14. Dash
DASH
She nods.
One sharp dip of her chin. Water streaming down her face, mascara running in twin black rivers, that ridiculous soaked bridesmaid dress clinging to every curve. She looks like a drowned goddess. She looks like a verdict.
That's all I need.
I bring Mark down from overhead. Not gently. I sling his folded weight over my right shoulder, his face bouncing against my shoulder blade, his legs kicking uselessly against me. His broken fingers scrabble at the back of my jacket. The wet fabric of his tuxedo squelches against my ear.
"Put me down," he wheezes. "Put me down right now, you animal, I will call the Magistrate, I will have your mercenary license revoked, I will—"
I start walking.
The aisle runner squelches under my dress shoes.
Two hundred guests track my movement in perfect unison, heads swiveling like spectators at a tennis match.
The string quartet has stopped playing. The cellist's bow hangs frozen three inches above the strings.
The officiant, a tall silver-haired Elf with robes down to his ankles, presses himself to the altar as I pass.
"Excuse me," I say.
He nods rapidly.
Mark's kicks grow weaker. His protests dissolve into a continuous, breathy monologue directed at nobody.
"—assault charges, I have witnesses, two hundred witnesses, my father is on the Arcane Commerce Board, you think you can just—"
I hang a left past the rose trellis.
The lawn stretches ahead. Pristine. Manicured to a level that borders on violence against grass.
Each blade stands at identical height, enchanted to stay emerald green regardless of season.
My shoes leave deep gouges in the turf. The groundskeeper, a squat gnome in overalls, looks on from behind an ornamental hedge.
His mouth falls open. I nod to him. He nods back.
"—and furthermore the Mercenary Guild has very specific bylaws about physical altercation outside of contracted combat zones, Section Fourteen, Paragraph Nine—"
I adjust his weight. He weighs nothing. A hundred and sixty pounds of wet linen and bad decisions.
The service path curves behind the main clubhouse. Gravel now. The crunch of it under my feet. The air changes. Kitchen exhaust. Rotting flower arrangements from yesterday's rehearsal dinner. The sharp chemical bite of industrial cleaning solution.
And there it is.
The country club's dumpster sits against the back wall of the kitchen wing.
Massive. Industrial green steel, eight feet long, four feet deep, with a heavy rubber lid propped open by a broken wooden pallet.
Inside: black garbage bags, wilted centerpieces, the charred remains of the original wedding cake, and what appears to be an entire crate of empty champagne bottles from last night.
Perfect.
"—calling my lawyer the instant my feet touch the ground, do you hear me, you oversized—"
"They're about to."
I plant my back foot. Shift my grip from his waist to his belt and the back of his collar. He goes rigid.
I throw him.
Not hard. Not with everything I have. That would put him through the steel wall on the far side. I use perhaps eight percent of my full strength. A controlled, arcing lob. A gentle parabola. Almost graceful, if you squint.
Mark sails through the air. His arms and legs spread in four desperate directions. His mouth opens. No sound comes out. He hangs at the apex for one perfect, suspended heartbeat, backlit by the afternoon sun, his wet tuxedo jacket flapping behind him like broken wings.
He drops.
The impact sounds like a bass drum stuffed with cottage cheese. Glass bottles shatter underneath him. Garbage bags rupture. A cloud of charred cake ash erupts from the dumpster in a gray mushroom plume. Mark vanishes entirely beneath the debris for two full seconds.
Then his head surfaces.
Eggshells in his hair. Coffee grounds smeared across his forehead. A long strip of wilted lily draped over one ear. His eyes are perfectly round. His mouth works soundlessly.
I walk to the edge. Look down.
He stares up at me from his nest of garbage bags and broken glass and the ashy skeleton of a five-tier cake. One of the champagne bottles rolls slowly across him and clinks against the steel wall.
I plant both hands on the dumpster's rim. The metal groans under my grip.
"The contract I'm working specifies protection of one client from all threats, physical and emotional.
You are an emotional threat." I lean forward.
My shadow swallows him whole. "If you speak to her again.
If you look at her. If you breathe in a direction that might eventually carry your air toward her lungs.
I will come back here. And I will not use eight percent. "
Mark blinks.
A coffee ground falls off his eyebrow.
"Nod if you understand."
He nods. Fast. Frantic. His chin bobbing like a woodpecker against a rotten log.
I straighten. Brush a fleck of cake ash from my lapel. Check my cuffs. The left one tore during the fountain extraction. I fold it under twice, evening it out.
Behind me, gravel crunches.
I turn.
Magnolia is at the corner of the building, still dripping, still ruined, one broken heel in her hand. Her mouth is pressed into a tight line. Her shoulders shake.
She is trying very hard not to laugh.
The laugh escapes anyway. A sharp, wet bark that she clamps down on with both hands pressed over her mouth. Her shoulders convulse. Her eyes squeeze shut. Water drips from the hem of her destroyed dress and pools around her one remaining heel.
From the dumpster, a weak groan.
I ignore it.
"You're shaking."
She drops her hands. Her teeth chatter once, hard, before she locks her jaw. "I'm not shaking. It's a full-body shiver. There's a distinction."
"The distinction being?"
"Shaking implies weakness. Shivering implies I jumped into a fountain in October and the laws of thermodynamics are having their way with me."
I close the distance. Three strides. Her chin tilts up.
Way up. Water beads on her eyelashes. Goosebumps race down her bare arms in waves.
The bridesmaid dress, some shade of dusty rose that probably cost more than my broadsword, clings to her skin like wet tissue paper.
Ruined. The beadwork along the neckline hangs by threads.
A long tear runs from her left hip to mid-thigh where she hit the fountain's edge.
She's magnificent.
I shrug out of my tuxedo jacket. The shoulder seams protest. One of them rips. The armor-silk lining whispers against my dress shirt as the jacket slides free, still warm from my body heat.
I drape it around her shoulders.
The jacket swallows her. The hem hits her mid-thigh. The shoulders hang four inches past her own, the sleeves dangling empty at her sides like deflated wings. She grabs the lapels with both fists and pulls it tight across her. Her knuckles go white.
"This is warm."
"Body heat transfers through armor-silk at twice the rate of standard fabric. The enchantment works both ways."
"That's not what I—" She stops. Buries her nose in the collar. Inhales. Her eyes flutter closed for half a second. "You smell like buttercream and violence."
"Occupational hazard."
From the dumpster, the sound of Mark attempting to sit up. Glass clinks. He whimpers. I don't turn around.
"We need to get back."
Her eyes snap open. The humor drains from her face.
Reality lands on her like a sandbag. "Oh god.
The ceremony. I tackled Mark into a fountain in front of two hundred people.
My sister is going to murder me. My mother is going to murder me first, and then my sister is going to murder whatever's left, and then my Aunt Delphine is going to write a strongly worded letter to the remains. "
"Your sister's wedding wards are intact because you acted."
"My sister's wedding is a circus because I body-checked my ex-boyfriend into three feet of decorative water during the processional."
"The binding runes on the altar would have shattered. The magical contract would have been void. The marriage wouldn't have held."
She goes still. Her fingers tighten on the jacket lapels. "You saw the dagger?"
"Glowing. Serrated. Inscribed with dissolution sigils along the blade. Standard black-market ward-breaker. Another thirty seconds and he would have severed the primary anchor rune." I pause. "You saved the wedding, Magnolia."
Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
"Okay," she says quietly. "Okay. Let's go fix this."
I offer my arm. She hooks her hand into the crook of my elbow, her broken heel dangling from her other fist. We walk back up the gravel path. Around the corner of the clubhouse. Across the gouged lawn, following my own footprints back toward the ceremony.
The scene has devolved.
Guests stand in clusters, buzzing. Several elderly relatives grip each other's arms. A child cries somewhere in the third row.
The string quartet has abandoned their instruments entirely and joined the general milling chaos.
The bride awaits at the altar in her white gown, both hands pressed flat against her cheeks.
The groom holds her elbow. The officiant clutches his ceremonial scroll.
Magnolia's mother has positioned herself at the aisle, arms crossed, face reddening.
I walk directly toward her.
She does not move.
I do not slow down.
At the last possible second, she steps aside. One sharp lateral movement, like a matador who just realized the bull outweighs her by six hundred pounds.
I guide Magnolia to the front row. She sits. The jacket pools around her on the white folding chair. I straighten. Turn.
Two hundred faces stare back at me.
I roll my shirtsleeves to my elbows. Slowly. The scars on my forearms catch the afternoon light. Thick ropes of white tissue across green skin. Tally marks from a decade of contracts completed. Promises kept.