I walk to the edge. Look down.
He stares up at me from his nest of garbage bags and broken glass and the ashy skeleton of a five-tier cake. One of the champagne bottles rolls slowly across him and clinks against the steel wall.
I plant both hands on the dumpster's rim. The metal groans under my grip.
"The contract I'm working specifies protection of one client from all threats, physical and emotional. You are an emotional threat." I lean forward. My shadow swallows him whole. "If you speak to her again. If you look at her. If you breathe in a direction that might eventually carry your air toward her lungs. I will come back here. And I will not use eight percent."
Mark blinks.
A coffee ground falls off his eyebrow.
"Nod if you understand."
He nods. Fast. Frantic. His chin bobbing like a woodpecker against a rotten log.
I straighten. Brush a fleck of cake ash from my lapel. Check my cuffs. The left one tore during the fountain extraction. I fold it under twice, evening it out.
Behind me, gravel crunches.
I turn.
Magnolia is at the corner of the building, still dripping, still ruined, one broken heel in her hand. Her mouth is pressed into a tight line. Her shoulders shake.
She is trying very hard not to laugh.
The laugh escapes anyway. A sharp, wet bark that she clamps down on with both hands pressed over her mouth. Her shoulders convulse. Her eyes squeeze shut. Water drips from the hem of her destroyed dress and pools around her one remaining heel.
From the dumpster, a weak groan.
I ignore it.
"You're shaking."
She drops her hands. Her teeth chatter once, hard, before she locks her jaw. "I'm not shaking. It's a full-body shiver. There's a distinction."
"The distinction being?"
"Shaking implies weakness. Shivering implies I jumped into a fountain in October and the laws of thermodynamics are having their way with me."
I close the distance. Three strides. Her chin tilts up. Way up. Water beads on her eyelashes. Goosebumps race down her bare arms in waves. The bridesmaid dress, some shade of dusty rose that probably cost more than my broadsword, clings to her skin like wet tissue paper. Ruined. The beadwork along the neckline hangs by threads. A long tear runs from her left hip to mid-thigh where she hit the fountain's edge.
She's magnificent.
I shrug out of my tuxedo jacket. The shoulder seams protest. One of them rips. The armor-silk lining whispers against my dress shirt as the jacket slides free, still warm from my body heat.
I drape it around her shoulders.
The jacket swallows her. The hem hits her mid-thigh. The shoulders hang four inches past her own, the sleeves dangling empty at her sides like deflated wings. She grabs the lapels with both fists and pulls it tight across her. Her knuckles go white.
"This is warm."
"Body heat transfers through armor-silk at twice the rate of standard fabric. The enchantment works both ways."
"That's not what I—" She stops. Buries her nose in the collar. Inhales. Her eyes flutter closed for half a second. "You smell like buttercream and violence."
"Occupational hazard."
From the dumpster, the sound of Mark attempting to sit up. Glass clinks. He whimpers. I don't turn around.
