Danu's parents were an interesting pair.

  Mirk was accustomed to mismatched couples. His own father had towered over both he and his mother, taller even than K'aekniv, though he hadn't been as broad in the shoulders and had much larger, thicker, brilliant white wings. He had radiated angelic composure and determination, with a face as fine and hard as a marble sculpture, always either in a wall of gleaming silver armor or the skin-tight undersuit he wore beneath it, which made it clear to anyone who saw him in such a state of undress that his whole life had been devoted to serving the Empire as a fighter. Meanwhile, his mother had been just like he was, though a bit more delicate — small and warm, always laughing or teasing, save for on the rare occasion someone aggravated her temper. Usually his father, with his stubbornness. The main trait they shared, along with their confidence.

  In certain aspects, Danu's parents weren't as far off from each other, at least physically speaking. They were both tall and arresting, her mother as broad as her father was narrow. But her mother was grand on a merely human scale, whereas her father eclipsed the bounds of the human form. The skeletal giant, towering at least two heads above what Mirk could remember of his own father, would have come across as something out of a nightmare, his eyes dark pits into eternity, his grin having far too many teeth, had he not been sniffling to hold back tears as he marveled down at Danu in her wedding gown. His emotions finally getting the better of him, her father reached out and wrapped Danu into an embrace, ignoring the way the magic sewn into her dress sparked and hissed at his Deathly touch.

  "I can't believe it!" he crowed as Danu squeezed him tight in return, also ignoring the magic crackling between them. "My sweetpea's getting married!"

  "Deaidín, don't be so mushy," she scolded back at him, though she kept clinging to him nevertheless.

  Though her mother's smile was warm, there was also a hint of exasperation in it. Mostly over the magic and how it was making the grass start to smoke. As if she was long accustomed to this sort of trouble, she lifted the hem of her wispy gray robes and stamped the beginnings of a fire out with the sturdy boots that'd been hidden beneath it while her daughter and husband continued to gush at one another.

  "That dress! Your hair! You've gotten so big! Oh, I can hardly stand it!"

  "I missed you too, Deaidín."

  Behind them, a pair of skeletal creatures that might have once been horses looked on resentfully, one of them leaning over and nipping at the back of Danu's father's rough-spun black robes. Her mother, ever mindful, conjured an apple with a flick of her wrist and fed it to the thing to bribe it into settling. Though the beast clearly ate the fruit, Mirk couldn't tell where it went. If he looked too hard at the creatures, or at the buggy they were hitched to that was also made entirely of bones, Mirk's eyes started to water.

  Danu's father finally released her, if only so that he could continue to gape at her dress. "I've never been so happy." He pressed a thin hand over his mouth, overwhelmed with joy. Mirk wasn't surprised he couldn't feel a trace of it pressing up against his shields, but the warm adoration of both Danu and her mother more than made up for its absence. "My little garden together again," he choked out, once he trusted himself to speak once more, turning an admiring eye toward his wife, who was finally getting a chance to take a look at Danu for herself.

  "That's excellent runework." She leaned down, plucking at one of Danu's trailing sleeves and peering at the embroidery on its cuff. "I'll have to give my regards to your husband's family."

  Mirk could clearly see both their influences in Danu. Her mother had Danu's same ruddy, curly hair, freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose atop an equally rosy complexion. And she had the same air of calm sensibleness that served Danu so well with her patients in the infirmary. But Danu had her father's narrowness too, not to mention the darkness and pallor that came over her when she reached for the Deathly part of her magic. Her inability to resist the endearing charm of things she found to her liking seemed to come from her father too.

  At the mention of Mordecai and his kin, Danu glanced back over her shoulder at the tent. They'd all filed out of it, the ladies of Mordecai's family included, though the woman in black was only emerging just then. None of Mordecai’s kin felt terribly surprised by Danu's parents, or the skeletal coach behind them. Though none of them looked like they wanted to draw too close to it either. Instead, Danu met them halfway, stepping out of reach of her father, who was on the verge of sweeping her up into his arms again. "Everyone, these are my parents, Donn and Laoise."

  Danu's father surveyed them all with curiosity, head tilting to one side, though he made no other move to acknowledge them. Her mother bridged the gap, making a gesture that fell somewhere between a bow and a curtsey. "I'm sorry we were late. Thank you for helping Danu."

  "Death comes on his own time," the old woman in black said, with a dismissive wave of her gnarled hand.

  The comment made Laoise sigh and Donn perk up. "Exactly!" he said, beaming down at them all. It was an odd expression coming from someone with so many teeth, both unsettling and charming all at once. "That's what I keep telling everyone, anyway. Are you all related to Danu's husband? The living really do come in such wonderful variety..."

  Danu shook her head, looking up at her father. It put an edge of giddiness in her smile to see him so approving, even if not everyone gathered outside the tent had received her parents as warmly as she had. "No, my friends from the City are here too. The ones who work at the infirmary, anyway. But there's..."

  "Her husband's grandmother," the woman in black cut in, before Danu could tell her father her name. "And that's what it's important for you to know."

  The other women who'd been helping Danu prepare for the wedding followed the first's lead. "His grandmother's sister," the shorter of the two women who'd been embroidering Danu's dress said.

  "And her cousin," the other one said, at least trying to pull a smile onto her face.

  The woman with the knife tucked into her apron wasn't so accommodating. Her arms were folded again, her frown back in place. "Her husband's aunt."

  Donn wasn't put out by any of this in the slightest. He laughed. Or rather giggled, as he brushed his long snarl of uncombed, stringy black hair off over one shoulder. "I should have known you'd marry into a family full of clever people!"

  "At least the women are," Yule muttered under his breath. Mirk nudged him in the side, but the older healer only rolled his eyes. All the sentiment flying around the little clearing in front of the tent had to be wearing on Yule’s nerves. It wasn't his favorite sort of emotional atmosphere. At least when he wasn't two bottles deep at the tavern.

  If Donn had heard Yule, he didn't mention it. He rambled on instead, peering closely at the older women. "Don't give Death your name so that he can look you up in his book, yes? You wouldn't be in mine anyway...had a run in with old Veles on the way here...such a spoilsport, getting all puffed up because I didn't let him know I was dropping by..."

  Thankfully, Danu was too cheered and relieved by the arrival of her parents to pay either Yule or the older women much heed either. She moved on smoothly, indicating each of Mirk's fellow healers with a face-splitting grin. If it hadn’t been for Donn’s extra teeth, it would have been identical to her father’s "And the rest are healers. Eva, Sheila, Yule, and Mirk."

  Eva scraped together a stiff curtsey; Sheila only grinned back at Danu, with the benefit of the teeth Danu lacked. Yule nodded, grudgingly, as if he didn't want to attract too much attention to himself. Mirk performed the proper bow and decided to take the lead again, speaking for all of them, since none of the others seemed inclined. "Enchanté, seigneur, madame. I'm sorry if the translation charm doesn't give the right titles. I've never had the honor of meeting such an impressive family before."

  "Mirk's the only one with any manners," Danu explained, over a renewed bout of her father's giggling. Though it had a certain nervous tone to it that hadn't been there before.

  "I'm glad to hear the rumors aren't as bad as I'd heard. You all are so lovely for helping! I'm sure Laoise would have been able to help with the dress, but I would have messed it all up. Oh! That reminds me, sweetpea..."

  Donn turned back to the skeletal carriage, rummaging around underneath its front seat. It was made of curved, broken-apart rib cages arranged to be as yielding to a traveler's seat as possible. Though extra comfort was added by a pair of cheerful red and yellow cushions that had flowers stitched onto them by a clumsy, inexpert needle. "Ah! Here it is! I've been working on it for weeks!"

  When Donn turned back around, he had a crown in hand. Of sorts. Like the carriage and its restless beasts of burden, it was made of bone. Though at least the ones in the crown weren’t from former humans, its centerpiece the skull of some kind of fox or cat. All the pieces were tied together with bits of vine and grass, and bright yellow dandelions had been worked into the design, to fill in all the gaps. Reverently, though he couldn't keep the grin off his face, Donn placed it atop his daughter's head.

  Mirk found himself grinning too, his eyes watering at the force of Danu's tenderness as she adjusted the crown. "Deaidín, you shouldn't have..."

  "It's perfect! Now we can match!" With an arcane gesture, Donn lifted his hands to his own head. A much greater, more menacing crown of bone appeared on it, its centerpiece the skull of some sort of beast, a wolf or a bear. There weren't any flowers in it. Though Mirk did notice then that Donn had a few dandelions strung around his wrist in the manner of a bracelet.

  Laoise wasn't as oblivious to the stone-faced reaction this new addition to Danu's wedding finery provoked from Mordecai's kin. She offered them an apologetic shrug. "I'd be happy to help where I can with the preparations," she said. "I'm grateful for everything you've done. I would have come earlier, but the teleporting magic I know doesn't reach past ériu. And Donn..."

  "Death can't be concerned with the things of the living, I know," the woman in black said. "Doesn't matter. Our Mordka is getting married anyway. And once they make their first jump together, you have the same duty to him as we do to her. So the duty started a day before it had to. What's a day, anyway?"

  "It depends on who you ask, I suppose," Laoise replied, watching with a distant sort of warmness as Donn fussed with Danu's crown.

  The old woman in black snorted. "But if you want to work, I'll put you to work. The baking's done, but the cooking isn't. How many of you people are good for that?" she asked, turning a skeptical eye on the healers.

  Mirk once again was forced into taking the initiative, as the rest of Danu's guests exchanged equally skeptical looks among themselves. "We'd be happy to help however we can, madame," he said. "Though you might have to give us some instructions, we'd be glad to learn."

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  "Speak for yourself," Yule grumbled.

  "Come on, then. Not Danu. She stays. And she can keep her daddy too," Mordecai's grandmother said under her breath to herself, as she began to walk, stiff and slow, down a path through the undergrowth opposite the one they'd all come down to reach the red tent in the small clearing.

  "You're right, Mirk. The K'maneda already have a reputation as freeloaders," Eva said, following after the woman in black. "If all their cookware is enchanted like the things they're giving Danu, even the worst of us should be able to do something." As she passed Yule, she knocked him in the shoulder, to emphasize her point.

  "I can do the garlic trick," Shelia said, grinning at Eva's back. Eva's shoulders stiffened at the mention of it and she hurried to catch up with Mordecai's grandmother. "Everyone likes the garlic trick."

  Though Mirk had been the one to offer up their help in the first place, he hesitated. The joy radiating off Danu, mirrored in her father's excited rambling about how he'd collected the dandelions in her crown from all their favorite graveyards, including the one where Danu had picked the ones that made up the bracelet on his wrist as a girl, was unmistakable. Yet there was something in it that made his chest ache. And made him feel very alone, despite having come with all the infirmary healers he was closest to and the Easterners besides.

  He was knocked out of his thoughts by Danu's mother, who paused as she passed by him, looking down at him with unconcealed curiosity. "So this is Mirk d'Avignon. I'd have thought you'd be bigger..."

  "Euh, pardon, madame?"

  "Nothing. We should go before the others do anything terrible. I've already had enough of it for one day," she said. Then she flashed him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes before slipping off down the path through the vale's overgrown forest.

  Rubbing at the steadily growing ache in his chest, Mirk hurried to catch up.

  - - -

  "I shouldn't have bothered with the good robes."

  They were all seated at the front of the rightmost legion of benches that'd been piled into the vale's largest clearing, close to the canopy under which the wedding ceremony was going to take place. It was made of fabric similar to that of the red tent in the smaller clearing where they'd last seen Danu, breezy and light, though the bridal canopy was white underneath more of the ever-present red embroidery. Mirk had been relegated to the seat furthest from the aisle, beside Yule, to keep him away from Donn. Though Danu's father refused to say anything directly about it, Mirk was able to sense from both his nervousness whenever he addressed him and the worried looks his wife shot him that their magicks were too incompatible for Donn’s comfort.

  Mirk leaned over to look at what Yule was still picking at, nearly an hour later — a sauce stain on the front of his dress robes. "Methinks I might have some cleaning potion in my bag..."

  "Don't bother," Yule huffed, even as Mirk reached under the bench for his satchel. "It's not like I have anyone to impress anyway. Whoever decided the beard makes the man deserves the rope."

  The older healer was glaring off at Mordecai's side of the clearing. All of the men seated there, crammed in shoulder to shoulder across the benches in front of the women, had beards, aside from those who were just approaching the gap between boyhood and manhood. They were traditional among eastern teleporting mages, K'aekniv had explained, during one of his many trips over to the cooking fire to sneak bites from the platters all the women were assembling.

  A young man was only allowed to start growing a beard once he'd teleported around the whole of the Earth, along one of their countless smuggling passageways kept hidden from the guilds. Since no one wanted to be mistaken for a failure at the familial art, no one forsaked the beard. Mordecai was the rare exception — he'd left his family before he'd had a chance to go on his circuit, and after joining the K'maneda, he'd done most of his teleporting off-realm. That aside, the thick beards the men of his family favored, some reaching nearly to the waist, weren't to the tastes of the ladies in England.

  Or Yule’s, apparently. Sheila smacked him in the shoulder as she teased him, grinning. She’d been in unnaturally high spirits the whole morning, which had only served to keep most of Mordecai’s kin from coming close to any of the healers. "More for me, then."

  "You like hair in your dinner?" Yule retorted.

  "There are other places to bite, you know..."

  "I think it'd be a wiser choice to limit yourself to the K'maneda," Eva said, leaning over so that they could hear her without her needing to raise her voice above a low whisper. Even then, it was hard to hear her over the crowd. “We are already making a poor impression.”

  Not that Eva had helped. Her constant questions about the enchantments on the pots and pans they’d been set to work over had made most of the women they’d spent the morning working beside clam up. But Mirk couldn’t fault her for trying to find common ground in her usual fashion, by showing interest in foreign magic that could be put to use on her own surgical tools.

  Yule turned to look over his shoulder — while most of the K'maneda in attendance were technically more Mordecai's friends than Danu's, they'd been put on her side of the aisle for the sake of trying to balance the two sides out. Yule shook his head as he turned back around, folding his arms over his chest, conveniently hiding the stain. "Nothing but Easterners. Thanks, but no thanks."

  The exceptions to that unspoken compromise were seated on the frontmost bench on the opposite side of the clearing, second in from the aisle. K'aekniv, Ilya, Pavel, and Genesis. K'aekniv was fighting to button his uniform coat, complaining the whole while about it being too small and too hot. And about Ilya and Pavel being bastards for not telling him that they knew where to get their hands on better clothes. Pavel was trying to help him, despite complaining right back at him, though Ilya had drifted off, preoccupied by something off in the trees behind the bridal canopy. They were both wearing clothes closer to those favored by Mordecai and his family, though the embroidery and the placement of the front fastenings on their shirts were different, offset to one side, like on the K’maneda’s formal uniform. Pavel forced the coat closed across K'aekniv's broad chest only for a second. Once K'aekniv let out his breath, it sprung back open, its silver buttons popping off and rolling away into the grass.

  Genesis was the only one of the four K'maneda on the other side of the aisle who was silent and still. However, it wasn't in the commander's nature not to stand out. The benches were built to human scale. He was stuck in the undignified position of sitting with his knees up close to his chest, unwilling to sprawl into the space of his neighbors like K'aekniv. And his attempt to keep himself from reaching a terminal state of annoyance by reading a book was probably making the men behind him even more curious and confused than the others' griping. The men were constantly shuffling places to take a closer look at Genesis, though none of them were reckless enough to slide into the open spots that were within arm's reach directly behind him.

  Mirk couldn't blame Mordecai’s kin for not getting close. He thought it'd be best for him to keep his own distance as well. Albeit for a much different reason.

  A summons from a horn called the guests to attention, blown by a man standing beside an older man beneath the bridal canopy, a priest or an elder, judging by the embroidered shawl over his shoulders and the towering red hat on his head. Mordecai's grandparents got up, his grandfather leaning on the shoulder of his grandmother, shuffling off down the aisle back to the rear of the clearing. Danu's parents followed their lead. A hush fell over the clearing, broken only by birdsong and the sound of the wind through the trees.

  It really was pleasant, Mirk thought, having a wedding outdoors, especially on a such a fine day. He turned his face up toward the sun hanging high above the clearing, closing his eyes. A church was the proper venue, of course, and he'd been to plenty of fine weddings in them. The done thing among the French mages was enchanting their stained-glass windows with illusions that shifted the usual depictions of the saints into those of the bride and groom.

  But the clearing had a holy feeling all its own. One that was much more earthy and much less orderly, but suffused with the same steady thrumming of tradition, of belief. Of faith in something grander, which the wedding was a small, but crucial part of. When the band hidden behind the canopy began to play at a signal from the elder, filling the clearing with the melancholy strain of fiddles and the beat of a single drum, Mirk decided to turn off the translation charm pinned to his sleeve.

  The words weren't important, not then. Everything that needed to be understood could be felt.

  Mirk didn't banish his shields. But he did lower them most of the way, letting the hundreds of pinpricks of emotion from his fellow guests into his mind, allowing himself to be buoyed along in their flow. Affection, excitement, impatience, a few faint traces of boredom and discomfort. A harmony that rose and fell in its own rhythms, an intricate dance that mirrored back each part of the ceremony.

  A rush of pride swelled Mirk's chest when Mordecai first appeared, teleporting underneath the grand canopy at the front of the clearing with a slap of displaced air that rattled the benches. His grandfather appeared beside him, a firm hand on his shoulder, and a moment later Donn snapped back into existence as well, reeling and bewildered but still perpetually amused, holding on to the back of Mordecai's shirt. White embroidered with red, the inverse of Danu's gown. An aching tenderness forced the air right back out of his lungs as Danu went to the canopy on foot, her head crowned with bones and flowers held high, arm in arm with Laoise and Mordecai's grandmother.

  Then came the lull of the rite itself. Mirk coasted on the emotions of the guests nearest him as they each took their own meaning from the words the elder read from a book as big as a cartwheel. Eva was fascinated by how the book's pages turned themselves; Yule was chafing at the mere whiff of religiosity. Sheila was distracted by how the warmth was making the scents of those around her stronger. And from all the way across the clearing, Mirk could feel the drone of K'aekniv's boredom, echoing those of the more experienced wedding-goers in the crowd, making his own eyelids heavy.

  The sun beating down on him, the warm security of so much happiness and so little bitterness, didn't help Mirk stay awake. Only the earth rioting beneath him helped balance out the relief he felt at knowing his prediction had been true, that all of Mordecai's kin were so overjoyed to see him married that they didn't mind that Danu wasn't at all what they’d been expecting.

  His spell of drowsiness vanished when the ceremony reached its high point. The first jump. Mordecai took hold of Danu's hands, eagerly, and with a slap of displaced air somehow even louder than the one he'd arrived with, teleported them both back out into the sunlight. Though Mirk didn't know it was what was called for, he found himself jumping to his feet along with all the other guests, clapping along to a jaunty tune the band behind the canopy launched into.

  The guests poured out into the aisle, young and old, K'maneda and teleporting mage alike, the strongest young men coming together to lift the couple up onto their shoulders. Danu and Mordecai didn't walk to the next clearing over, to their reception. They were carried together on a wave of love so strong that Mirk found himself clutching his chest and pulling his shields back up against the force of it.

  And in the wake of that love, inside the quiet of his own mind, Mirk was horrified to find that he didn't find his own gladness, his own excitement waiting for him. Instead, there was a biting coldness, a hollow gap where some light had gone out. It made him gag and reel, until Yule took him by the shoulders and asked him what the hell was going on. It brought a glimmer of warmth came back to him, grounding Mirk well enough for him to cough and muster up a smile and give the excuse that it hadn't been a good idea to lower his mental shielding so far in the first place.

  Yule didn't seem convinced. But he was too distracted by the mad rush after the happy couple toward where a feast was waiting in the next clearing over for everyone to interrogate him. His fellow healers were carried with the rest of the crowd toward it, while Mirk thumped back down onto the bench and tried to sort out what was wrong with himself.

  Mirk wasn't certain how much time passed while he sat with his eyes closed, head turned toward the sun again to coax more warmth back into himself, trying to understand. Of course he was happy for Danu. He was glad to be there, to see how everything and everyone had come together. Mirk knew it in his head, but didn't feel it in his heart. Something was in the way. But what could cause such a disconnect, could cut so wide of a gap?

  From somewhere behind him, Mirk heard a frustrated sigh. Shaking his head to clear it, Mirk turned to look.

  Most everyone had left the clearing by then. Genesis, as always, was the exception. The commander was a few benches away from him, standing with arms folded, glaring at the tail end of a long line of people snaking through the woods over that stretched all the way to the bridal canopy. Or maybe he wasn't glaring. Genesis wasn't fond of bright light, and he hadn't dragged out a hat yet to protect himself from the sun.

  "Is something wrong, messire?" Mirk asked him.

  "This will take...an hour. At least."

  "What will?"

  Genesis glanced down at him. "If you are not otherwise occupied...I would prefer your assistance with this task."

  Rubbing his eyes, Mirk surveyed the clearing. There was no sign of the other healers, or of any of the Easterners Mirk knew. Most of the people standing in line were Mordecai's kin. Elderly couples, leaning on one another and talking in low voices. "Euh...of course, messire. But what’s the task?"

  "...negotiation."