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. Themetal 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.
