With this novel, Mary Jo Putney’s Guardian series gets a makeover. The books will no longer be a part of Ballantine’s Romance wing, but moves to the publishing house’s SF/Fantasy adjunct, Del Rey, and Mary Jo Putney becomes M. J. Putney. While the fantasy elements in the series merit the move, rest assured that the romance remains at the heart of the novels.

Guardians are mages, humans with magical powers who have pledged to use their magic for the good of humankind. Simon Malmain, the Earl of Falconer, is the chief enforcer for the Guardian Council who tracks and brings to justice Guardians who have strayed. He has a confrontation with Lord Drayton, whose many transgressions against Guardian law include encouraging the late Jacobite Rebellion and ominous signs of planning Something Big.

During the confrontation, Drayton channels immense power from an external source and turns Simon into a unicorn. Drayton then tries to kill him for his horn, which contains great magical properties. Simon manages to escape, but now what? He can’t perform magic and it is a struggle to maintain his rational self, to not let his animal instincts overwhelm his human self.

The traditional method of capturing a unicorn is to stake out a virgin and let the unicorn come to her, for unicorns are attracted to purity. Virgins are not exactly thick on the ground in Drayton’s castle; the only one around is “Mad Meggie,” an ugly, timid, simple stammering girl who is in thrall to Drayton. She is the source of Drayton’s power, and he regularly taps into her in a kind of rape of the mind and soul. The ploy works like a charm and Simon is drawn to Meg, but she helps him escape and runs away with him. Both are injured, and when Meg touches Simon’s bloody wound with her bloody finger, he transforms back into his human form.

Simon senses that Meg has been ensorcelled and though he cannot completely sever her connection with Drayton, there is much he can do. Freed from the spells, Meg’s appearance changes and her mind is her own. She realizes that Drayton has enslaved her for ten years, since she was fourteen, the age when mages come into their power. Meg has the potential to be a very powerful mage, greater than any Simon has ever known, but she doesn’t know how to use it. She needs to be trained, and since Simon has a tendency to revert to his unicorn form at odd moments, he needs to keep her close to him, for his sake, as well as to keep her safe from Drayton.

Simon and Meg’s relationship when he is a unicorn is fascinating. Simon is so drawn to her, and feels such longing, joy and contentment that it is all he can do to not lay his head in her lap and stay there. He is also quite attracted to her when in his human form, but how much of that attraction is real and how much is residual unicorn/virgin magnetism?

One cannot help but sympathize with Meg and all she has been through. She has no memory of her life before Drayton. Her desire to find her family is poignant and her education in discovering her magical abilities is exciting. When a marriage between her and Simon is proposed as being mutually beneficial, she refuses, wanting to find herself, to discover and control her own life before giving it to another. But she cannot deny the attraction she feels for Simon. Of course, in order to be of help to Simon, she must remain a virgin, something which becomes harder to do as time goes on.

My only complaint is that a good deal of a mage’s actions takes place mentally and internally, which bogged down the story a time or two. But more often this glimpse into the internal workings of a Guardian’s powers was absorbing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and becoming a part of M. J. Putney’s Guardian world.