1
The doves were not supposed to be on fire.
Nico stared up at the chandelier where six irritable birds, haloed in faint blue flame, roosted among strings of enchanted crystal. Every time one shifted, a sprinkle of sparks drifted down toward the aisle like dangerously festive confetti.
Tulla popped up at his elbow, tablet in one hand, wand tucked behind her ear like a pencil. “Good news,” she said, slightly out of breath. “The bride’s hair stopped screaming.”
“Fantastic,” Nico replied. “Tell her the doves are spontaneously combusting in sympathy.”
He snapped his fingers toward the chandelier. A soft gust of cool, glitterless air whooshed up from his palm, wrapping the birds in a swirl. The flames went out with a hiss and a few offended coos. The crystals chimed as the chandelier settled.
“That’s the third time today,” Tulla muttered, squinting at the flock. “Maybe they’re allergic to romance.”
“Same,” Nico said. “And we don’t get to complain, so neither do they.”
The hall slowly exhaled around them, adjusting itself as though the building were stretching. Vines of soft silver ivy crept along the walls, blooming tiny floating lanterns. Rows of chairs shifted an inch straighter on their own. In the arched windows, the sky held a sunset that had been magically looped for six hours, all molten orange and streaks of pink, refusing to move on.
The city outside the windows—if anyone cared to look past the illusion—was already deep into evening, but inside, this was the kind of light people liked in photographs. Soft. Forgiving. Fake.
“Okay,” Tulla said, scrolling through her glowing checklist. Her curls were pinned up with too many glittering stars, some of which were probably real. “Vows enchanted, cake levitating at a safe height, musicians charmed to only play the approved playlist, grandmother’s crystal protected from spontaneous waltzing, bride in dressing room, groom in side chamber. We are… shockingly on schedule.”
Nico watched a pair of floating candles drift past, trailing the faint scent of citrus and something warmer underneath, like sunlight on bakery windows. He had chosen that signature smell himself.
He did not think about the date.
He absolutely did not think about the fact that the candles smelled almost exactly like his childhood kitchen, and the way his mother’s hands had looked dusted with flour.
He did not think about the fact that his wristwatch, glamoured to look like a discreet silver bracelet, was quietly counting down to midnight.
Instead, he smoothed the front of his black vest, adjusted his tie, and scanned the hall with a professional eye.
Golden aisle runner? Perfect. Petals scattered in a carefully calibrated pattern of artful chaos? Still perfect. The ceremonial archway at the front, woven from branches of moonwood and hung with crystals that chimed faintly in response to nearby heartbeats? Absolutely—
The arch flickered.
Nico’s breath caught. The moonwood branches wavered, solid, then translucent, then solid again. The crystals buzzed with a thin, irritated whine, like bees trapped in glass.
Tulla saw his expression and looked up. “No. Nope. Do not do this to me, arch. We had a deal.”
She raised her hand, fingers tracing quick little sigils in the air. Pale lines of light trailed from the movement, forming a lattice around the arch. The wood settled back into visibility with a reluctant shudder.
“The building’s magic is jumpy today,” she said. “You feel that?”
Nico did. He’d felt it since waking up: a tremor under his skin, like the city’s heartbeat was slightly off. Lamps flickering half a beat late when you walked past, street tiles not quite aligning with your footsteps. A subtle wrongness, as though some vast hand had nudged everything a fraction of an inch to the left.
“I feel like the entire place drank three coffees and a bad idea,” he said. “But we’re being paid, so we smile and pretend everything is fine.”
Tulla smirked. “And that is why you are the best wedding planner in the city.”
“Second best,” he said automatically.
Her eyes narrowed. “To who?”
He shrugged. “Hopefully to whoever’s not working on their birthday.”
Her expression softened. “Nico…”
“We are not doing this,” he interrupted.
She tilted her head. “Doing what?”
“The birthday thing,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the air. “No surprise balloons. No tragic speeches. No enchanted cupcakes that sing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Something.’ We’re professionals.”
“You’re very cranky for someone turning—”
“If you say the number out loud, I’m canceling the open bar.”
Tulla shut her mouth with exaggerated horror. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
They glared at each other for a moment before she broke into a grin. “Fine. No number. But, just for the record, if I were turning a totally unspecified age and I had your cheekbones, I’d throw myself a parade.”
“Duly noted,” he said. “When the universe rerolls my personality, I’ll let you know.”
Her grin faded into something more thoughtful. “You could at least take the night off, you know.”
“I did,” he said. “Off work. Onto different work. Circular progress.”
“Normal people do things on their birthdays that don’t involve panicking about floral arrangements.”
“Normal people also believe the universe will give them a break,” he said. “I lost that habit years ago.”
Tulla watched him a moment longer, like she wanted to push, then she sighed and let it go. “All right, grumpy star. At least let me get you a pre-ceremony drink—non-alcoholic, so we don’t accidentally summon last year’s regrets.”
“After we get the bride to the altar without her bouquet exploding,” he said. “Then I’ll consider hydration.”
“Noted.” She checked something off on her tablet. Little golden sparks flew from the screen and disappeared into the air. “Guests start arriving in ten. You want to charm the welcome wards or should I?”
“I’ll do it.” Nico rolled his shoulders, feeling the familiar, comforting weight of responsibility settle back into place. “Go make sure the officiant hasn’t turned into a tree or something.”
“That was one time,” she called back as she hurried toward the side corridor. “And it was a symbolic transformation.”
Nico walked toward the open entryway, hands already moving with practiced ease. The grand doors arched high above him, carved with dancing figures and climbing roses that occasionally winked if you stared too long. He traced a circle over the center of the wood; thin lines of white light spread out in a spiderweb pattern, racing along the edges, sinking into the hinges.
“Guests of the union of Lira and Marek,” he murmured, letting his voice carry the weight of the spell. “Welcome. Enter with open hearts, closed mouths, and no cursed objects. Looking at you, Auntie Yira.”
There was a faint popping noise, and something small and nasty-sounding fizzled out on the other side of the door.
Nico smiled. “Nice try, Auntie.”
He stepped back and surveyed the hall one last time. The floating lanterns were steady now, hovering at just the right height. The music spell was humming in the rafters, ready to drop a warm, low melody as soon as the first guest crossed the threshold. The scent enchantment was working, curling softly through the air.
Everything looked perfect.
It always did, right before it didn’t.
“Deep breath,” he said under his breath. “In, out, pretend you’ve got this.”
The doors glowed faintly, then swung inward as the first guests arrived.
They came in twos and threes, murmuring in the hush that precedes formal joy. Dresses brushing the floor, some glittering, some seemingly made of starlight or leaves or smoke. Suits cut sharp enough to slice, embroidered with tiny sigils that shimmered when their wearers laughed. The occasional guest with horns or feathers or extra eyes, this being the kind of city where everyone had that one cousin who was technically part swamp.
Nico greeted them all by name, because that was part of the job. He shook hands, accepted air kisses, nodded at floating familiars perched on shoulders. He winked at a little girl whose braids were tied with ribbons that kept trying to untie themselves to go dancing.
“Welcome,” he said. “Please, find your seats. Yes, your name card will glow when you’re near the right chair. No, please don’t lick the glowing name cards. They do not taste like anything good.”
A tall, hawk-nosed woman in iridescent green approached, carrying an orb that smoked faintly.
“A protective charm,” she said before he could speak. “For the bride. To keep wandering eyes away.”
The orb crackled, emitting a puff of sour-smelling gray vapor. Nico’s own eyes started to water just being near it.
“Lovely thought,” he said, smiling blandly. “Unfortunately we’ve already arranged spiritual security. House policy: no personal hexes or charms within the ceremonial boundary.”
Her mouth thinned. “Young man, I have been warding marriages since before you were born.”
“Which is exactly why I respect your work too much to let it fight with mine,” he said smoothly. “If you leave it at the gift table, I promise we’ll place it in the couple’s home afterwards. It’ll have better range anyway.”
She considered this, then handed the orb over. When her back was turned, the orb tried to bite him.
He slapped a quick stasis sigil on the glass. “Not today, Auntie,” he murmured.
Tulla slid back to his side like she’d never left. “Officiant is not a tree. I repeat, the officiant is not a tree.”
“Low bar, but I’ll take it,” Nico said.
“She did ask if you wanted to adjust the vow pattern,” Tulla added. “Something about adding a clause where they promise not to deliberately weaponize dream-sharing magic against each other.”
“That’s under the ‘No Emotional Arson’ sub-clause,” he said. “We already put it in last week.”
“I love it when you talk legal wards to me,” Tulla said, fanning herself.
“Focus,” he murmured, lips twitching.
More guests poured in. The murmur of voices rose, bounced off the enchanted ceiling, and softened into something warm and fizzy. The building liked gatherings. It drank laughter like wine.
For a few minutes, Nico let himself sink into the rhythm of it. Direct. Smile. Answer questions. Quietly intercept the cursed bracelet one cousin tried to slip onto another’s wrist. Reset the champagne fountain when it tried to escape. Nudge the enchanted orchestra to avoid accidentally slipping into a dirge because one of the violins was feeling melodramatic.
His watch vibrated gently against his skin.
He did not look.
He knew what time it was. He’d known from the moment he opened his eyes to find his bedroom clock projecting a cheerful “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICO!” across his ceiling in pulsing red letters, before he’d silenced it with a flick and a curse.
Thirty.
That was the number he wasn’t letting Tulla say out loud.
It loomed in the back of his mind like an unpaid bill. Not old, not really. Not in a city where certain creatures considered a century “youthful.” But old enough that people started asking questions: Are you seeing anyone? When are you settling down? Have you considered summoning a partner? There’s this ritual, my friend’s cousin’s ex used it, her fiancé crawled right out of her mirror—
He had planned to ignore it. Work through it. Let the day slide past quietly, unnoticed, like a minor spell miscast in a crowded room.
He had not planned for the city’s magic to feel strange. He had not planned for the doves to catch fire. He had not planned for the slight, prickling pressure behind his sternum that came and went like a breath that never fully released.
He definitely had not planned for his ex to be here.
But he saw them as soon as they walked in.
Lio looked exactly the same and nothing like Nico remembered, all at once. Tall, lean, with that same careless grace, the same absent-minded curl to their mouth. Their suit was dark silver, cut close, shimmering faintly with stored illusions that threatened to slip loose. Their hair, once perpetually tousled, was now elegantly swept back with a streak of pale color at the temple that might have been fashion or might have been stress.
Nico’s stomach did something unpleasant and complicated. The air between them tightened, the way it did right before lightning.
Tulla, who had been mid-sentence about floral centerpieces, followed his gaze. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Oh. I thought they weren’t coming.”
“So did I,” Nico murmured.
Lio saw him.
For the briefest moment, the illusions around them flickered. The air at their shoulders shimmered; half-formed images spun and vanished. A spinning top. A bouquet. A collapsing tower of cards.
Then their face closed, and everything smoothed out.
They changed direction, moving not toward Nico but toward the left aisle, where some mutual friends were already seated. They laughed at something someone said, head tilted back, light catching on their jaw.
Tulla slid her arm through Nico’s like an anchor. “You don’t have to talk to them.”
“Great,” he said, voice steady. “I don’t want to.”
“You also don’t have to pretend you don’t care,” she pointed out.
“I am not pretending,” he said. “I am professionally compartmentalizing.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“I haven’t set anything on fire yet,” he said. “So, amazing.”
Above them, one of the chandelier candles flickered dangerously.
Tulla lifted a hand and snapped her fingers. The flame straightened. “You are not allowed to combust out of sympathy,” she told it sternly.
The candle sparkled once, sulkily, and settled.
Across the hall, Lio glanced over their shoulder. Their eyes brushed Nico’s again, just for a second.
Nico turned away.
“Places,” he said, voice maybe a little harsher than necessary.
The musicians struck up the pre-ceremony procession. A low, rolling melody unfolded, rich and warm as melted chocolate. Guests took their seats; the enchanted name cards glowed, guiding them like lazy fireflies.
Nico and Tulla moved through the space with practiced ease, smoothing edges. A gentleman with antlers needed assurance that his seat would accommodate his rack. A pair of cousins argued over who had the right to sit closer to the aisle, citing various family feuds and historic slights; Nico rearranged them without letting either side feel they’d lost. A toddler started crying because the floating lanterns were “too floaty”; Tulla whispered a spell that coaxed one lantern down to hover just above the child’s hand, bobbing in sync with the tiny sobs until they turned into giggles.
Finally, the hall settled. A hush fell, the audible hush of expectation. Dust motes and magic hung in the air together, waiting.
“All right,” Tulla said softly, at his side. “Ready?”
“Always,” Nico lied.
The doors at the far end glowed, then slowly swung shut with a decisive thud. A thin barrier of light shivered across them, then vanished. The wards locked into place. No one in, no one out until the ceremony finished or someone screamed the safe word.
Nico took his position near the front, to the side of the aisle, where he could see everything and be seen by almost no one. Tulla slipped to the back, headset crackling slightly as she coordinated with the staff in the wings.
The music shifted: brighter now, tinged with threads of gold. The officiant, a serene older woman in simple robes that glowed faintly from within, stepped up to the moonwood arch. Her eyes were calm, but Nico noticed the way her fingers flexed once before she folded her hands.
Doors at the back of the hall opened.
The procession began.
First, the little group of children assigned to scatter petals and miniature glowing orbs. They walked very seriously, taking turns accidentally dropping everything at once and then scrambling to pick it up again. The hall chuckled gently, the sound moving like a wave.
Then the attendants: a parade of friends and cousins in coordinated colors that managed to look spontaneous. They moved down the aisle in pairs, some holding hands, some exchanging exaggerated smirks. One of them winked at Nico as they passed; he pretended not to notice.
The groom appeared in the side doorway to Nico’s right, half-hidden behind a curtain. Marek’s hands were clenched on the fabric. He was tall, strong, the kind of man who probably wrestled magical beasts for fun and yet currently looked like he might faint at the sight of his own shoes.
Nico stepped closer, voice low. “Breathe.”
Marek exhaled sharply. “What if I forget the words?”
“The vows are under your tongue,” Nico said. “Literally. The spell will know when to release them.”
“What if my mother starts crying and won’t stop?”
“Then the building will redirect excess water to the indoor fountain. We’ve had worse.”
“What if Lira changes her mind?”
The question hung there, raw and naked.
Nico looked at him. “Did she ask for an exit charm?”
Marek blinked. “What?”
“Some people want one built into the ritual,” Nico said quietly. “A way to break it if someone panics at the last second. Lira didn’t.”
Marek swallowed. “So she—”
“She’s walking toward you right now,” Nico said. “Because she chose to. So you can either meet her at the altar or faint into that very expensive hedge.”
Marek huffed out a laugh that was half choking. “Okay. Okay.”
“Good,” Nico said, patting his arm once. “Try not to run away, yeah? It’s bad for business.”
The look Marek gave him was startled, then grateful. Nico stepped back into his place as the music rose.
The doors at the back opened again.
Lira stepped in.
She was radiant in the way people got when they leaned fully into the magic of the moment. Her dress was a waterfall of white and pale gold, catching light in ways that made it hard to tell where fabric ended and glow began. Tiny charms sewn into the hem whispered blessings with each step. Her hair, recently done screaming, was swept up and adorned with moonflowers that opened and closed softly, in time with her heartbeat.
At her side, her father walked with the stiffness of someone trying very hard not to cry. His arm trembled under Lira’s hand.
The hall rose as one.
Nico felt the shift. Always, this was his favorite part: the moment when even the most cynical guest couldn’t help but lean in. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, drawn by the gravity of two people walking toward a choice.
Lira’s gaze found Marek’s at the front. Her smile trembled, then steadied. The glowing petals the children had dropped rose slightly from the floor as she passed, swirling gently in her wake like a quiet storm.
Nico let himself enjoy it, just for a heartbeat: the softness in their eyes, the hum of the vows waiting like a chord about to be struck, the building’s happiness humming through the walls.
Then his watch buzzed again.
A brief, subtle vibration against the thin skin of his wrist, barely noticeable.
He clenched his fingers. Not now.
As Lira reached the front, her father kissed her cheek, whispered something that made her laugh unexpectedly, and placed her hand in Marek’s. Their fingers intertwined automatically, the way people’s bodies sometimes knew the choreography before their minds caught up.
The officiant stepped forward. Her robes pulsed once with soft light as she raised her hands.
“Family, friends, honored guests,” she began, her voice carrying easily without amplification. “We gather to witness and sanctify a choice. Not a spell of compulsion, not a binding of convenience, but a decision made and remade in every breath that follows this one.”
Nico had heard a thousand variations on that speech. He could have recited most of them in his sleep. But tonight, the words felt oddly sharp, like they’d been polished.
He rubbed his thumb over the inside of his wrist, where faint, intricate scars curled — remnants of an old curse. The skin prickled.
The officiant continued, weaving in the couple’s names, their shared history, the usual blend of tradition and personal touches. The mood was warm, expectant. Lira’s mother dabbed at her eyes. Marek’s brother tried and failed to look indifferent. Somewhere in the second row, someone’s familiar—a small, rotund dragon—sniffled smoke into a hankie.
Then the lights flickered.
It was subtle at first. The floating lanterns dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again, as if confused. The crystals on the arch buzzed once, twice. One of the doves in the chandelier gave an indignant squawk.
Nico’s senses sharpened. He scanned the hall, looking for the source. Tulla looked up sharply from the back, headset crackling with sudden static.
The officiant faltered for half a second, then continued, smoothly layering the vow spell through her words. Golden threads spun out from her hands, wrapping gently around Lira and Marek’s joined fingers like sunlight in silk form.
“Do you, Marek,” she said, “of your own will, choose Lira as your partner in this life, to walk beside through storm and calm, to share—”
The music stuttered.
The orchestra’s enchantment skipped, like a record caught on a scratch. Notes warped, twisted, then righted themselves. A murmur rippled through the guests.
Nico felt it then: not just jumpy magic, not simple nerves. Something deeper. A tug.
It came from above and within and all around, as if the city were inhaling. A pressure built in his chest, the same one that had lurked all day, now swelling like a wave.
The officiant’s hands trembled; the golden threads around the couple flickered.
Tulla’s voice murmured in his earpiece, quiet but tense. “Nico. You feel that?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
And then, in the space of a heartbeat, everything happened at once.
A scream from the far side of the hall—high, piercing. Someone’s chair levitated two feet in the air and spun slowly. The dragon familiar hiccuped and belched a stream of rainbow fire that singed the nearest floral arrangement. The moonwood arch shuddered; leaves burst out along its surface, blooming and wilting in seconds.
The doves caught fire.
They ignited as one, flames licking along their wings, casting wild shadows across the guests. Instead of panicking, the birds seemed annoyed, shuffling and shaking their heads as if this was just one more irritation in a day full of them.
The guests were not so calm.
Someone shouted. Someone else tried to cast a dousing spell and missed, hitting a row of chairs instead, which dissolved into puddles and then re-formed as very confused penguins. The music, thrown completely off, launched into a triumphant march that absolutely did not fit the scene.
Nico moved.
“Tulla, ceiling,” he snapped, already reaching upward.
He didn’t need to speak the spell; his hands knew it. Fingers traced a firm, confident pattern in the air. A gust of cool, controlled wind whipped up to the chandelier, wrapping around the flaming birds like a soft, invisible blanket. The flames died with a collective hiss. Tiny wisps of smoke curled downward, smelling faintly of burnt sugar.
The chandelier, offended, swayed.
Somewhere in the chaos, Marek flinched.
Silence fell in a thick, weird way—music cut off, conversations sliced in half. The building itself seemed to hold its breath.
All eyes shifted toward the groom.
Marek’s chest was heaving. His fingers had slipped from Lira’s. His gaze darted from the arch to the crowd to the ceiling, then back to Lira’s face. Whatever he saw there made him pale further.
“Marek?” Lira said softly.
Nico felt it an instant before it happened, the way you can feel a glass tipping seconds before it shatters.
Marek turned.
And ran.
He didn’t just stumble or step back; he bolted. One second he was standing under the arch; the next he was a blur of suit and panic sprinting down the side aisle.
But instead of heading straight for the main doors like a reasonable runaway groom, he veered left.
Toward the cake.
Nico saw his entire professional reputation flash before his eyes.
The cake towered at the far corner, six tiers of architectural ambition. Frosting flowers climbed its sides in intricate patterns, enchanted to occasionally open and release a faint sparkle. Tiny sugar doves circled the top tier, flapping gently. It hovered a few inches above its stand, held aloft by a levitation charm for that extra “wow” factor.
Marek hit the table at full speed.
The cake wobbled. The levitation spell, not designed for sudden impact, squealed in magical protest.
“No, no, no—” Nico whispered.
The cake toppled.
But instead of crashing to the floor, it shot forward—levitation magic rerouting panic into momentum. The entire confection slid through the air like a very determined pudding, right toward the nearest open exit door.
For a surreal moment, the hall watched as the groom fled and the cake fled with him, a bizarre, frosted companion.
The door recognized the imminent bolting pastry as a large, enchanted object and opened obligingly.
Marek disappeared into the corridor.
The cake followed.
There was a stunned beat of silence.
Then someone laughed, high and close to hysteria.
The sound broke the spell.
Voices exploded. Guests stood, craned their necks, talked over each other. The penguin-chairs waddled in confused circles. The dragon familiar fainted dramatically onto its owner’s lap, blowing smoke rings.
Lira stood alone at the front, under the quivering arch.
Her bouquet, forgotten at her side, trembled. The flowers, overwhelmed by the emotional surge, popped into full bloom at once, then exploded in a shower of petals that dissolved into glitter.
She didn’t flinch.
Nico was already moving, cutting through the chaos in a direct line. Tulla’s voice buzzed in his ear, issuing instructions to staff, locking the doors so half the guests didn’t stampede after the fleeing groom and dessert.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Nico called, voice pitched to carry even through the commotion. “Please remain in your seats. The groom has experienced a minor… spatial malfunction. Everything is under control.”
“Is this part of the show?” someone shouted.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Which is why we are now transitioning into an unscheduled intermission. Complimentary drinks will be provided. Please stay away from the penguins. They’re structurally unstable.”
The penguins honked in what sounded like agreement.
He reached Lira.
Up close, she looked not radiant but human—cheeks flushed, eyes too wide, bouquetless hand clenched so tight her knuckles were white. Her lipstick had cracked slightly at one side.
“Nico,” she said, and her voice didn’t break. “What just happened?”
He hesitated for exactly one half-second.
“The groom is having some… last-minute emotional congestion,” he said gently. “We’re going to go unclog him.”
For a moment, she stared at him. Then her shoulders dropped, and a strange, strained chuckle escaped her.
“That’s the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard,” she said.
“I’m saving the good ones for the reconciliation,” he replied.
Her mouth twisted. “Assuming there is one.”
“There will be a conversation,” he said. “And you won’t have to go into it alone. But right now, the most important thing is that you don’t stand here in front of two hundred people while they project their own unresolved issues onto your love life.”
She blinked. “That’s… fair.”
He turned slightly, catching Tulla’s eye across the room. She was already moving toward them, flanked by two assistants carrying emergency privacy screens like they were about to stage a heist.
“Lira,” Nico murmured, lowering his voice. “Can I escort you to the waiting lounge? You can choose who comes with you. Your parents, your best friend, your terrifying aunt, whoever you want. No one else gets through the wards.”
She swallowed. For a moment, he thought she might say no, might insist on marching after Marek and demanding answers in front of everyone. But then she glanced past him at the sea of watching faces, all wide eyes and half-hidden whispers.
“Yes,” she said. “Please. I need… not this.”
“Done.”
He offered his arm. She took it, fingers icy against his sleeve. Together they walked away from the altar, through a quickly conjured arch of gauzy illusions Tulla whipped up on the fly—something pretty and distracting to give the hall something to focus on besides the fact that the wedding had just imploded.
As they passed the first row, Nico felt a familiar gaze on his skin.
He didn’t look, but he knew Lio was watching.
Tulla joined them with the screens. As soon as they crossed into the side corridor, she snapped a charm. The air shimmered; sound from the hall muffled to a faint, distant hum.
“Room three is ready,” she said, all brisk efficiency now. “I’ve asked the staff to bring calming tea, a decoy cake, and tissues. Someone’s running after the groom. Do we want that someone to be family or a neutral third party?”
Lira’s mouth opened, closed. “My brother,” she said finally. “He’ll… he’ll know how to talk to him.”
“Consider it done,” Tulla said, squeezing her shoulder once before hurrying off.
Nico walked Lira the rest of the way in silence. The corridor was lined with soft lights that brightened as they passed, trying to be soothing. The building hated it when weddings went wrong. Nico could feel its anxiety tingling under his palm as he brushed the wall.
“This isn’t your fault,” he told it under his breath.
The wall vibrated faintly in grim disbelief.
In the lounge, Lira’s parents were already waiting, along with two close friends clutching each other’s hands. The room itself was designed for exactly this situation: plush sofas, low music, walls spelled to absorb both sound and panic. The air smelled faintly of lavender and something stronger underneath, in case anyone needed to scream.
“I’ll give you privacy,” Nico said.
Lira nodded, jaw tight. “Will you… let me know when you know anything?”
“Of course.”
He stepped out, letting the door whisper shut behind him. The corridor felt oddly empty without the muffled roar of the hall clamoring at his skin.
He leaned back against the wall for exactly one breath.
That was when his watch buzzed again.
This time, it wasn’t subtle. A sharp, insistent vibration shot up his arm, strong enough to make his fingers twitch.
“Okay, what,” he muttered, tugging his sleeve up.
The face of the watch, usually elegantly blank until he tapped it, glowed bright red.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICO! blazed across it, because Tulla had no mercy.
He glared. “Really?”
The text flickered. Letters rearranged, melting and reforming into a new message.
00:04
He frowned.
The numbers ticked.
00:03
“That’s not funny,” he whispered.
00:02
The corridor dimmed, as if someone had turned the world down a notch.
00:01
The watch face went dark.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing. No sound, no movement, just the thin, high whine of magic stretching.
Then the lights blew out.
Not just in the corridor—through the wall, he heard guests gasp as the hall plunged into darkness. Somewhere, someone shrieked. The faint hum of the building’s magic stuttered and dropped, leaving everything feeling suddenly heavier.
Emergency candles flickered to life along the corridor floor, one by one, casting long, wobbly shadows.
“Nico?” Tulla’s voice crackled in his earpiece, laced with static. “We’ve lost main power. Backup’s trying to—what is—”
Her words cut off in a burst of sharp, painful buzzing. The earpiece went dead.
A cold, prickling sensation crawled up Nico’s spine.
“Okay,” he said to nobody. “Okay, that’s new.”
He pushed off from the wall, intent on heading back toward the hall, when the air in front of him rippled.
At first, he thought it was just the emergency lights messing with his vision. The shadows seemed to thicken, then twist, gathering in the center of the corridor like smoke being drawn toward an unseen chimney.
The temperature dropped. His breath fogged the air.
“Nico,” someone said.
The voice was soft and layered, like three people speaking at once, out of sync. It wrapped around his name, tasting it.
Nico froze.
The shadows converged, coiling into a rough shape: tall, slender, vaguely human. The emergency candles flared, throwing light upward.
She stepped out of the darkness, or maybe she condensed from it.
The figure was not quite solid. Her edges shimmered, blurring into the air like ink in water. She wore a gown that seemed made of overlapping heartbeats, each pulse sending a faint ripple through the fabric. Her hair flowed down her back in a way that suggested wind but didn’t obey it. Her skin glowed faintly, like moonlight on marble.
Her face was young and old and neither. Her eyes were bottomless.
Nico’s mouth went dry.
“Hi,” he said, because that was his default setting when confronted with eldritch phenomena. “If you’re here to complain about the cake situation, I’d like to state, for the record, that it was not my fault.”
She smiled. It was not a safe smile.
“You’re exactly as advertised,” she said. “Sarcasm first, terror second.”
“Who… are you?” he asked, though he already knew.
Because he could feel it. The same pressure in his chest from earlier now surged, filling him, a current pulling at his ribs. The building’s heartbeat, the jumpy magic, the way the candles smelled slightly sweeter today—it all clicked, a pattern he hadn’t been willing to see.
“I have been called many things,” she said. “Song in the blood. Fool’s fire. Patron of every terrible poem. The first impulse to hold someone’s hand and the last impulse to let it go.”
She tilted her head. Her earrings, if that’s what they were, were small spinning galaxies.
“But you can call me Love,” she said. “Most do, eventually.”
His brain supplied the missing word.
“Goddess,” he whispered.
She inclined her head in a mocking little bow. “Nico.”
He swallowed. “This… this isn’t real. I’ve seen you in frescoes. Statues. Hallway murals trying to look tasteful but failing. You don’t just… show up in corridors.”
“Are you critiquing my entrance?” she asked, amused. “On your birthday?”
“This is a spectacularly bad time,” he blurted, and then wanted to bite his tongue.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? You’re busy?”
“I am literally in the middle of a wedding,” he said. “The groom just eloped with the cake. The bride is in shock. The guests are traumatically acquainted with spontaneous poultry combustion. I have a reputation to salvage.”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re very good at your job.”
It shouldn’t have mattered, but something in him warmed traitorously at the compliment.
She drifted closer. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor.
Up close, he could see hairline fractures in her glow. Thin lines of dullness spiderwebbed across her skin, barely visible, like cracks in fine porcelain.
“You feel it, don’t you?” she asked softly.
He did. Now that she stood before him, the city’s wrongness was almost deafening. The building’s pulse, the ambient magic, the background hum of a thousand minor enchantments—it was all off-key, like an orchestra playing slightly sharp.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Her smile faded. “Nothing. That’s the problem.”
He frowned.
She gestured, and the air around them shifted. For a brief moment, the walls of the corridor fell away. Nico was standing in a familiar space and a vast one at the same time: the hall, the city, the sky above, all overlaid. He saw flickers of other weddings, other vows, other couples pressing ink to contracts and lips to lips and hands to hands.
Threads spun between them all, fine as hair, glowing softly.
“Love is the gravity that keeps this place together,” she said. “Not just romance. Devotion. Promise. Choice. Every time someone says ‘I choose you’ and means it, a thread strengthens. Every time they turn away from what is easy toward what is true, another strand weaves in.”
Nico watched as some threads brightened. Others snapped, flaring and vanishing with tiny sparks.
“Used to be, I could coax them,” she went on. “Nudge here, soften there. Hold the net when it tore.”
Her hand lifted. Nico saw those fractures on her fingers again, lines of absence spreading.
“But gods are not eternal,” she said lightly. “We fade. We retire. We… move on. And when we do, someone has to hold the threads.”
She let the vision collapse. The corridor snapped back around them; sound rushed in, muted but present.
Nico shook his head, trying to reorient. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I feel like this is the part where you tell me you found a lovely little god-home in some other plane and you’ll be leaving us a nice pamphlet with instructions.”
She laughed, a sound that made the emergency candles flicker toward her like flowers to the sun.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “I already tried leaving Love on autopilot. Do you know what happened?”
He didn’t, but he had a feeling it involved a lot of terrible decisions.
“War,” she said. “Bad poetry. Marriages bound purely for tax benefits. I’m still recovering.”
Her gaze sharpened. “No. This time, I’m doing what I should have done ages ago. I’m choosing an heir.”
Nico’s skin went cold. “An heir,” he repeated. “Like… a replacement.”
“A continuation,” she corrected. “Someone tethered enough to this mess of a world to care, and reckless enough to intervene when necessary. Someone who understands that perfection is boring, that love is often absurd, and that ceremonies like this—” she nodded toward the hall “—are the bones on which we hang meaning.”
He swallowed. “And you’re… telling me this because…?”
She stepped even closer. He could see his own reflection in her eyes now, dwarfed and distorted.
“Because I’ve already chosen,” she said. “You.”
Nico stared at her.
He waited for the punchline. The reveal. The “just kidding, here’s the real godlet, it’s that guy over there hyperventilating into a curtain.”
Nothing came.
He laughed, a short, disbelieving sound. “No.”
Her brows arched. “No?”
“No,” he repeated. “I am a wedding planner.”
“Yes.”
“I make timetables and seating charts and soothe drunk uncles,” he said. “I make sure flower spells don’t accidentally propose to anyone. I keep the chaos manageable. I do not… I am not…” He gestured vaguely. “Divine.”
“Yet,” she said.
“I’m not even particularly good at love,” he snapped before he could stop himself.
Her gaze softened. “That’s one reason you are perfect.”
He flinched.
Images tried to surface—Lio’s expression at the end, the curse that followed, his own reflection in the mirror afterward. He shoved them down.
“You’re mistaken,” he said tightly. “There must be some… some oatmeal-hearted soul out there who writes sonnets for fun. Ask them.”
“They’re too busy writing sonnets,” she said dryly. “I don’t need someone infatuated with the idea of love. I need someone who shows up when love is messy. Someone who sees the disaster and walks into it anyway.”
She pointed at the hall.
“You could have left after your ex,” she said. “You didn’t. You showed up. You keep showing up.”
“That’s just my job,” he muttered.
“Your job,” she said, “is to make sure people don’t combust on their so-called happiest day. You do more than that. You shield. You listen. You stand between fragile hearts and the terrible conditions they’re invited to fulfill.”
He hated, profoundly, that her words made something in him ache.
He crossed his arms, defensive. “Let’s say I believe you,” he said. “Hypothetically. What does being your heir even mean? Do I grow wings? Start spontaneously singing ballads in public squares? What?”
She smiled again, sharp and fond. “If you accept, you inherit my domain. Not all at once. It would grow in you, like… a very stubborn plant. You’d be able to see the threads. Nudge, when necessary. Interfere, sometimes. Steady the net when it tears.”
“And if I say no?” he asked.
“Then the net keeps tearing,” she said simply. “Until it breaks.”
The corridor was suddenly too small. He felt the building’s anxiety again, magnified. Through the wall, someone in the hall raised their voice. A glass shattered.
“This city,” she went on, “is held together by more than brick and spell. Its people have woven their own protections for centuries. Promises. Friendships. Lovers who choose each other even when it’s hard. Parents taking on burdens for their children. Strangers offering shelter. All of that sings through me. But I am… tired.”
For the first time, she looked it. Not physically—she still glowed, still crackled with impossible presence—but there was a droop to her shoulders, a thinness at the edges.
Nico’s chest hurt.
“So,” he said, after a long moment. “You’re giving me an impossible choice. Take on godhood and fix the universe’s love life or let everything fall apart and live with the guilt.”
“Essentially,” she agreed cheerfully. “Though ‘godhood’ is a bit dramatic. Think of it as becoming a very, very specialized civil servant.”
He let his head thump lightly against the wall. “Do you always recruit people in corridors during catastrophic weddings?”
“Only the interesting ones,” she said.
He closed his eyes. “Why me? Really.”
Silence stretched. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler.
“Because you know what it is to want love and fear it,” she said. “Because you know how it feels when a vow is broken. Because you still believe, even if you won’t admit it. You believe in the ceremony, if not in your own capacity to stand under that arch.”
He opened his eyes. Her gaze was steady, unblinking.
“And,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “because your line has always been… attuned. You are not the first in your blood to carry a piece of me. Just the first I’m talking to directly. Pressure’s on.”
He stared at her. “My… line.”
Memories shuffled. Old stories his grandmother had told him about great-aunts whose matches were so uncanny they were whispered about for decades. A great-grandfather who had officiated half the city’s unions and never once misheard the vows, even when people tried to lie through them. His mother, who had never remarried after his father left, saying quietly, “Sometimes love is knowing when to keep the door locked.”
“Is that why everything feels wrong today?” he asked. “Because you’re… fading?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “Threads are snapping faster. Spells are misfiring. People are… uncertain. When the god of anything steps away, the thing itself wobbles.”
He swallowed. “And if I say yes, that… stops?”
“It steadies,” she said. “For a time. Nothing lasts forever, Nico. Not even gods. But you would give them a chance to keep weaving, instead of watching it all unravel on my way out.”
He pressed his thumb hard into the scar on his wrist. The old line of curse burned faintly. He remembered the night it formed, the way magic had coiled and snapped, the way his heart had felt like it was being extracted.
“You’re asking a lot,” he said.
“I am,” she agreed. “So I’ll sweeten it. You don’t have to decide right this second.”
He blinked. “You don’t?”
She smiled. “No. I’m dramatic, not unreasonable. You have—” She tilted her head, listening to something he couldn’t hear. “Oh, poetic. Midnight. On your birthday. Very fairy-tale. I like it.”
He stared. “Midnight.”
“Yes. At the twelfth stroke, the offer expires. The threads will either tether to you, or they will… float. You must choose before then.”
He exhaled, a sound that felt like it had teeth. “You expect me to figure out whether I want to become a deity by midnight.”
“Well,” she said lightly, “there is one condition.”
Nico’s suspicion, already high, peaked. “Condition.”
“It’s not just about wanting it,” she said. “My domain can’t sit in someone who has no anchor. Love is not theoretical. It must be lived.”
She reached out and, very gently, touched two fingers to his chest. Right above his heart.
Heat flared under his ribs, not exactly pleasant, not exactly painful. His breath hitched.
“You must be tethered,” she said softly. “Chosen and choosing. Not in some distant past, not in a someday-maybe. Now.”
He grabbed her wrist—not to stop her, but because he needed something solid to hold. Her skin under his hand felt like sunlight filtered through colored glass.
“What does that mean?” he asked, though he could guess.
She watched him with something like sympathy. “You must enter into a binding of your own,” she said. “Stand under an arch. Speak a vow. Not in theory, not as practice. Your life, tied to another’s.”
He laughed, a harsh, disbelieving sound. “You’re saying… to become the next you, I have to get married.”
“Yes.”
“By midnight.”
“Yes.”
He dropped her wrist. “That’s impossible.”
“Oh, probably,” she said cheerfully. “But I have faith in you.”
He stared at her. Words piled up in his mouth, tripped over each other, fell out.
“You can’t— I mean, I— People plan weddings for months. They book venues, they choose menu options, they argue about colors for three weeks straight. They do not just run out between dessert and disaster to get married in a corridor.”
“You’ll figure it out,” she said.
“I don’t even—” He swallowed. His throat felt tight. “I am not… with anyone.”
“Yes, you’re terribly single,” she said. “I checked.”
He gaped at her. “You checked.”
“Of course I checked,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to have a ring in your pocket and a partner on call. That would be boring.”
“Good,” he said weakly. “Because that would be too easy, clearly.”
She shrugged, a ripple of galaxies in her shoulders. “Love is rarely convenient, Nico.”
“You keep saying love,” he said. “But you can’t possibly expect me to fall in love and get married before midnight. That’s… that’s ridiculous.”
“I did not specify that it had to be love as you currently define it,” she said calmly. “Commitment can begin in many forms. Arranged. Practical. Reckless. You might surprise yourself.”
“That’s supposed to make this better?”
“You’re very focused on the impossibility,” she said. “Focus instead on the question: if you had to choose someone, who would you be willing to tie your life to, even if it started as a gamble?”
Nico’s mind, obedient traitor that it was, immediately supplied an image.
Dark eyes. A laugh like breaking glass. Hands tracing wild, spiraling sigils in the air.
He shoved it away so hard he almost swayed.
“No,” he said.
Her eyes gleamed. “Ah,” she murmured. “There it is.”
“There what is?” he snapped.
“The ghost at your heel,” she said. “The story you still don’t tell all the way through. Convenient, that they’re in the city.”
He clenched his jaw. “We are not talking about them.”
“We will,” she said. “Soon. But for now…”
She stepped back. The emergency candles guttered, then steadied.
“In summary,” she said briskly, as if wrapping up a business meeting. “I am fading. I chose you. You have until midnight, your thirtieth—excuse me, unspecified—birthday, to secure both a marriage and an answer. Say yes, and you become my successor. Say no, and we find out what a city without Love at its center looks like.”
He swallowed. “You realize those are terrible options.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s how you know it’s important.”
He almost laughed and almost screamed.
“Why the marriage?” he asked quietly, one last grasping question. “Why that condition?”
She looked at him, all the jokes dropping away.
“Because you do not trust love where you are not in control,” she said. “Because you stand at the edge of every ceremony and never under the arch. Because you have built a life around orchestrating other people’s risks while refusing to take your own. If you are to hold my power, you must know what it is to be vulnerable to it.”
The words slid under his defenses like blades.
He stayed very still.
“And what if I get married and then say no?” he asked, desperate for a loophole.
“You won’t,” she said simply.
“You sound very sure.”
“I am Love,” she said. “I cheat. I peek ahead.”
He glared at her. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
She shrugged again. “I wrote them. Now.” She lifted a hand.
The corridor brightened slightly. In the distance, he heard the hall’s lights flicker back on. People gasped, muttered. A penguin honked.
“The threads will start pulling harder now,” she said. “Strange things will happen. Old choices will come back. Try not to ignore them.”
“That’s not helpful,” he said through his teeth.
“It’s not meant to be.” Her form was already thinning, edges blurring. “One more thing, Nico. I chose you. But you still have to choose me back. And you are allowed to say no. Truly.”
She met his eyes with something like kindness.
“I would be disappointed,” she added, “but I would understand. Not everyone wants to spend eternity meddling in teenagers’ crushes and long-married couples’ arguments about laundry.”
“Does eternity come with dental?” he asked weakly.
“You’ll find out,” she said. “If you accept.”
Her smile, this time, held no sharpness. “Happy birthday,” she said softly.
Then she was gone.
No grand flash. No explosion. Just a slow unraveling of light, like someone shaking glitter out of a cloth until it vanished.
The temperature rose back to normal.
The emergency candles flickered once, then went out. Overhead, the normal lights flared on, humming with renewed, slightly unsteady energy.
The corridor was just a corridor again, lined with discrete picture frames and potted plants that were trying very hard not to look sentient.
Nico stood there, hand still pressed to his chest where she’d touched him.
His heart was pounding.
In his wrist, the watch buzzed once, gently. He looked down.
The face now showed a simple countdown timer.
11:32:17
It ticked down.
He stared at it until the numbers blurred.
“Nico?” Tulla’s voice crackled back to life in his earpiece, grumpy and frazzled. “We’re back on partial. Lights, music, minimal penguin situation, but the guests are restless and someone keeps asking if this is a performance art piece. Where are you?”
He swallowed, forcing his throat to work. “In the corridor,” he said. His voice sounded almost normal. “I had a… conversation.”
“Please tell me it was with the groom,” she muttered. “Because right now he’s locked himself in a supply closet with the cake and won’t come out. Also, Lira’s brother says he’ll punch him, which I’m not entirely against, but maybe after we figure out if there’s still a wedding happening?”
Nico closed his eyes.
“Copy that,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
He pushed off the wall, straightened his vest, smoothed his tie. His fingers trembled, just a little. He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide it.
His thumb brushed the old scars on his wrist, then the new, faint warmth on his chest.
Married by midnight, he thought, hysterical laughter rustling at the edges of his mind. What a joke.
He took one step toward the hall.
Then another.
The lights above him buzzed, flickering for half a second as if laughing along.
Behind his ribs, the pressure he’d been ignoring all day pulsed once, like a heartbeat that wasn’t entirely his.
The clock was ticking.
