13. Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
The string quartet hits a high, trembling note.
I'm already out of my chair.
Heels on grass is a nightmare. Every step sinks two inches into the manicured lawn.
The aisle stretches ahead, white runner gleaming, two hundred heads turned toward the bride who hasn't yet reached the altar.
Nobody is watching me. Nobody is watching the man crouched behind the hydrangeas with a blade that pulses like a diseased heartbeat.
My right heel catches. Snaps clean off.
I kick both shoes into the crowd and run barefoot.
The grass is cool and damp and perfect for sprinting.
My toes dig in. The green silk dress rides up past my knees.
Somewhere behind me, Dash's chair explodes into splinters, but I am closer.
I am faster. I am five foot three and one hundred forty pounds of absolute fury, and Mark is not going to ruin my sister's wedding.
Not today.
Not after the cake. Not after the fire sprites and the melted mixers and the four hours of backbreaking labor and Dash whipping seventeen pounds of buttercream by hand until his arms shook.
Not after any of it.
Mark sees me coming. His head snaps up from behind the hydrangeas, the green blade hovering three inches from the anchor rune. His mouth drops open.
"Magnolia, wait—"
I don't wait.
The altar is flanked by two enormous stone fountains, each one carved to look like two intertwined swans.
Elven craftsmanship. Probably enchanted.
Definitely expensive. The nearest one sits four feet behind Mark, its basin full of shimmering water that catches the afternoon light in tiny prismatic bursts.
I plant my left foot on the stone base of the altar. Push off. The binding runes flash hot gold under my toes for one brilliant instant.
And I am airborne.
The crowd gasps. The string quartet screeches to a halt. My sister, frozen mid-step at the halfway point of the aisle, drops her bouquet.
Mark raises the dagger.
I hit him square.
Both of my hands move around his wrist. The disruption blade screams, a sound like tearing metal, and the green light strobes violently as we sail backward together through the wall of hydrangeas.
Petals shatter around us in a blue and purple cloud.
Mark's back slams into the stone rim of the fountain.
We tip.
We go over.
The water is freezing. Enchanted. It tastes like starlight and chlorine and punches the breath from my lungs. We plunge into the basin, and the impact rips Mark's wrist from my grip. The blade spins free, skittering across the bottom of the fountain in a trail of dying green sparks.
I surface, gasping, my hair plastered flat against my skull. Mark flails beside me, sputtering water and hydrangea petals. The fountain is deeper than it looks. My feet barely touch the bottom. The stone swans loom above us, their carved eyes witnessing my complete destruction of social propriety.
Mark lunges for the blade.
I reach for the nearest thing I can reach, a decorative stone swan neck. It snaps off in my hand. Solid. Heavy. About fourteen inches of carved elven limestone.
I bring it down on Mark's reaching hand.
"OW! What the—"
"Stay down."
He doesn't stay down. He grabs for the blade again, fingers scrabbling against the fountain floor. I swing the swan neck into his shoulder. He yelps and twists, water sloshing over the rim and flooding the grass around the altar.
"You psychotic—"
I shove his head under the water. Not long. Just enough. He comes up choking.
"That cake took me three hours, Mark."
"What does the cake have to do with—"
Under again. Up again.
"Three. Hours."
The ground shakes. A shadow falls over the fountain. Dash is the rim, his jacket off, his sleeves already rolled to his elbows. His amber eyes sweep the scene: me, soaking wet, straddling Mark in a fountain, holding a broken swan neck like a club.
"Status report."
"Blade's at the bottom. He's neutralized."
Dash reaches into the water. His massive green hand closes around the disruption dagger.
The enchanted blade shrieks and fights, its green light flaring against his skin.
He squeezes. The metal crumples like tinfoil.
The light dies with a sad little pop, and he drops the crushed remains into the grass.
Then he reaches down again and lifts Mark straight out of the fountain by the back of his collar. Mark dangles, dripping, his feet kicking six inches above the water's surface. A hydrangea petal clings to his left nostril.
"I believe we discussed your kneecaps."
Two hundred guests stare in frozen horror. My mother has both hands pressed over her mouth. My father's champagne flute hangs at a forty-five degree angle, pouring Dom Perignon directly onto his loafers.
My sister stands in the aisle, bouquet retrieved, veil crooked.
She looks at me. Soaking wet. Sitting in a fountain. Holding a stone swan head.
She looks at the crushed dagger in the grass. At Mark, dangling like a wet cat from an Orc's fist.
"Was he going to break my binding runes?"
I push my sopping hair off my forehead.
"Yes."
My sister's face goes nuclear.
My sister's scream pierces the air like a war horn.
Not at Mark. Not at me. At the altar behind us.
The binding runes are flickering.
I whip around in the fountain, water sloshing against my ribs.
The crushed dagger on the grass is dead, yes.
But the anchor rune at the altar pulses with sick green light, spreading through the carved channels like poison in a vein.
The disruption spell is already embedded.
Mark didn't need to touch the rune with the blade. He already had.
"There's a second charge," Dash growls, and drops Mark into the fountain with a spectacular splash.
Mark hits the water face-first. He comes up laughing. Laughing. Water streaming down his jaw, hydrangea petals in his teeth, and the absolute audacity of a man who packed a backup plan.
His right hand plunges beneath the surface.
A second blade ignites underwater. Green light floods the fountain basin, turning the enchanted water into a luminous, churning pool. The glow catches every carved feather on the stone swans, every ripple, every bubble streaming from Mark's clenched fist.
The wedding guests scream.
Not a polite gasp. Not a murmur. A full-throated, champagne-dropping, chair-toppling collective shriek that sends the string quartet diving behind their music stands.
Aunt Geneva faints directly onto Uncle Teddy, who buckles like wet cardboard.
Three bridesmaids stampede left. Two groomsmen stampede right.
My mother seizes a candelabra from the nearest table and holds it in front of her like a lance.
The binding runes crack audibly. A sound like ice splitting on a frozen lake.
My sister clutches her fiance's arm, her face white, her veil whipping in the sudden magical wind pouring off the dying ward system.
If those runes shatter completely, the wedding contract dissolves.
The venue license is void. The officiant's seal breaks.
Six months of deposits, planning, fittings, arguments about centerpieces and seating charts and whether the napkins should be eggshell or ivory, gone.
Because of Mark.
Because Mark cannot lose gracefully.
Because Mark looked at my happiness and my sister's happiness and every good thing in this family and decided that if he couldn't have control, nobody could have anything at all.
The green blade hums beneath the water. Mark raises it toward the surface, angling the point at the altar. One clean throw. That is all it will take.
I drop the swan neck.
I lunge.
Both hands close around his fist underwater.
The blade bites immediately. A searing line across my left palm, hot and sharp, and the enchanted water turns pink around my fingers.
The green silk of my dress tangles between us, wrapping around my legs, around his arm, binding us together in a thrashing knot of expensive fabric and desperation.
Mark yanks. I hold.
My bridesmaid dress cost four hundred dollars. Custom dyed. Hand-stitched seed pearl detailing along the bodice. My sister cried when she saw me in it at the fitting.
The blade shears through the silk at my hip.
A massive panel of green fabric rips free and floats to the surface like a lily pad.
Cold water floods against my bare skin. Another yank, another tear.
The pearl-stitched bodice splits along the left seam, beads scattering into the fountain basin like tiny hailstones.
I twist his wrist.
Mark bares his teeth. "Let go—"
I don't let go. I dig my thumbs into the tendons on the back of his hand, the exact pressure point my bread-kneading hands know by instinct.
Years of working dough. Years of squeezing pastry bags until my forearms burned.
Years of gripping hot sheet pans with nothing but determination and a thin towel.
His fingers spasm.
The blade loosens.
He slams his forehead into mine. Stars burst white and sharp behind my eyes. Water rushes into my mouth. I choke, swallow, and bite down on his thumb.
Mark howls.
The dagger drops.
I plunge both hands to the fountain floor. My torn dress billows around me, the remaining silk shredding against the rough stone bottom. My fingers grasp the handle. The disruption magic sears up my arm like grabbing a live wire, every nerve lighting up green and wrong and screaming.
I surface with a gasp that tears my throat raw.
The dagger bucks in my grip. It wants the altar.
The spell pulls toward the binding runes like a magnet, dragging my arm forward.
My shoulder strains. My torn dress hangs off me in ribbons, the seed pearls completely gone, nothing left but a ragged slip of soaked green silk clinging to what remains of my dignity.
I point the blade straight down.
And drive it into the stone floor of the fountain.