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17

The rest of the ceremony proceeded smoothly as we transitioned into the reception, which was only a short walk away to a banquet setup that occupied both the gardens and the palace’s grandest veranda.

I sat next to Xander at the head table, facing all of our guests, patting my belly — finally satisfied after a long day of worrying, stress, and yes, holding back my gorgeous, manly tears.

Dinner had been absolutely delicious, consisting of dishes that sort of reminded me of things from Earth and yet didn’t — like a delightful garden salad that legitimately included more things you’d commonly find in a garden. So many flowers, most of which only grew in the Verdance. I didn’t expect to enjoy eating something that looked so delicate and pretty.

There was a seafood appetizer prepared with a fresh catch from the fishing villages just north of the Palace of Briars. The Court of Summer, Sparrowheart had assured me, was known for its seafood and its beautiful beaches — something that she promised to show us in good time. I couldn’t imagine King Oberon taking us on his promised tour of his kingdom when he’d already given us so much.

The main course was a beautifully dressed fowl, flavored with a fragrant citrus sauce. I couldn’t decide if the bird tasted closer to chicken or duck, the skin so crisp and the flavors so fruity and lemony. I did appreciate how the kitchens had made every effort to include more familiar ingredients from our side of the universe. We did have more in common with the fae than just our physiology, after all.

The speeches had come and gone — short and sweet, but all deeply appreciated. Preston had stumbled through his, red-faced and shy, so sweet and soft-spoken despite his frame.

Beatrice, of course, drew the most attention and laughter, punctuating her cutting jokes — most meant for me — by waving a champagne flute in the air. She started out with a full glass at the beginning of her speech and ended up with a half-empty one by the end, sloshing champagne all over the garden grass.

“I wonder what’s for dessert,” Xander asked, leaning close to poke the side of my belly. “If dinner was anything to go by, then we know it’s going to be amazing. But I’m also curious about the cake that Lore made for us. I’m sure it’s great, too.”

“Yeah,” I said, scanning the garden and the veranda. I patted my stomach for emphasis. “I think we can do that once everyone starts to settle down a bit.”

There was actually plenty to do at the wedding beyond just dinner and the ceremony. Xander, Beatrice, and the others had gotten so excited looking at all the fun things they could add by checking for ideas online. There was one of those photo booths that let you put on funny props and wigs, with photography provided by the finest lensman that the Ringing Hollow could provide.

There was also the guest book, a sizable tome that had been placed at its own podium not far from the dining area. The book itself was a gift from Kaoru, hand-bound with the finest paper, its cover finished in ivory leather.

He’d also kindly provided a set of pens with various vibrant inks, perfect for guests to inscribe their well wishes for the happy couple. Us, that is. I’d peeked at the podium throughout dinner, noting to Xander with delight that Flint, Harlock, and even Giuseppe had all bothered to write a little something for us.

“Here,” Reza said, his head popping between the two of us as he unloaded an armful of gift boxes onto our table. “Dessert’s taking too long and I can sense that someone here needs a little dose of sugar.”

“Rude,” I said, making a show of frowning as I hurriedly, gratefully unwrapped one of the boxes.

Oh, sweet. These were the souvenir cakes that Gertrude brought. I licked my lips in anticipation. Xander started tugging at the ribbon on his own box. A little pre-dessert dessert wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Found them on that table over there,” Reza said, his breath smelling of icing, but also some sort of liquor. “Looks like Gertrude Goodness brought too many so we’ve got plenty for snacking. They’re super good.”

Bruna Hernandez grinned and waved at me from the bar. Wow, she really hooked us up, Reza most of all. I laughed as I looked up into his uncharacteristically ruddy face. It was nice to see him letting loose for once, enjoying the party with the rest of us like he was actually human, too.

“So cool of Gertrude to make these all herself,” I said. “Come to think of it, she probably baked them all in that special oven she keeps in her office.”

Reza stared at me blankly. “Huh? In the what, now?”

“The oven in her office? Big shiny thing. She calls it the Crucible as a joke. My parents made it. Reza, you were right there when she was telling us about it.”

He shrugged. I frowned, but this time for real. I understood if Reza was a little tipsy — it was a party, after all — but how strange for him to completely forget about Gertrude’s oven. I mean, he was sitting at her desk, drinking tea and nodding along to everything.

“There you are,” Niko hissed, both their heads poked between us now. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Reza. Sorry, you guys. I’m sure you were enjoying your privacy until Mr. Fifth Glass of Champagne over here so rudely interrupted.”

“I only had six glasses,” Reza protested, grabbing Niko’s face in both hands, cooing contritely. “C’mere, habibi . I wanna kiss you.”

“Oh gods, Reza. Stop.” Niko had gone red in the face, as much from embarrassment as from anger, I imagined, but maybe from a little bit of titillation, too. He dragged Reza from our table, shaking his head apologetically. “Let’s leave them be. We have to go sign the guest book. Big, boozy baby.”

Reza stumbled after him, eyes all googly, love drunk and also regular drunk all at once.

“Thanks for the cake!” Xander called out, his portion already half gone. I was about to get started on mine when I noticed something about the guest book and the podium.

I should have seen it before, but it only came clearer to me now that Niko had stepped up to it. I’d watched other guests sign the book, but he had a way of holding himself that reminded me so strongly of Xander, how the Grayhaven boys had a particular posture. A straight back, a confidently raised head. He riffled through the book, selected an empty spot for him and Reza to sign, then smoothed the pages down on either side.

A chill ran down my spine. The way he stood there, the way both of Niko’s palms lay flat on the pages — all I could think of was Xander assuming his position to harness the power of the arcane engine. He’d stood exactly this same way, his hands pressed against the control panel, the slab of crystal that we’d intentionally carved into the shape of a book.

Why didn’t I think of this sooner? The external design of the arcane engine, the crystalline book, those had all been improvised, little customizations that I’d made with Preston, Giuseppe, and Master Vikhyat to make the machine our own. Otherwise, the device functioned similarly to its predecessor in every other way.

It had the main body of the machine, then a control panel for magical input, mounted on a pedestal. It was meant to channel and amplify the essence of the mage who used it. Lobelia, Kaoru, Beatrice, and Xander had all tested our version of the arcane engine, to varying degrees of explosive effect.

But the explosion at the Halls of Making, the one that had actually destroyed the guild the first time — who was the mage who stood at the pedestal?

Who tested it and caused the blast heard around the Black Market?

“Jack?” Xander waved his hand in front of my face. “Hey, Jack? Something wrong with your cake?”

Someone screamed, followed by a wet splat. I stared, bewildered, at the table that held our wedding cake. Buttercream and bits of cake had splattered everywhere, like it had exploded from the inside. A great, ragged split had appeared down the center of the cake, from the bottom all the way to the top tier.

Glassy globes spilled from the inside of the cake, tumbling from the table and shattering to release their unholy payload of purplish crystal. My stomach tangled in knots.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Chrysanthemyst petals. And Chrysanthemyst petals stored in the very glass grenades that Niko and I had designed and manufactured, too. I clenched my teeth as the wheels turned and turned in my head.

“This is impossible,” Xander breathed. “I thought we were done with this. Queen Titania is dead. There’s no one left to continue her awful work.”

I shook my head. “I think we’re wrong on that one. Remember, she said she was working with someone from our side of the portal. We just never put it all together.”

My fists tightened as I watched the chaos unfold at our wedding, of all places. The mutilated cake couldn’t possibly contain that many glass eggs, and yet they kept rolling out from its insides like they were issuing forth from a secreted pocket dimension. Which they probably were! This had been planned from the start.

“Arma grandia,” Xander muttered, twin bubbles of red light forming around us, then settling into our skin. I nodded gratefully as the warmth of the shielding spell took hold over my body.

“My masterpiece!” Lore cried, his crystal zipping between our heads, weaving the path of a distressed bumblebee. “Someone destroyed my masterpiece! Oh, Jackson, Xander, why?”

Xander pursed his lips, fingers curling as he prepared his spells. “Sorry, Lore. It was so beautiful, too.”

“Guess that rules you out, Lore.” His bawling blue crystal glowed a threatening red. “I’m kidding! Sorry. Bad joke. Someone clearly gained access to the cake and stuffed it full of these godsforsaken grenades.”

Lore’s crystal flashed blue and red, vacillating between despair and fury. “But who would do such a thing?”

I knew he was only in denial. He knew. Xander already knew, too.

“The cake was stored in your workshop at Mother Dough, wasn’t it?” Xander began kindly. “And the guild did commission several crates of Jack and Niko’s glass eggs.”

The colors drained from Lore’s body, leaving his crystal an eerie, milky white. “Gertrude Goodness. She used me. Did I ever deserve my place at the guild? Was I ever worth — no. She will pay for this.”

“Provided we can find her,” I said, searching the crowd, itching to punch something, or someone. “But what if she has something else in store? And we need to nullify these Chrysanthemysts before they take over the gardens.”

They were just as unstable and virulent as before, the petals taking root and almost instantly erupting into jagged, twisted vines, the crystalline segments as terrible as they were beautiful, designed to cut, maim, and corrupt.

The king’s gardeners and several of the guests had already begun to beat the overgrowth back, but with the cake still spitting out its contents like some deranged pinata, who knew how long it would take before the Palace of Briars was once again transformed into a choked, thorn-filled death trap?

“Whitby and I will find a way,” Lore said, zipping off into the crowd. I appreciated his initiative, but something about his tone told me that Gertrude needed to watch her back. And her front.

“The fucking nerve of her,” I muttered. “The last person I expected. A guild master, too. Why would she go through all this trouble, and at our wedding, too? How could this possibly get any worse?”

“Remember Titania’s plan. The Chrysanthemysts lay the groundwork for corruption. It saps power where it grows, sending it back to those who control it, and now it’s growing right in Oberon’s backyard.” Xander tugged on my jacket. “And don’t look now, but things have just gone from bad to worse.”

The crystals had transformed again, the vines sprouting the familiar deadly blooms of the Chrysanthemyst. But now the petals were falling, the shards of crystal reshaping themselves until they resembled little stars. And then the stars began to stretch — four limbs and an awful, spiny head.

Sharp and spindly things. Slender gauzy wings. The Fractures.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed.

The Fractures screeched as they staggered outward, lunging and slashing at anyone nearby. The guests screamed, though most of those attending weren’t at all the kind to flee from a fight. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.

I clenched my fist, instinct and muscle memory instructing me to send a flow of essence to the Gauntlet — except I wasn’t wearing it. I hadn’t even brought it with me to the Verdance.

“Not that I want to make this a big thing,” I grumbled to Xander, “but I really wish you would have let me wear the Gauntlet to the wedding. Or at least let Beatrice take the sleeves out so I could keep it under the table or something. In case of emergencies. Like this one.”

Xander nodded attentively as he kicked over our table to use as cover. “I love you too, babe. Glacia! Who would have guessed our first fight as a married couple would involve weaponizing menswear?”

“This isn’t a fight,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder for taking down a Fracture. “That over there is a fight. Those people need our help.”

I leaned forward into a run, except that my jacket suddenly felt so much harder to move in. Lifting my arms wasn’t supposed to be this damn difficult. I frowned down at myself, only then noticing the brush of Beatrice’s hand along the front of my suit. Magic trailed from her fingertips, sinking into the fibers of the fabric.

“Speaking of weaponizing menswear — sorry, Jack, you should sit this one out. I put a silkensteel spell on your suit. Makes the material tough as hell, but your mobility’s gonna take a hit. At least you’ll be safe.”

“Thanks, B. Xander gave me a shield, too, but better safe than sorry. Gods, this spell you cast — did it have to be so tight?”

Beatrice’s eyes rolled down, then up my body, her lips twisting with disappointment.

“You really should have let me tailor the sleeves enough to accommodate the Gauntlet.”

Xander smirked. “Yeah, Jack. You really should have let her.”

My jaw fell. “You guys are going to kill me. Not the Fractures. You two, specifically.”

Bedlam at the Palace of Briars. Good thing so many of our friends and guests were capable of erecting their own magical defenses. Calls of “Arma!” echoed across the gardens, flashes of red light as the Grayhaven boys threw up their shields.

Sedgewick had engaged every single candle on the premises, conjuring great gouts of flame to harass and dazzle the Fractures. Master Lobelia exerted her will over the native flora to rip them apart, summoning strange and terrifying plants from around the gardens to help in the fight.

Edric and Wilhelmina fired spells like a pair of magical gunslingers, launching the elements from their fingertips. Reza was an actual magical gunslinger, his refined mastery controlling the flight of his ensorcelled bullets and ensuring that they only struck their intended targets.

But we stood a better chance if we cut this off at the source, and I had nothing better to do. I squeezed Xander’s hand and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“I’ll be back.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, no. You’re quoting action movies. Jackson Aurelius Pryde, don’t you dare — ”

I vaulted over our table, risking the loss of cover, but I had a shielding spell, a silkensteel jacket, and bravado on my side, plus I looked really cool doing it. Fighting the new stiffness of my suit I shuffled as fast as I could go down the garden, making a beeline for the wedding cake from hell.

Poor Lore, crafting the perfect cake only for Gertrude Goodness to use it as a Trojan horse packed with actual grenades. Poor us for having to suffer through this bullshit at our wedding. And the poor fae, King Oberon’s kindness repaid by his ex-wife’s posthumous attempt to repave their palace into a dystopian crystal hellscape.

I struggled out of my jacket, muttering obscenities the entire time. It felt like someone had overstarched it, then starched it some more, turning it into more of a sculpture than a garment. I clenched my teeth as I eyed the gash in the wedding cake, still never slowing its relentless release of Chrysanthemyst grenades. How many of these glass eggs had we actually sold to Mother Dough? Did Gertrude really load all of them by herself?

Ripping the jacket off my arms with one final triumphant roar, I slammed it over the opening, sealing the hole in the cake. I stood back, watching warily to see if it would hold. My pulse thumped in my temples. Glass and crystal clinked as the eggs collided with each other, but the jacket didn’t budge.

The jacket was indestructible, a ringing endorsement for Beatrice Rex’s boutique. I waited to see if the cake’s contents would explode out the sides instead, but nothing. A belated cheer went up from around the gardens. Now we only had to clean up the last of the Fractures and Chrysanthemysts.

Lore flew to my side, Whitby hovering over to my opposite shoulder.

“Goodness gracious,” Lore said. “You did it, Jackson.”

I threw my hand at the cake. “What in the world did you bake this out of, Lore? This has to be the sturdiest cake in the world. Is it even edible?”

“Oh, it certainly is.” Whitby’s crystal pulsed an embarrassed shade of pink. “We just did everything we could to reinforce its structure. Lore was so worried about potential floppiness.”

So our wedding cake was a marvel in baking engineering and architecture, a feat orchestrated by the digital brains of two artificer’s intelligences combined. A pity we couldn’t taste it. I sure as hell wasn’t planning to now that I knew about its delightfully dangerous filling.

With a gesture, King Oberon called down a beam of sunlight, its shaft widening like a spotlight until all of the gardens were covered in searing gold. I held my hand over my eyes, peering through my fingers, watching even as the magic of the Summer Court purified and cleansed its very earth. Within moments, none of the purple crystals remained.

“The aftershocks of Titania’s cruelty,” the king said, his eyes searching the palace grounds. “Blasphemy and abomination on the face of the Verdance. Pah. That I could come with you to finish this and find who was responsible, but I must stay and ensure that the Summer Court is secure. Otherwise, you know that I would gladly break their spine myself.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty. We’ll make sure to finish this.”

Xander bent low to retrieve something out of all the broken glass and smushed cake. He held up two tiny objects in his hands. The figurines that Lore had used as a cake topper, the scruffy one to represent me, the salt-and-pepper hair for Xander. They used to be one solid piece, but the cake’s explosion had split them apart. Somehow that made me angrier than anything.

Madame Cathee traced an oval in the air, magic humming in sparking streaks as she moved her finger. A portal flashed into existence, the swirling energies faintly warping an image of the destination: Mystery Row, the Black Market.

“Gentlemen, if you please. This should take you outside your home.” She bent closer as I passed, speaking in a lowered voice. “We must stay here to make sure this dimension is safe. The fae king will need all the help he can get.”

I nodded. Understood. Better to cut off the infection here than risk letting it leak into other corners of reality. I glanced over my shoulder, reaching a hand out toward Xander.

“Xander, you coming?”

He stuffed the figurines into his pocket, mumbling sulkily. “I guess we can glue them back together. So annoying. Yeah. Let’s go.”

He laced his fingers with mine. Hand in hand we left our own wedding as a married couple.

Our first order of business as newlyweds: kick a guild master’s traitorous ass.