then they were out of resorts. They’d reached a dead-end.
When the royals came downstairs, it fell to Roxanne to explain everything. She retold the story three times—to Effrax, to Max, and finally to Seba when the princess joined them.
“Then the unicorn told Thorion to do what Valerion had done,” Roxanne finished, “and Thorion told him it couldn’t be done. That was the end of it.”
Seba rounded on Max. “What did Valerion do?”
“He gave his soul to the gods of Selaras,” Effrax supplied. “They used his magic
