CHAPTER 1
MAGNOLIA
The mug catches the lantern light for exactly one beautiful second before it shatters against the wall three inches from my face.
I drop.
Ale rains down. Glass skitters across the floorboards. My knees hit sticky wood and something squelches under my palm that I refuse to identify.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
I'm a small-business owner in a vintage polka-dot dress, crawling across the floor of the most notorious mercenary tavern in the Lower Quarter on a Tuesday night, and everything is completely, perfectly, one-hundred-percent fine.
A boot slams down next to my hand. I yank my fingers back and scramble sideways, tucking behind an overturned bench. Two humans grapple past me, one of them missing a shoe and most of his dignity. A half-troll picks up a third human and uses him to hit a fourth human, which, credit where it's due, is efficient.
The invitation crinkles inside my coat. Thick ivory cardstock, gold leaf lettering, a wax seal my sister Petunia had custom-made with her and Todd's intertwined initials. I've been carrying it against my ribs for three weeks like a wound that won't close.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Petunia Renée Jenkins and Todd Andrew Bellingham III.
Todd Andrew Bellingham the Third. Petunia's perfect match. A private equity manager with a weak chin and a trust fund.
Another mug detonates. This one hits the ceiling beam above me and showers my hair with foam and ceramic dust. I cover my head, count to three, and peek over the bench.
There.
Back corner. Alone.
The orc sits at a two-person table that looks like doll furniture beneath his forearms. He takes up the entire bench on his side and some of the wall behind him. Dark forest-green skin catches the low firelight. Scars crisscross his arms like a road map to every bad decision anyone ever made in his presence. One tusk curves up sharp and whole; the other is broken halfway, the jagged edge worn smooth with time.
He drinks from a tankard with the calm of a man watching rain through a window, not a bar fight three feet from his left elbow.
A chair sails past him. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't even track it with his eyes.
Okay. Deep breath. Go time.
I launch from behind the bench and immediately collide with a dwarf going the opposite direction. We bounce off each other. She swears at me in a language that sounds like gravel in a blender. I apologize, duck a thrown boot, and keep moving.
The crowd surges. A wave of bodies pushes me sideways into a support pillar. My ribs protest. The bag of gold at my hip digs into my kidney. I clutch it tighter and weave through the room between two brawling minotaurs who are, improbably, arguing about cheese.
"Gouda is abreakfastcheese, Aren!"
"Gouda is ananytimecheese, you absolute philistine!"
Ten feet. A bottle rockets past my shoulder and explodes in a spray of cheap whiskey and cheaper glass. Droplets pepper my neck. I wipe them with my sleeve and keep going.
Five feet. A barstool bounces off the floor and careens toward my shins. I hop over it, barely, my flats skidding on the ale-slick wood.
Two feet.
The orc still hasn't moved. Up close, his shoulders block the entire back wall. The tankard in his hand is roughly as large as my head. His eyes, dark amber beneath a heavy brow, track upward from his drink to my face with the slow precision of someone sighting down an arrow.
I plant both hands on his table and lean in, breathing hard.
He blinks. Once.
I reach into my coat and pull out the invitation. Slap it down on the scarred wood between us. The gold leaf glints. The wax seal stares up at us with Todd and Petunia's stupid intertwined initials.
Then I unclip the bag from my belt. Fifteen hundred gold pieces. Six months of weekend catering gigs, three months of 4 a.m. croissant batches, and one extremely lucrative contract supplying mini-tarts to the Mayor's office. I drop it next to the invitation with a solid, satisfyingthunkthat rattles his tankard.
