Chapter 10
FLYNN
My knuckles crack before I make the conscious decision to crack them. Ten sharp pops, one for each finger, rolling through my hands like a string of firecrackers.
The goons flinch.
Good.
I step forward. The runic tattoos on my forearms burn hot under the bandages. Old instinct. Warband instinct. The kind that says three enemies, three angles, take the center one first because his hammer is heaviest and his stance is wrong.
"Twenty seconds," Valerius says.
I take another step. The lead goon adjusts his grip. Stone skin or not, his eyes are soft. Fleshy. Targetable.
A hand catches my wrist.
Small. Strong. Covered in jasmine sap.
Junia ducks under my arm and plants herself directly between me and three sledgehammers that could punch through a foundation wall.
Her torn overall strap flaps against her shoulder.
Potting soil crusts her curls. She is five feet six inches of absolute insanity standing in front of beings that outweigh her by several hundred pounds.
"Move," I growl.
She doesn't move. She squares her shoulders and points one sap-coated finger directly at Valerius's sterile silver lapel.
"Ordinance 4,012, Section C."
Valerius's left eyebrow twitches. Barely. "Yes. Which I just cited. Thank you for your attention."
"Subsection 7."
The eyebrow stops twitching.
"Subsection 7 provides an explicit exemption for load-bearing landscape structures installed as part of an active erosion-mitigation effort. That archway is a retaining keystone for the combined terrace drainage system. Remove it, and the entire hillside behind both properties destabilizes."
Valerius's smile thins to a razor line. "That interpretation is creative."
"That interpretation is textual. Page forty-seven, paragraph three, right between the clause about decorative birdbaths and the one about acceptable mulch coloring. Which you wrote, by the way. July 14th, three years ago. You were very thorough."
Silence. The goons look at Valerius. Valerius looks at Junia. I look at the back of Junia's head and something cracks open inside my ribcage that has nothing to do with combat readiness.
"Furthermore." She steps closer to Valerius.
He doesn't retreat, but his nostrils flare.
"Ordinance 2,308, the Emergency Grounds Stabilization Act, grants any resident the right to install temporary structural reinforcements during active soil disruption without prior board approval.
That root system just tore up three hundred square feet of shared property.
The soil is actively disrupted. Right now.
As we speak. As your goons stand on it."
The lead goon looks down at his feet. The ground beneath him is, in fact, cracked and heaving with severed root channels.
"The archway stays until the soil is certified stable by a municipal zoning official." Junia crosses her arms.
"Unless you want to override your own bylaws on the record. In front of witnesses." She jerks her chin toward the street. Mrs. Cho from three houses down stands on the sidewalk with her phone raised. Recording. The Hendersons observe from their porch.
Old Barnabus has dragged his rocking chair to the end of his driveway and is eating popcorn. Valerius's jaw works. Grinding. The muscles along his temples cord tight beneath that flawless skin.
"A municipal official."
"Licensed. Bonded. Non-HOA-affiliated."
"Getting the city out here requires a formal inspection request."
"Which is incredibly convenient," Junia smiles. Bright. Infectious. Devastating. "Since
Commissioner Voss is already scheduled to be here for the judging."
Valerius studies her. Then he studies me. His gaze tracks across the sap on my shirt, the bandages on my forearms, the way I stand close enough behind Junia that her wild curls brush me.
"You're making a mistake," he says. Not loud. Not theatrical. Quiet. The kind of quiet that carries more threat than a hundred sledgehammers.
"I'm making a garden."
The elf holds her stare for three full seconds. Then he snaps his fingers. The goons lower their hammers. They turn in unison, heavy feet grinding divots in the sidewalk, and march back toward the idling luxury car.
Valerius lingers. He straightens his cuff. Brushes an invisible speck from his lapel.
"The competition is in forty-eight hours." His eyes flick to me. Cool. Ancient. "I have four centuries of horticultural mastery, a staff of twelve, and a budget that exceeds your combined property values. Enjoy your archway."
He turns. Walks to his car. The door closes without a sound.
Junia doesn't move until the car rounds the corner. Then her shoulders drop. Her hands shake. She presses them flat against her thighs.
"Hey."
She turns. Looks up at me. Sap on her cheek. Dirt in her eyebrows. That ridiculous torn strap.
"Where did you learn HOA bylaws?"
"Couldn't sleep last night." She shrugs. "Read the whole charter. Twice. It's eight hundred pages. Did you know there's a section on acceptable lawn gnome facial expressions?"
I stare at her.
"You memorized eight hundred pages of bylaws in one night."
"I was motivated." Her eyes drop to my forearms. The bandages have come loose. The runes glow faintly, pulsing with residual adrenaline, green light leaking through the gaps in the wrapping.
She reaches out. Touches the bandage. Her fingertip is warm.
"Your tattoos are showing."
I should rewrap the bandage. That's the rational move. Cover the runes, tuck the edges tight, secure the whole thing with the medical tape I keep in the garage's third drawer, left side, between the zip ties and the emergency flares.
Junia's fingertip traces the gap in the wrapping. The rune beneath it pulses brighter.
I don't rewrap the bandage.
"They're warm," she says. Not a question. Her nail skims along the cloth, following the green glow like she's reading something written in light. "Do they always do this?"
"Only when my heart rate spikes."
Her eyes snap up. Brown. Flecked with gold near the iris. A smear of potting soil arcs across her left cheekbone like war paint.
"Your heart rate is spiking right now?"
"You just faced down three sledgehammer-wielding enforcers and an immortal elf by quoting subsection 7 of an ordinance nobody has read since it was drafted. Yes. My heart rate is spiking."
Her lips part. Just barely. The torn overall strap slides another half inch down her shoulder and she doesn't fix it.
I need to mow something. Edge something.
Pressure-wash a driveway. Any physical task that will redirect the absolute wildfire ripping through my nervous system because this woman, this five-foot-six hurricane of jasmine sap and legal technicalities, just verbally dismantled the most powerful being in the subdivision while standing barefoot on cracked soil.
She didn't flinch.
Not once.
Not when the goons shifted their weight forward. Not when Valerius dropped his authority to that ancient, venomous register. Not when three sledgehammers hung in the air between her skull and gravity.
She planted her feet and fought. Not with fists. Not with warband brutality. With eight hundred pages of bureaucratic ammunition she loaded into her brain in a single sleepless night because she was motivated.
Both forearms blaze. Green light spills between my fingers, throwing sharp shadows across Junia's face.
"Flynn."
"What."
"You're glowing."
"I'm aware."
"Like, really glowing. The neighbors can probably see."
Mrs. Cho still has her phone out. Barnabus crunches another fistful of popcorn. The Hendersons' teenage son presses his face against their screen door.
I don't care.
I care about the way Junia's chin tilts up when she argues.
The defiant jut of it. The way she loaded "page forty-seven, paragraph three" like a crossbow bolt and fired it directly through Valerius's composure.
The way her hands shake now, after, because she's brave enough to act before the fear catches up.
She's still touching my arm. One fingertip. That's all. One point of contact, sap-sticky and warm, pressed against my bandage where the rune for strength in battle pulses like a second heartbeat.
"You read the entire charter," I say again. Because the fact keeps detonating in my skull.
"The font was really small. Like, aggressively small. I think Valerius chose it specifically to discourage reading."
"Eight hundred pages."
"Some of them were diagrams."
"Of what?"
"Acceptable fence picket spacing. There are seventeen approved configurations. Mine violates twelve of them." She grins. Crooked. One canine slightly overlapping the tooth beside it. "I have a lot of citations coming."
A sound escapes me. Low. Rumbling. Foreign.
Junia blinks.
"Did you just laugh?"
"No."
"That was a laugh."
"It was a tactical exhale."
"Flynn Danger, you laughed."
The sound comes again. Bigger this time. Shaking loose from somewhere behind my sternum that I sealed shut years ago with routine and precision and exactly three inches of grass height maintained with a spirit level.
Her grin widens. Full wattage. The kind of smile that violates at least four HOA regulations regarding brightness levels and visual disruption.
"You're dangerous," I tell her.
"Says the seven-foot orc with glowing battle tattoos."
"Six-seven."
"Okay, the six-foot-seven orc with glowing battle tattoos who catches falling trees with his bare hands and is currently lit up like a green lantern because I quoted a bylaw at an elf."
My jaw works. The runes pulse. She's not wrong about any of it, and the accuracy makes the heat worse.
"That wasn't just quoting a bylaw." I step closer. Not much. An inch. Her curls brush my me again. "That was warfare."
Her breath catches. Quick. Almost hidden.
"I grew up in a florist shop," she whispers. "My mom always said the deadliest weapon in any garden is the permit."
"Your mother is a tactician."
"My mother is a Sagittarius."