8. Dash #2
One final pull. A branch thick as my thigh comes free with a crack that echoes across the entire grounds.
The opening is ragged and enormous. Sap rains down like a bioluminescent waterfall. I step through onto manicured grass.
The practice putting green. Pristine. Moon-bright.
Mark stands at the far edge, backed against a white fence, tie askew. His eyes are locked on the hole in the maze. On the glowing sap dripping from my hands. On the thorns still embedded in my forearms.
His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
"I was just talking to her," he says.
I pull a three-inch thorn from my palm and flick it into the grass at his feet.
The distance between us is thirty feet. I close it in eight strides.
Mark does what every man with bad instincts does. He tries to talk.
"Look, buddy, I don't know what she told you, but Magnolia and I have history, okay? We go way back. I was just checking in on her. Old friends. That's all it was."
Twenty feet.
"She's... she's clearly going through something right now, dating a..." He gestures vaguely at all of me. "And I just wanted to make sure she was doing okay. As a friend."
Ten feet.
"You can't just destroy a heritage Silverleaf maze, man. That's... that's a felony. I think. Todd's dad is a lawyer, he would know."
Five feet.
Mark hits the low stone wall bordering the putting green and realizes, with the specific wide-eyed understanding of prey, that there is nowhere left to go. The wall is waist-high. Decorative. Old limestone blocks mortared together by elven groundskeepers a century ago to frame the ninth hole.
Mark's hands come up. Palms out. The universal signal.
"Okay. Okay, let's just... let's be cool about this. Be rational. We're adults."
I am very rational. Rationality is the foundation of every successful contract. Emotion clouds tactical judgment. A mercenary who operates on anger makes mistakes, takes unnecessary risks, dies in a ditch over something personal when he should be collecting payment and moving to the next job.
My hands reach for his lapels.
The blue suit fabric bunches in my fists. Cheap stitching. Mass-produced. The kind of suit that comes off a rack in a department store and thinks it's tailored because the salesperson pinned the back with two clips. The seams strain immediately under the pressure of my grip.
I lift.
Mark's feet leave the ground. Three inches. His dress shoes dangle. One loafer slips halfway off his heel. His hands grab my wrists but can't close around them. Not even close. My forearms are thicker than his biceps. His fingers scrabble uselessly against sap-slicked skin and embedded thorns.
His back lies next to the limestone. I hold him there, pinned like a butterfly in a collector's case, and lean in close enough that he can count every scar on my face.
I don't raise my voice.
"Your left kneecap," I say. Quiet. Conversational.
"Has a very specific structural weakness.
Every humanoid kneecap does. It's a hinge joint.
Ligaments on four sides. The anterior cruciate is the weakest. A sharp lateral strike with approximately two hundred pounds of force dislocates the patella entirely and tears the ACL, the MCL, and the meniscus simultaneously. "
Mark's breathing is a wet, panicked whistle through his nose.
"I can generate nine hundred pounds of force with an open palm strike."
His left shoe falls off. Hits the grass with a soft thud.
"That's enough to not just dislocate the patella but shatter it into three distinct fragments. The recovery involves two surgeries. Titanium pins. Eight months of rehabilitation. You walk with a limp for the rest of your life. Stairs become a negotiation. Running becomes a memory."
"Please."
"That's just the left one." I shift my grip. Pull him one inch closer. "The right one, I'd take my time with."
A sound comes out of Mark that lives somewhere between a whimper and a hiccup. His eyes are wet. His cologne is suffocating at this range, and underneath it, the sharp copper tang of genuine terror sweat.
"You spoke to her tonight. In a dark corner.
Alone. Without witnesses." Each word lands separate and clean.
"You will not speak to her again. You will not approach her.
You will not stand within twenty feet of her for the remainder of this wedding.
If I catch your scent near her, if I hear your voice in her direction, if she so much as flinches because you looked at her wrong across a room... "
I tap his left kneecap with one finger. Gentle. Almost friendly.
"...I will find you and I will make you sit down forever."
I open my hands.
Mark drops. Three inches. His shoeless foot hits first, ankle rolling on the manicured grass, and he crumples sideways against the stone wall. Slides down it. Sits in the dirt with his knees pulled to his chest and his remaining loafer pointing at the moon.
He doesn't say a word.
I turn and walk back toward the maze.
The Silverleaf has already begun repairing the tunnel I carved through its heart. Branches reach across the gaps like fingers lacing together. But the wounds are fresh and the regrowth is thin. I push through easily, following the trail of destruction back toward the center.
Magnolia is exactly where I told her to be. Near the fountain. Petunia beside her, gripping her arm, both of them staring at the wrecked hedge walls. A floating champagne tray hovers nervously behind them, rattling.
Magnolia sees me. Her eyes track down from my face to my torn shirt, the shredded armor-silk beneath, the blood and glowing sap mixing on my forearms, the thorns still jutting from my skin like quills.
"Dash, what did you..."
I don't stop walking. Straight to her. One arm hooks behind her knees, the other behind her back. I lift her off the ground and over my shoulder in a single fluid motion. Petunia's champagne glass hits the stone.
"We're leaving the maze."
"Put me down."
"No."
My blood is running entirely too hot, every vein lit up with something that has nothing to do with combat, and her hand grabs the back of my ruined shirt to steady herself, and the touch burns worse than any Silverleaf thorn.