7. Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
Mom's shriek could strip wallpaper.
It starts in the neighborhood of a dog whistle and drops three octaves into a register that rattles the iron bed frame.
Her manicured fingers fly to her collarbone.
Her pearls, the good ones, the ones Grandma Eloise left her specifically because they were too ostentatious for anyone with taste, bounce against her knuckles.
"MAGNOLIA."
"Mom, this is—"
"There is a CREATURE in your ROOM."
Dash doesn't flinch. Doesn't tense. Doesn't even shift his weight on the dismantled pallet. He sets the mahogany plank down with surgical precision, aligning it flush with the others. Then he rises.
And rises.
Mom's head tilts back. Back. Back. Her mouth, which has been open since the door hit the wall, keeps going.
Dash at full height in a confined space is not a man standing up.
It's a geological event. His shoulders block the window.
The scars on his chest, pale green lines carved through darker skin, map out a history of violence that spans more surface area than Mom's entire body.
Her second shriek stalls in her throat.
Dash reaches for his shirt. Not rushed. Not embarrassed.
He picks it up off the desk with two fingers, shakes it once, and threads his arms through the sleeves.
The armor-silk catches on the ridges of his forearms. He doesn't button it.
He rolls the cuffs twice, precise folds, each one even.
The open collar frames the column of his neck and the thick scar tissue that crawls up from his sternum.
Then he steps forward.
Mom stumbles back half a step into the hallway. Her heel catches on the carpet runner. She grabs the doorframe.
Dash stops. Lowers his chin. Places his right hand flat across his chest, fingers spread wide over the silk. His left arm sweeps behind his back. He bends at the waist.
Not a nod. Not a dip. A full, formal, spine-straight aristocratic bow, the kind they teach at the Orcish War Academy in the northern territories, the kind that precedes treaty signings and surrender negotiations and state funerals. He holds the position for three full seconds.
The hallway goes quiet. Somewhere downstairs, a string quartet is warming up, and the faint whine of a violin drifts through the floorboards. Mom's mouth closes. Opens. Closes again.
"Madam Jenkins. Dash Roark. Your daughter's partner. Forgive my state of undress. The wardrobe required restructuring to accommodate the room's spatial limitations."
Mom blinks. Seven times. I count.
"You..." She swallows. Her hand hasn't left the doorframe. "You speak English."
"Four languages, Madam. English, Orcish High Tongue, conversational Elvish, and enough Dwarven to negotiate mining contracts."
The pearls have stopped bouncing. Mom's posture undergoes a tectonic shift. Her shoulders drop a quarter inch. Her chin lifts. The expression that crosses her face is one I've cataloged over years of being her daughter: recalculation.
She's pricing him.
The shirt is clearly bespoke. The bow was flawless. The language, precise. Mom doesn't care about the scars or the tusks or the green skin. Mom cares about the thread count and the deportment and whether or not his vocabulary suggests old money or new money or, God forbid, no money.
"Magnolia didn't mention she was bringing anyone."
"A recent development, Madam. I regret the lack of formal notice."
"How recent?"
"Recent enough that I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting her family." Dash straightens from the bow. "An oversight I look forward to correcting this weekend."
Mom's eyes flick to me. Sharp. Surgical.
I am standing next to a stripped wardrobe frame, wearing a wrinkled vintage dress with a flour stain on the hip that I completely forgot about, and my hair is a wind-destroyed catastrophe from the van with no windshield.
I look like I crawled here from a dumpster behind a bakery, which is not far from the truth on any given Tuesday.
My mouth is dry. My palms are wet. The familiar heat creeps up my neck, the blotchy red flush that betrays me every time Mom turns that particular gaze in my direction.
"Hi, Mom," I say again, because my brain has apparently seized.
"You have flour on your dress."
"I know."
"The rehearsal dinner is in ninety minutes."
"I know."
"Your sister has been asking where you are for two hours."
"I was—"
"You were late. As usual." Mom's gaze swings back to Dash. The recalculation is still running. Her lips press into a thin line, the one that means the data is inconclusive but trending favorable. "Mr. Roark. Are you aware that my daughter owns a bakery?"
"I am."
"And that concerns you... how?"
Dash looks at her with perfect stillness. "It doesn't concern me, Madam. She builds things that make people happy. That requires more courage than most professions I've encountered, and I've encountered a significant number."
Mom's left eyebrow moves a full centimeter.
The string quartet downstairs finds its tuning. A cello joins the violin. The sound swells through the old building like a held breath.
"Rehearsal dinner. Ninety minutes." Mom straightens her pearls. "Don't be late."
She turns on her heel and vanishes down the hallway without closing the door.
The door stays open. Mom's perfume lingers, something floral and accusatory.
I sink onto the tiny bed. The mattress wheezes under me like it's also been judged and found wanting.
"She liked you."
Dash looks at me.
"No, seriously. That was her liking someone. The eyebrow thing. When she hates you, she doesn't move her face at all. Ask my college roommate. Ask my therapist. Ask literally anyone who's ever brought a casserole to her house that wasn't in a Le Creuset."
Dash buttons his shirt. Two buttons. From the bottom. The collar stays open. "Your mother operates a dominance-based social hierarchy with economic gatekeeping. Standard tribal structure. I've negotiated with warlords who use the same framework."
"Cool, so Thanksgiving should be a breeze."
His mouth does the thing. The almost-thing. The ghost of a twitch at the corner. It's not a smile. Orcs don't smile, according to the fourteen websites I stress-read at 3 AM before hiring him. But it's adjacent.
I grab my garment bag from the van wreckage pile by the door and disappear into the bathroom. Eighty-seven minutes. I can do this.
I cannot do this.
Forty minutes later, I'm standing in a lavender dress with my hair pinned into something that suggests competence, and Dash is beside me in the full armor-silk suit, and we're walking across the country club's grand lawn toward the rehearsal dinner pavilion, and there are torches.
There are torches and there is mud.
The entire south lawn has been transformed.
Gone are the white linen tables and the crystal stemware and the string quartet.
In their place: a churned field of dark earth, a series of wooden barricades draped in enchanted ivy, and a pen at the far end containing six enormous magical boars.
Their tusks glow faint amber. Their eyes are red. One of them is eating a croquet mallet.
A tall Elven maitre d' is at the pavilion entrance in a spotless white jacket, holding a brass horn and a scroll.
"Welcome to the Silverleaf Country Club rehearsal dinner. As per club tradition dating to the Third Era, all guests will participate in the ceremonial boar hunt before the evening meal is served."
My sister Petunia is already in the mud.
She's wearing a silk jumpsuit and custom hunting boots that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
Her fiance, Todd, a perfectly symmetrical man who works in private equity, stands behind her holding a ceremonial spear like it's a golf club.
They look like a catalog spread for people who've never experienced a real problem.
"Maggie!" Petunia waves her spear. "You made it! I love that you're wearing that color again!"
Again. She says again like lavender is a crime I keep committing.
"Tradition dictates," the maitre d' continues, unrolling his scroll with the gravity of a man reading a death sentence, "that each couple must work in tandem to capture and subdue one boar.
Only upon successful capture will dinner be served.
Weapons are provided." He gestures to a rack of wooden shields and blunted lances wrapped in enchanted vines.
"The boars have been fed a mild aggression potion.
They will charge. The club assumes no liability. "
"I'm sorry, what?"
No one else looks surprised. The other couples are already selecting weapons.
Mark is here, solo, flexing his way into the hunting gloves across the field.
Mom waits at the pavilion under an umbrella held by a member of the waitstaff, sipping champagne and watching like a Roman empress at the Colosseum.
Dash picks up one of the wooden shields. Turns it over. Sniffs the enchanted vine binding. Sets it down.
"Substandard construction. The binding will snap on impact."
He picks up a lance. Bends it between his hands. The wood groans. He sets that down too.
"These weapons are decorative."
"They're traditional," the maitre d' sniffs.
"They're kindling."
A boar screams from inside the pen. The sound is somewhere between a chainsaw and a pipe organ. The ground vibrates. The enchanted ivy on the barricades starts writhing, reaching for anything warm-blooded.
"Dash." I grab his forearm. The muscle underneath is like gripping a tree root. "We don't have to do this. We can skip it. We can eat in the room. I have protein bars in my—"
"The contract specifies full event participation."
"I wrote that contract on a bar napkin in blood!"
"Blood contracts are the most binding kind." He rolls his sleeves up. Both forearms, exposed. The scars catch torchlight. "How fast can you run?"
"What?"
"In those shoes. How fast."
I look down at my kitten heels. Look back up at him. Look at the mud field. Look at the boar that just headbutted its pen gate hard enough to crack the bottom hinge.