DASH
The door handle comes off in my fist.
Not ideal. I toss the brass knob over my shoulder, grip the door's edge with my fingers, and rip it open so hard the top hinge separates from the frame. The door swings crookedly outward and slams against the hallway wall.
A woman stands in the corridor. Silk robe. Hair in massive rollers. Mascara streaked down both cheeks in twin rivers of black. She's got Magnolia's jawline but sharper, Magnolia's brown eyes but colder, and a mouth currently stretched into a shape that could only be described as structural collapse.
"Who the HELL are--" She stops. Processes. Her gaze starts at my bare feet, climbs the full six feet nine inches of shirtless, scarred Orc, and arrives at my face with the dawning horror of someone who has just opened the wrong door in a haunted house.
I grip the doorframe to keep the broken door from falling on her.
"You must be the bride."
"MAGNOLIA!"
Behind me, sheets rustle. A small warm body collides with my back, and Magnolia's face appears under my arm, sleep-creased and blinking. Her hair is a magnificent disaster. She's wearing my dress shirt and nothing else, the fabric hanging past her knees like a tent.
"Petunia. It's six in the morning."
"The cake is GONE."
Magnolia's body goes rigid against my side. "What do you mean gone?"
"GONE gone! Ashes! A fire sprite got into the kitchen through the ventilation ducts and it ATE the cake! All five tiers! The fondant, the buttercream, the sugar flowers, the little marzipan doves--GONE. There's nothing left but a black spot on the countertop and the cake topper, which is now MELTED. The groom figurine looks like a SLUG." Petunia cracks on the last word. Fresh mascara rivers carve new tributaries down her cheeks. "The wedding is in nine hours and I don't have a CAKE, Magnolia!"
I catalog the tactical situation. Fire sprite. Kitchen breach. Structural damage to pastry assets. Timeline: nine hours.
I look down at Magnolia.
Magnolia looks up at me.
Something passes between us that doesn't require language. Her spine straightens. Her chin lifts. The woman who spent yesterday being steamrolled by her family disappears and the woman who runs a bakery, who carries shields without dropping them, who pulls thorns from Orc skin with her bare fingers, steps forward.
"Take me to the kitchen."
"It's DESTROYED--"
"Take me to the kitchen, Petunia."
Petunia blinks. Sniffs. Grabs Magnolia's wrist and drags her down the hall. Magnolia is barefoot in my shirt, padding across cold marble tile with the focused calm of a field commander approaching the front line.
I grab my torn undershirt from the wreckage of our room. The fabric complains as I pull it across my massive shoulders. Acceptable losses.
I follow.
The country club kitchen is a crime scene. Scorch marks climb the tile walls in jagged black fingers. Three industrial ovens stand open and gutted. The fire suppression runes carved into the ceiling have all activated and spent themselves, leaving a fine magical frost coating every surface. In the main prep counter sits a perfect circle of ash roughly the diameter of a wagon wheel. Five tiers of wedding cake, reduced to carbon.
A thin trail of tiny scorched footprints leads from the ash pile to a ventilation grate, where a maintenance dwarf is currently welding the cover shut.
"Caught the little bastard in the walk-in freezer," the dwarf grunts without looking up. "Screamed like a teakettle when it hit the cold. Already shipped it off to animal control."
Petunia collapses into a prep stool. "Nine hours."
Magnolia circles the kitchen with her arms crossed. Opens drawers. Checks the pantry. Runs her finger along the inside of a mixing bowl and sniffs the residue. Crouches below the counter and examines the lower ovens, which escaped the worst of the scorching.
"These two work," she says, rapping her knuckles on the oven doors.
"So what? The baker was a specialist from the Elven Quarter. She's already gone. She took her tools and her enchanted piping bags and her stupid little edible gold leaf and she LEFT because the kitchen is 'compromised' and she doesn't work in 'compromised environments.'"
