She looks at the crushed dagger in the grass. At Mark, dangling like a wet cat from an Orc's fist.
"Was he going to break my binding runes?"
I push my sopping hair off my forehead.
"Yes."
My sister's face goes nuclear.
My sister's scream pierces the air like a war horn.
Not at Mark. Not at me. At the altar behind us.
The binding runes are flickering.
I whip around in the fountain, water sloshing against my ribs. The crushed dagger on the grass is dead, yes. But the anchor rune at the altar pulses with sick green light, spreading through the carved channels like poison in a vein. The disruption spell is already embedded. Mark didn't need to touch the rune with the blade. He already had.
"There's a second charge," Dash growls, and drops Mark into the fountain with a spectacular splash.
Mark hits the water face-first. He comes up laughing. Laughing. Water streaming down his jaw, hydrangea petals inhis teeth, and the absolute audacity of a man who packed a backup plan.
His right hand plunges beneath the surface.
A second blade ignites underwater. Green light floods the fountain basin, turning the enchanted water into a luminous, churning pool. The glow catches every carved feather on the stone swans, every ripple, every bubble streaming from Mark's clenched fist.
The wedding guests scream.
Not a polite gasp. Not a murmur. A full-throated, champagne-dropping, chair-toppling collective shriek that sends the string quartet diving behind their music stands. Aunt Geneva faints directly onto Uncle Teddy, who buckles like wet cardboard. Three bridesmaids stampede left. Two groomsmen stampede right. My mother seizes a candelabra from the nearest table and holds it in front of her like a lance.
The binding runes crack audibly. A sound like ice splitting on a frozen lake.
My sister clutches her fiance's arm, her face white, her veil whipping in the sudden magical wind pouring off the dying ward system. If those runes shatter completely, the wedding contract dissolves. The venue license is void. The officiant's seal breaks. Six months of deposits, planning, fittings, arguments about centerpieces and seating charts and whether the napkins should be eggshell or ivory, gone.
Because of Mark.
Because Mark cannot lose gracefully.
Because Mark looked at my happiness and my sister's happiness and every good thing in this family and decided that if he couldn't have control, nobody could have anything at all.
The green blade hums beneath the water. Mark raises it toward the surface, angling the point at the altar. One clean throw. That is all it will take.
I drop the swan neck.
I lunge.
Both hands close around his fist underwater. The blade bites immediately. A searing line across my left palm, hot and sharp, and the enchanted water turns pink around my fingers. The green silk of my dress tangles between us, wrapping around my legs, around his arm, binding us together in a thrashing knot of expensive fabric and desperation.
Mark yanks. I hold.
My bridesmaid dress cost four hundred dollars. Custom dyed. Hand-stitched seed pearl detailing along the bodice. My sister cried when she saw me in it at the fitting.
The blade shears through the silk at my hip. A massive panel of green fabric rips free and floats to the surface like a lily pad. Cold water floods against my bare skin. Another yank, another tear. The pearl-stitched bodice splits along the left seam, beads scattering into the fountain basin like tiny hailstones.
I twist his wrist.
Mark bares his teeth. "Let go?—"
I don't let go. I dig my thumbs into the tendons on the back of his hand, the exact pressure point my bread-kneading hands know by instinct. Years of working dough. Years of squeezing pastry bags until my forearms burned. Years of gripping hot sheet pans with nothing but determination and a thin towel.
