"I was on the junior varsity track team for two weeks in ninth grade."
"Why only two weeks?"
"I got shin splints and my mom said competitive running was unfeminine."
Dash pulls both sleeves above his elbows. The muscles in his forearms shift like tectonic plates.
"Stay behind me. Move when I move. Stop when I stop." His golden eyes sweep the field with the same focus he used to assess my mother. "If a boar charges you directly, drop flat. They can't adjust trajectory below knee height."
The pen gate splinters open.
Six glowing boars explode onto the field.
The field erupts.
Boars scatter like furry cannonballs, their amber tusks carving trenches through the soft earth. Todd hurls his ceremonial spear with the confidence of a man who's never thrown anything heavier than a squash racket. It sails six feet wide and embeds in a barricade. Petunia screams, but the decorative kind, the kind that saysI'm having an experiencerather thanI'm about to die.
Dash moves.
One second he's beside me. The next he's four strides ahead, barefoot in the mud because at some point he kicked off his dress shoes and I didn't even register it. His feet sink three inches with each step. Doesn't slow him. He angles toward the smallest boar, a creature the size of a commercial dishwasher with eyes like brake lights, and herds it sideways with his body mass alone.
I run behind him. The kitten heels last exactly three steps before the left one sinks into the mud and stays there. I kick the right one off and keep going, cold wet earth squishing between my toes, the lavender dress already streaked brown from the knee down.
"LEFT," Dash barks.
I go left. The boar jukes right. Dash cuts the angle and drops to one knee, arms wide, and the boar banks hard into a barricade. The enchanted ivy lashes out and tangles around its front legs. It squeals. Thrashes. The ivy holds for maybe two seconds before the boar rips through it like wet tissue paper and bolts back toward the field.
"BEHIND YOU, MAGGIE!"
That's not Dash. That's Mark. He's standing near the weapon rack with no boar, no partner, no mud on his pristine hunting gloves, and a grin that makes my stomach drop.
His right hand is tucked behind his thigh. His fingers are moving.
I know those fingers. I dated those fingers for two and a half years. Mark minored in Applied Enchantment at Whitmore. Party tricks, mostly. Lighting candles from across the room. Chilling drinks without ice. Making small objects move.
Making small objects move.
The ground under my right foot yanks sideways.
Not the mud shifting. Not my balance failing. The actual earth lurches beneath my bare sole like someone's pulled a rug. My ankle rolls. My knee buckles. The field tilts and the sky swaps places with the ground and I'm going down, arms flailing, and the massive boar that was circling back is now twenty feet away and closing fast, head lowered, tusks blazing amber, aimed directly at where I'm about to land.
Fifteen feet.
Ten.
The mud hits my back. Cold. Wet. Absolute. It swallows my shoulders and floods the back of my dress and squelches up around my ears. The boar's hooves pound the earth so hard the vibration travels through the ground and into my spine.
Five feet.
A shape blots out the torchlight.
Dash doesn't tackle the boar from the side. He meets it head-on. Full stride. Both arms forward. His hands grab both glowing tusks and his feet plant in the mud and the impact sound is something I'll hear in my dreams for the rest of my life. A wet, heavy, bone-deepthudthat sprays mud fifteen feet in every direction.
The boar's back legs leave the ground. All four hundred pounds of magically aggravated pork go vertical for a half second, tusks screaming amber light, and then Dashdrivesit down. Into the earth. His arms flex and the armor-silk acrosshis back splits along the seam line the tailor triple-stitched two hours ago. The boar hits the mud with a sound like a car door slamming and Dash drops his full weight onto its flank, one knee on its ribcage, both hands still locked on the tusks.
The boar bucks.
Dash holds.
