Orc Tusks in a Wedding Tux

MAGNOLIA

The mug catches the lantern light for exactly one beautiful second before it shatters against the wall three inches from my face.

I drop.

Ale rains down. Glass skitters across the floorboards. My knees hit sticky wood and something squelches under my palm that I refuse to identify.

This is fine. Everything is fine.

I'm a small-business owner in a vintage polka-dot dress, crawling across the floor of the most notorious mercenary tavern in the Lower Quarter on a Tuesday night, and everything is completely, perfectly, one-hundred-percent fine.

A boot slams down next to my hand. I yank my fingers back and scramble sideways, tucking behind an overturned bench.

Two humans grapple past me, one of them missing a shoe and most of his dignity.

A half-troll picks up a third human and uses him to hit a fourth human, which, credit where it's due, is efficient.

The invitation crinkles inside my coat. Thick ivory cardstock, gold leaf lettering, a wax seal my sister Petunia had custom-made with her and Todd's intertwined initials. I've been carrying it against my ribs for three weeks like a wound that won't close.

You are cordially invited to the wedding of Petunia Renée Jenkins and Todd Andrew Bellingham III.

Todd Andrew Bellingham the Third. Petunia's perfect match. A private equity manager with a weak chin and a trust fund.

Another mug detonates. This one hits the ceiling beam above me and showers my hair with foam and ceramic dust. I cover my head, count to three, and peek over the bench.

There.

Back corner. Alone.

The orc sits at a two-person table that looks like doll furniture beneath his forearms. He takes up the entire bench on his side and some of the wall behind him.

Dark forest-green skin catches the low firelight.

Scars crisscross his arms like a road map to every bad decision anyone ever made in his presence.

One tusk curves up sharp and whole; the other is broken halfway, the jagged edge worn smooth with time.

He drinks from a tankard with the calm of a man watching rain through a window, not a bar fight three feet from his left elbow.

A chair sails past him. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't even track it with his eyes.

Okay. Deep breath. Go time.

I launch from behind the bench and immediately collide with a dwarf going the opposite direction. We bounce off each other. She swears at me in a language that sounds like gravel in a blender. I apologize, duck a thrown boot, and keep moving.

The crowd surges. A wave of bodies pushes me sideways into a support pillar. My ribs protest. The bag of gold at my hip digs into my kidney. I clutch it tighter and weave through the room between two brawling minotaurs who are, improbably, arguing about cheese.

"Gouda is a breakfast cheese, Aren!"

"Gouda is an anytime cheese, you absolute philistine!"

Ten feet. A bottle rockets past my shoulder and explodes in a spray of cheap whiskey and cheaper glass. Droplets pepper my neck. I wipe them with my sleeve and keep going.

Five feet. A barstool bounces off the floor and careens toward my shins. I hop over it, barely, my flats skidding on the ale-slick wood.

Two feet.

The orc still hasn't moved. Up close, his shoulders block the entire back wall. The tankard in his hand is roughly as large as my head. His eyes, dark amber beneath a heavy brow, track upward from his drink to my face with the slow precision of someone sighting down an arrow.

I plant both hands on his table and lean in, breathing hard.

He blinks. Once.

I reach into my coat and pull out the invitation. Slap it down on the scarred wood between us. The gold leaf glints. The wax seal stares up at us with Todd and Petunia's stupid intertwined initials.

Then I unclip the bag from my belt. Fifteen hundred gold pieces.

Six months of weekend catering gigs, three months of 4 a.m. croissant batches, and one extremely lucrative contract supplying mini-tarts to the Mayor's office.

I drop it next to the invitation with a solid, satisfying thunk that rattles his tankard.

The bag slumps open. Gold winks in the firelight.

Behind me, a body crashes through a table. Someone screams something about gouda.

The orc looks at the invitation. Looks at the gold. Looks at me.

I straighten up, brush glass from my sleeve, and push a strand of ale-damp hair off my forehead. My heart hammers against the cardstock-shaped bruise on my ribs.

His gaze drops to the wax seal. One scarred, sausage-thick finger reaches out and tilts the invitation toward him. He reads it.

A glass smashes somewhere. The cheese minotaurs have escalated to headbutting.

He looks up again. Those amber eyes pin me to the floor.

"I need a date," I say, "to my sister's wedding."

The tavern erupts behind me. He doesn't even glance at it.

"My ex-boyfriend is going to be there."

One dark eyebrow rises.

"And I need you to be terrifying."

The orc doesn't respond. He just stares at me with those amber eyes like I'm a contract written in a language he's still translating.

A bottle explodes against the pillar behind me. I flinch. He doesn't.

"Three days," I say, louder now because one of the cheese minotaurs has found a fiddle and is playing it aggressively. "Country club wedding. Silverleaf Country Club. You show up, you look intimidating, you make my family deeply uncomfortable, and you leave fifteen hundred gold richer."

He tilts his head. The tusk catches firelight.

"You want me to... attend a wedding."

His voice. Gods above. The sound of it vibrates in my sternum.

"As my boyfriend. My fake boyfriend." I tap the invitation with one flour-stained fingernail. "I need the full experience. Hand-holding, pet names, the works. But mostly I need you to stand next to me looking like you could tear someone's spine out through their throat."

"I could do that."

"The standing part or the spine part?"

"Both."

A grin tugs at my mouth before I can stop it. I kill it. This is a business transaction. "The spine removal won't be necessary. Probably. My aunt Delphine might test you."

He still hasn't touched the gold. Hasn't even shifted on his bench. Those scarred forearms rest on the table like they're bolted there.

"I don't do bodyguard work."

"This isn't bodyguard work."

"You want protection from your family."

"I want theater." I lean in closer. He smells like leather and iron and something woodsy underneath, like pine sap in winter.

"I want my mother to clutch her pearls. I want my cousins to whisper.

I want my sister to spend her entire reception wondering if her new husband is about to get folded in half by a seven-foot orc. "

"Six-nine."

"Close enough."

His eyes narrow a fraction. "What did the ex do?"

The question catches me off guard. My jaw tightens.

The noise of the brawl swells around us, bodies and furniture rearranging themselves with great enthusiasm, and for one stupid second my throat closes up because nobody has asked me that.

Not once. Not my mother, not my friends, not a single person at Petunia's four engagement parties.

"He left," I say. The words taste stale. "That's all."

Something shifts behind those amber eyes. Something I can't read and don't want to.

"The contract," he says, and pulls the invitation closer with that one massive finger. "Three days. What are the specific parameters?"

"Friday through Sunday. Rehearsal dinner Friday night.

Golf tournament Saturday morning, which, I know, but it's a country club, they can't help themselves.

Reception Saturday evening, black tie. Sunday brunch and departure.

" I tick each event off on my fingers. "You'll need a tuxedo. I budgeted for a rental."

"I own a tuxedo."

That stops me. "You own a tuxedo."

"Problem?"

"No, I just..." An orc mercenary with his own formal wear. File that away. "Great. Saves me forty gold."

He picks up his tankard. Takes a slow pull. Sets it back down with mechanical precision in the exact same ring of condensation.

"My rate for a three-day contract is two thousand."

"I have fifteen hundred."

"Then you have a problem."

"I have fifteen hundred and I can make the best chocolate croissant you've ever put in your mouth."

Something flickers across his face. Gone before I can catch it.

"I'm a baker," I add, gesturing at myself as if the flour on my collar and the burn scar on my wrist aren't already screaming it. "Magnolia's on Birch Street. The one with the blue awning."

Recognition. Just a flash. "The cinnamon rolls."

"You know my cinnamon rolls?"

"I've... walked past."

A troll barrels out of the crowd.

Not toward the bar. Not toward the exit. Toward me. Eight feet of mossy gray skin exhaling the stench of a compost heap, one meaty hand already reaching for my shoulder, glassy eyes locked on the bag of gold sitting open on the table.

I don't even get the scream out.

The orc moves. His left arm sweeps across the space between us, and his backhand connects with the troll's chest. The sound is a thunderclap.

Wet. Absolute. The troll's feet leave the ground.

All eight feet of him sails backward through the air, clears two tables and a card game, and crashes into the far wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

The orc's hand settles back on his tankard. Same position. Same grip. His eyes never left my face.

The tavern goes quiet for one full heartbeat. Then the cheese argument resumes and the noise floods back in like nothing happened.

My heart bangs against my ribs. My mouth hangs open. Ale drips from a strand of my hair onto the table.

He lifts the tankard. Sips.

"Fifteen hundred," he says, "and a standing weekly order of cinnamon rolls. For one year."

I close my mouth. Open it. Close it again.

"Deal," I whisper.

He extends his hand across the table. One massive green palm, open and waiting. My entire hand will disappear inside it.

I take it.

His fingers lock with mine, warm and rough and impossibly gentle for a fist that just launched a troll through drywall.

"Dash Roark," he says.

"Magnolia Jenkins."