“Keep it away from people, Merry!” Clayton yelled.
“Okay!” Merry shouted back, immediately chasing the creature toward Elena.
“Wow, you really made that thing useless, didn’t you?” Clayton remarked after the third time the unicorn tripped and fell for no reason.
“Is he useless if he makes her happy?”
Merry held the unicorn up in the air and announced, “I’m naming you Mister Stabby!”
“Of course you are,” Clayton muttered under his breath. “You’re in charge of fixing everything and everyone this thing breaks, Mal.”
Mal watched as Mister Stabby rammed Naerith’s ankle and set fire to his pants. “Worth it.”
“It is,” Clayton said, and Mal realized he wasn’t watching the show. Clayton was talking about him. “You’re worth it. No matter what happens, I chose you.”
“You’re gonna make me blush, Red. You’re really going to take my side against your dreamwalkers?”
“Whatever it takes,” Clayton said simply.
“I love you too, Red.”
“Don’t be sappy.” Clayton planted a quick kiss on Mal’s mouth and then chased after Merry and Mister Stabby as they set fire to every flammable thing in sight.
Good unicorn. He was exactly as fierce as Mal would be if anything tried to take his family.
Mal was going to be a great father.
Epilogue
Mister Stabby ended up requiring his own special corral inside their new home. Here had made a fireproof playspace for him to run freely, possibly because Here had taken a liking to Mister Stabby, and possibly because Eira had declared that if the unicorn set fire to one more thing, she was leaving.
Mister Stabby was also fully banned from the chapter house due to an incident that went something like this:
Upon his return to the Real, Clayton had brought his family—minus his parents. They seemed to think Astraea would get pissed if they went to the Real—for Samantha to inspect.
He wasn’t going to hide anything about anyone. Either Samantha accepted his entire family, or they all walked. Clayton may have an agenda to become the new PR guy for nightmares, but he still had standards.
Samantha took one look at Mal and said, “Never explain anything about him.” When Clayton opened his mouth, she cut him off. “Never. Not one word. Got it?”
Then Mister Stabby darted into the chapter house, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. Samantha screamed bloody murder while chasing after him, shouting for her companion to throw it out. Clayton saw a brief shimmer around Mister Stabby, but it vanished on contact.
“What do you mean you can’t affect it? It’s literally inside you!” Samantha shrieked, swatting the wayward unicorn with an ornamental chair that was easily as old as Clayton’s parents. It caught on fire instantly.
Clayton chased after the chaos, leaving his family on the doorstep of the chapter house.
They circled the loop of hallways connecting all the rooms on the first floor of the building, Samantha yelling at her companion, cursing Clayton, and smacking the unicorn with a smoldering broom the whole way.
She’d had to abandon the chair early on. Apparently, ancient, lacquer-covered wood was highly flammable.
Mister Stabby seemed to be having the time of his life as he galloped around, gleefully igniting Clayton’s place of work as he went. Clayton did his best to believe the flames out of existence as he followed the unfolding chaos, and to his delight, he was mostly successful.
He was really starting to get the hang of his magic.
As Mister Stabby and his screaming entourage looped back to the foyer, they met up with Tommy, Merry, and a brave, if hesitant, Holly.
Clayton flashed a grateful smile to the ceiling. If Samantha’s companion hadn’t approved of Holly, she never would have let her in. Mister Stabby notwithstanding, if she didn’t want something inside the chapter house, it didn’t enter.
Clayton had a feeling that the unicorn was an outlier since Mal had created Mister Stabby. Mal, standing innocently on the doorstep, wasn’t fooling Clayton one bit. He was only staying outside because he was enjoying pretending to be a good little monster.
