The dryads have been building the wedding venue for three days. Dozens of lanterns hang in the birch trees, unlit and waiting. The clearing is carpeted with swept moss and ringed by trees. There is no dais and no aisle. Just a wide circle of bare ground in the center, raked flat and smooth as a fencing floor.
It's exactly what I imagined for Saskia's wedding.
"Explain this blade nonsense to me again," Grammy says.
"It's not nonsense, Grammy," I chide, and she rolls her eyes. "They fight their vows. Full speed, real blades. The vow is that they never touch each other."
"Hmph." She watches two dryads light one of the lanterns. "In my day, you just promised to put up with each other and then did the dishes for fifty years."
"In your day? You're human, Grammy. This is different."
"But still," she insists.
"You'll like it. I promise."
"I'll like seeing your dress move. The rest is an experience." She takes my arm. "Now walk me in before all the good seats go to orcs who will block us."
The clearing fills as the sun sinks, turning everything gold. Orcs file in on one side, and dryads come in on the other. Family and friends who aren't on either side settle wherever they please. Half of them climb onto low branches and dangle their bare feet, so the wedding has an audience above as well as around the happy couple.
Kenna arrives with three granddaughters in a row like ducklings and crushes me in a hug that rearranges my spine.
"My girls," she announces proudly, presenting them. "Tell her."
"We want the dress," all three say in unison.
"After the wedding," Kenna says. "But soon." She waggles a finger at me. "You promised."
"Of course, but?—"
"You promised," Kenna repeats, and moves off to claim a row of chairs.
Saskia's father, Lord Garran, finds me next. He doesn't say much. He never says much at his daughters' weddings. But he takes my hand in both of his, which are the size of dinner plates, and holds it for a moment.
"Three daughters," he says. "Three dresses. Each one—" He works his jaw. "My wife will tell you what I mean."
"He means they were perfect," Lady Ishara says, arriving at his elbow, "and that he cried at every wedding so far, and that he's about to walk away before he does it again."
"I'm going to check the mead," Lord Garran says, and walks away.
Ishara watches him go with a bemused smile. Then she turns to me with a long look, the one that goes through me and takes stock of my worth. But it's different tonight. Warmer at the edges, like I've finally reached the point where she trusts me.
"He counted wrong, you know," she says. "He said three daughters. He has four." She touches my arm, brief and light. "The fourth dress will be the important one. I suspect you already know that."
She follows her husband toward the mead before I can answer, which is fortunate, because I don't have one.
Then Torgan's grandfather, a mountain of an orc with scars and white braids who terrified me from across the hall at Ysolde's wedding, walks straight over to us. He plants himself beside Grammy and looks down at her from his full height.
"You're the grandmother."
"You're the grandfather," Grammy says, entirely unimpressed, one hand still on my arm.
"You taught her"—he indicates me—"how to sew like this."
She squares her shoulders proudly. "I did."
"Good." He studies her a moment longer. "You'll sit with me. I have mead older than your granddaughter and nobody worth talking to."
Grammy laughs. Is she... flirting? This night promises to be strange indeed.
