His fingers spasm.
The blade loosens.
He slams his forehead into mine. Stars burst white and sharp behind my eyes. Water rushes into my mouth. I choke, swallow, and bite down on his thumb.
Mark howls.
The dagger drops.
I plunge both hands to the fountain floor. My torn dress billows around me, the remaining silk shredding against therough stone bottom. My fingers grasp the handle. The disruption magic sears up my arm like grabbing a live wire, every nerve lighting up green and wrong and screaming.
I surface with a gasp that tears my throat raw.
The dagger bucks in my grip. It wants the altar. The spell pulls toward the binding runes like a magnet, dragging my arm forward. My shoulder strains. My torn dress hangs off me in ribbons, the seed pearls completely gone, nothing left but a ragged slip of soaked green silk clinging to what remains of my dignity.
I point the blade straight down.
And drive it into the stone floor of the fountain.
The impact cracks the basin. Enchanted water rushes into the fracture, flooding over the blade, drowning the green fire. The glow sputters. Flickers. The dagger screams that same tearing-metal shriek, higher and thinner, and then the stone swallows it whole.
The binding runes at the altar flare gold.
Hold.
Steady.
Burn clean and bright against the afternoon sun.
The disruption spell is dead.
I stand in the shattered fountain, water pouring through the cracked basin around my bare feet, my dress destroyed, my palm bleeding, my forehead already swelling where Mark's skull connected with mine.
Mark floats on his back beside me, groaning, cradling his bitten thumb.
Two hundred guests stare in absolute silence.
"Someone call the marshals. And someone get my sister a robe."
Water streams off me in sheets. My teeth chatter so hard they click against each other like a broken typewriter. Thefountain basin keeps draining through the crack I split in the stone, enchanted water pooling across the manicured lawn in a spreading lake that soaks into the white aisle runner and turns it translucent. The string quartet's cellist peers over his music stand. Aunt Geneva is still unconscious on Uncle Teddy, who has stopped struggling and accepted his fate.
My palm bleeds freely. The cut runs diagonal across the meat of my hand, deep enough that the edges gape when I flex my fingers. Pink water drips from my elbow. What remains of my four-hundred-dollar bridesmaid dress clings to my body in wet green strips, like I lost a fight with a paper shredder inside a car wash.
Mark tries to stand. Slips. Goes down hard on one knee, his rented shoes squealing against the wet stone.
The ground shakes.
Three steps. That is all it takes. Three massive, earth-jarring strides and Dash is at the fountain rim. His shirtsleeves are soaked to the bicep from crushing the first blade. His amber eyes sweep me head to toe. The bleeding palm. The split dress. The red welt already rising on my forehead where Mark headbutted me.
His jaw tightens so hard the muscle jumps beneath his dark green skin.
He doesn't speak.
He steps into the fountain.
What remains of the water barely reaches his shins. The broken stone crunches under his weight. He bends at the waist, hooks one arm around my ribcage, and lifts me straight out of the basin like pulling a carrot from soft earth. My feet leave the ground. The world tilts. Cool air hits my soaked skin and I gasp.
He sets me on the grass.
