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Loquatius exhales as Beryl gives him a thumbs up, indicating a successful crystal recording. This Replenishment, his team of reporters will provide live coverage of all the various ceremonies and events, but Loquatius refuses to allow his own hard work--and face--to disappear entirely. Granted, his own wedding is one of the major society stories in this news cycle, but as one of the people getting married, he's not in a position to cover it.
(When he floated the idea of shape-changing into another reporter to interview himself, his assistant Aria pointed out that he asked Laerryn not to work on their wedding day. This is one of the many reasons why Loquatius will never, ever fire Aria.)
"Excellent work, everyone!" Loquatius claps his hands. Then, because he can't help himself, he follows his praise up with suggestions the team doesn't need. Incompetents don't last long enough at the Herald's Tome to get promoted. The fast-paced world of journalism is not a place that tolerates mistakes, especially if the wrong word in the wrong place pisses off the wrong person.
Then Aria snaps, "What?!" and immediately lowers her voice, whispering urgently to the unhappy-looking junior reporter, a young dwarven woman whose name Loquatius hasn't learned yet.
There's a story there, one that his assistant is undoubtedly trying to spare him. Loquatius glides over anyway, the mere force of his presence enough to cut through the gaggle of reporters and technicians eager to file the last of their paperwork and end a long day.
"Sir, it's being handled," Aria attempts.
"And I'm sure whatever the matter is will vanish in your capable hands," Loquatius replies smoothly. "But what, exactly, is being handled?"
The kid reporter cracks first, unable to withstand the Loquatius Seelie charm offensive. "Not all the wedding invitations to the Feywild made it there!" she blurts out.
The full story spills out after that, even with Aria glaring an entire cloud of daggers at the kid. All of the invitations sent via Sending made it, of course, and most of the formal written invitations did as well. But a courier teleported to the Feywild six months ago and returned today, convinced he had left just yesterday, and with several unopened invitations stuffed into his pockets. Why yes, the intrepid kid reporter made a list of the names.
Loquatius's polished smile remains in place as he tucks the list into his pocket. "You're young, so it's understandable that you've confused a simple mail mix-up with news. You should have brought this to me right away so that I could alert our wedding planner. But how can I hold a grudge the night before the happiest day of my life? Go on, go home."
The kid reporter's brow furrows. "But, sir…"
"Mr. Seelie's wedding planner is Patia Por'co herself," Aria interjects. "I'm certain she'll solve this minor problem. If you don't mind, I have a few things to wrap up with Mr. Seelie before I sign off for the night."
Once the kid reporter is safely out of earshot, Loquatius says, "Good instincts on that one. What's her name?"
"Elena Tuvaris. I hired her." Aria's smile shifts to something more concerned. "Are you sure you're all right, sir?"
"Absolutely," he lies.
The thing is, Aria is right. Patia and the rest of his friends can fix this, probably. It's just that the fey have opinions about invitations, even for events they have no desire to attend. Snub a powerful fey on your special day, and you're guaranteed a curse rather than a blessing.
Loquatius makes a leisurely retreat to his office, then immediately sketches the sigils for Sending in the air. "Patia, we have a problem. Meet at your place, now."
*
"Which invitations didn't arrive?" A chill cuts through Patia's clothes, like wind in a terrestrial winter. Cerrit and Nydas don't know enough of the Feywild courts to understand the extent of this diplomatic disaster. Patia has read verified accounts of fey wrath and fey capriciousness alike. The fey are masters of transmutation and enchantment, and their magic is wilder and stranger than that of the Material Plane.
Patia is confident in her ability to unravel any magical working, no matter how alien. Unfortunately, she is not confident in her ability to do so instantaneously. Laerryn and Loquatius shouldn't have to spend hours of their wedding day turned into donkeys, or with every non-elven guest in an enchanted sleep. Patia has worked so hard to make their wedding day beautiful.
Come to think of it, it's an extraordinary oversight that Patia, along with the small army she hired to manage this event, never noticed the discrepancy in the RSVPs. She followed up on every other missing reply. She personally confirmed the dietary requirements of the most persnickety guests. Her seating chart is a work of art. There is no possible way that she simply missed a dozen names on the guest list.
"This is sabotage," Cerrit says, voicing her own grim suspicions.
"Hence requesting the two of you: the expert in tampering with minds, and the expert in finding people who cause trouble." Loquatius's features shift underneath his skin, an unconscious echo of Cerrit's sharp eyes and prominent beak. If there's something of Patia in there as well, she can't quite see it. Perhaps that's for the best.
"'Tampering' is such a strong word," Patia feels compelled to object. "There are magics that enhance the memory as well as modify it. I might need to enhance your memory, Loquatius, to ascertain what suppressed the urge to follow up on unanswered invitations."
Loquatius waves a lazy hand, even though he's anything but. "Whatever resolves this the fastest. I remember the last time one of our missing guests wasn't invited to a naming day ceremony…"
"What about Laerryn?" Patia asks, although she's fairly certain that she already knows the answer. When Laerryn hasn't been buried in her work, she's been stressed about one aspect of the wedding or another.
"She doesn't need to know about this until we have more information," Loquatius says. "Nor does the rest of the Ring of Brass. Laerryn will know something's up if Evandrin and Zerxus find out, and Nydas has been working around the clock to bypass some irritating little regulations around our wedding favors."
Cerrit winces. "Please don't tell me."
Patia presses her middle and index fingertips on Loquatius's forehead, tracing the arcane sigils for Modify Memory with the other. The physical contact is unnecessary, but she prefers it when casting on someone who is aware that the spell is taking place. Their minds become slightly more open. With someone of fey ancestry, that openness is especially helpful.
She has never been fanciful about the inner life of sentient beings. Other scholars of mind magics have described intricate architecture within the mind, or ascribed different minds with certain colors or scents or textures. To Patia, minds are minds, and thoughts are thoughts. Therefore, it always irritates her that Loquatius's mind gives her the unmistakable impression of brambles. The Lady of the Seelie Court protects her people well.
But not well enough to deter Patia.
The brambles part, and Patia plunges into Loquatius's memories. Her skill allows her to bypass irrelevant memories. In an instant, she sees herself through Loquatius's eyes, reviewing the RSVPs as a precursor to the first of many seating chart drafts. In the memory, Loquatius doesn't notice his eyes losing focus when they hit upon certain names. His eyes skip down to the next name on the list. The magical working is a subtle one, relying on the mind's natural tendency to omit details it deems unimportant.
Patia emerges from the memory. Before Cerrit or Loquatius can ask, she holds up a finger and casts the spell on herself. She finds the same fuzziness in her own memories, and lets out a string of curse words that would make Nydas proud.
"It's a brilliant glamor, one laid over any mention of the omitted names, by voice or in writing. I've never seen anything like it," Patia snaps, furious at both the tampering and the admission. "But I would stake my reputation that it's fey in origin. Have you offended any archfey?"
"Not recently." Loquatius sighs. "So our chances of solving this before the rehearsal dinner are…"
"Next to zero," Cerrit says. "Now it's my turn."
"And I'll start Sending for those who never received their invitations." Patia, not given to physical contact, nevertheless pats Loquatius on one of his slumped shoulders. "There's nothing that we can't fix, my friend. You'll see."
*
"Argh!" Laerryn crumples up her latest draft of her wedding vows and pitches it towards the fire. Unfortunately, her aim isn't the best. The draft bounces off the edge of the grate, tumbles across the floor, and stops at… a pair of booted feet. Evandrin does not walk softly, particularly in his First Knight armor, but she was once again immersed in her work.
Except that she's good at her work. It's declaring her devotion to the love of her life that's proving difficult.
Evandrin picks up the offending wad of paper and lands it successfully in the fireplace, thanks to his much better athletic skills. "I take it that this means you're not ready for the rehearsal dinner."
Her gaze darts towards the clock on the mantel, panic flooding her. "But… but I thought it wasn't for another hour! I set an alarm!" Now Loquatius will be disappointed, and after she promised she would make their wedding her top priority. He's taking days off covering an event that happens only once every seven years. She buries her face in her hands, noticing only after she's done so that there is ink on her fingers.
"It isn't for another hour." Evandrin dabs at the ink on her cheeks with his handkerchief, ever a true gentleman. "I had the feeling your perfectionism would be getting the better of you, so I came to offer what assistance I could."
Laerryn scrunches up her face at him, the best she can do to acknowledge how accurately he's pinpointed her troubles. "I'm not sure I'll be able to follow your advice, Mr. Ooh Perfect Love At First Sight, And Also We Have An Adorable Son."
"My adorable son is going to need heavy bribery to make it down the aisle tomorrow," Evandrin says dryly. "I suppose if the rings don't make it, you won't have to recite your vows…"
"Stage fright. I can relate." Laerryn rakes her hands through her hair. "Quay's future wife, afraid of the spotlight. Only that's not the problem. I just don't know what to say that doesn't sound--trite. Stupid, even."
"Stupid is one thing you aren't," Evandrin says. He leans back, pinning her with a look as sharp as he keeps his sword. What he lacks in knowledge of the arcane, he makes up for in a deep understanding of people, especially the people who he loves. "What are you trying to express with your vows? I know the obvious answer, but be specific."
Be specific pierces right through Laerryn's guilt that she hadn't truly started these vows until, oh, approximately a few hours ago. There were so many other problems to solve and discoveries to make! But she excels in specificity, in defining terms that add up to more nebulous concepts like magic or love. Perhaps she can work with that.
"I'm stating what works about the two of us," Laerryn says slowly. "And what I'll do to ensure that it keeps working between us."
"Making an argument based on evidence?" Evandrin grins at her. "If I recall, you had no difficulty defending your thesis, Architect Arcane."
"People will say I'm unromantic if I look at it that way," Laerryn says, even as the spark of inspiration starts burning. She reaches for her pen again. "Not that people matter, but…"
"But certain people matter, especially Quay." This is why Evandrin is one of Laerryn's favorite people: he can breeze past her blunt way of phrasing things and find the beating heart of what she means. "Well, assuming I'm one of the people who matter, I think it's romantic. It's you through and through, and you're the person Quay loves."
"Thanks," Laerryn says softly, and then begins scribbling.
Tomorrow is going to be a perfect day. She and the people she loves designed it that way.
*
Cerrit turns his keen eye on the wedding rehearsal and the subsequent dinner, but finds nothing amiss. Patia had her people delve into the library while she ran the rehearsal dinner (and probably negotiated two treaties and a trade agreement at the same time). All they turned up were references to various fey glamors. Archfey are masters of the glamor, and some fey have an innate glamor that makes it difficult for mortals to see them. Potentially useful information for the investigation, but no real leads.
The sheer subtlety of the enchantment suggests a single powerful archfey, or a couple of less powerful fey working in tandem. Cerrit's working theory is that it's an archfey who would benefit from claiming offense against Loquatius, Laerryn, Avalir, or the entire Material Plane. But he knows well enough that clinging too tightly to a single theory means overlooking clues to the actual truth.
He leaves the rehearsal dinner early to pore over the invitee list and the list of RSVPs, cross-referencing any unknowns with the set of notes that Loquatius wrote down for him. Who's married to who, who hates who, who turned whose cousin into a fish a hundred years ago. It would be helpful to have the man himself fill in the gaps for the invitees from the Feywild, but it's the night before his wedding. Besides, Loquatius has always been frustratingly vague about his life prior to Avalir. Not even Laerryn knows much about it, or at least nothing that she's shared with the rest of the Ring of Brass.
Cerrit goes to bed with a list of suspects that's still about ten people too long for any real use. Like it or not, he needs to loop in someone else that he trusts. Patia has been casting Sendings left and right to reach the guests who didn't receive their proper invitations. Loquatius has other things to worry about today. He doesn't like keeping secrets from Laerryn that relate to her own wedding, but that's Loquatius's call to make. And Loquatius was right that Evandrin and Zerxus would tip off Laerryn.
So. Nydas sure as hell better be done with whatever party favors that Loquatius wanted. Can't hand out probably-illegal wedding favors if the party gets wrecked by a pissed off archfey.
Conveniently, Nydas is dropping off the wedding favors at the venue himself. Servants open up the crates, revealing dozens upon dozens of bags. The bag material shimmers like golden dragon scales, and whatever's inside positively stinks of magic. Not Cerrit's concern, not while he's on the case of something much more important.
"I need your opinion on something," Cerrit says, approaching Nydas. "In private."
"I always have time to help a friend," Nydas replies at once. And he means it, damn him, even though Cerrit catches the split-second guilty look he casts at the wedding favors.
Finding a quiet corner is quick enough work, as is explaining the situation to Nydas. Cerrit's a pro at conveying all the pertinent information in a case as efficiently as possible. While Nydas ruminates over both the guest list and Loquatius's supplementary details, Cerrit scans the reception setup. He spots no less than five suspicious objects and mentally marks them down for closer inspection. Preferably with Nydas at his side, since the man can do useful things like dispel magic.
Nydas lowers the list of names with one of his more piratical grins. "My good man, I think you're missing something."
"Tell me." Cerrit smooths down the ruffled feathers in his crest. Pride doesn't solve mysteries.
"You're a logical, reasoned man, so of course you've concluded some sort of political or personal machinations behind this whole brouhaha." Nydas circles a hand in the air, clearly relishing the opportunity to use the word brouhaha. Bards. "But think about the kind of people who dwell in the Feywild. What do the fey love to do, above all else?"
"Besides scheming for power?" Cerrit asks. "Though that's not particular to fey. No, what the fey love to do…" And he curses, realization crashing over him.
"Exactly!" Nydas claps him on the back. "Fey love to fuck shit up. No conspiracy, just fuckery. Someone with more mischief than sense thinks they're playing a hilarious joke on the mortals."
"Or someones, plural." Cerrit chuckles. After this long in the business, he can feel when a case is starting to crack open at last. "I think we're looking for a couple of fey punks instead of one archfey. Been a long time since I've had such lowbrow quarry."
"Which is why it took a former, ah, lowbrow quarry to spot it." Nydas laughs. "Well then. I saw you looking askance at that brass monkey statue on the pedestal over there. Shall we investigate it before it explodes?"
*
"Elias," Zerxus tries again. "We practiced this last night! You walk the rings down the aisle, straight to Daddy, and then you come sit with me. It takes under a minute if you hurry, and we agreed that you're allowed to hurry."
From behind a thick velvet curtain comes a muffled, "No."
For the thousandth time since he became a father, Zerxus wonders if parents pray to gods purely for an audience for their frustrations. Elias was so excited to be the ring bearer for his Aunt Laerryn and Uncle Loquatius's big day, right up until he was confronted with the reality people would be looking at him. Even the audience at last night's rehearsal was a bit much, and there are hundreds more people today. This wedding is the social event of the season, as Avalir marks such things.
"You could ride on my back down the aisle," Zerxus suggests, desperate now. The ceremony is going to start in five minutes. The ceremony that his husband has to perform is going to start in five minutes, so of course the parent who's better at soothing fears is busy. And Cerrit, the only other parent Zerxus is close with, has been roaming around doing who knows what in the reception hall.
Elias pokes his head out from behind the curtain, indignant. "I'm not a baby!"
Zerxus ruffles his son's hair while it's still visible, though he's careful not to jostle Elias in the direction of the door. One thing he does know about children--people in general, really--is that they're far happier about decisions they get to make themselves. "So you can walk down the aisle by yourself. Why don't you want to?"
"The monsters," Elias says matter-of-factly.
Instinctively, Zerxus scans their surroundings with his divine sense. Nothing catches his attention, but there are a few guests here whose fey appearance might frighten a child. "What did these monsters look like?"
"There was a lion man." Elias edges half an inch closer to Zerxus, revealing a handsome suit of clothes absolutely covered in dust. "Also a tiger man and a bear man. I saw them when we were walking in. They were laughing, but it sounded mean."
"Well, sometimes Uncle Loquatius has to invite people he doesn't like very much because of his work," Zerxus improvises. "But that's why your dad and I are here, along with your aunts and uncles. No one here can hurt anyone else with us watching. And thanks to you, we know who to watch out for." He holds out his hand, trying to project reassurance and protection.
And he must succeed, because Elias takes his hand, a tentative smile on his face.
"Zerxus! Elias! It's time!" Patia calls. Before she heads down the aisle herself, she clicks her tongue and casts a quick Prestidigitation over Elias's dusty clothing.
"Walk with me?" Elias asks.
"Of course."
It's not part of the plan to have Zerxus in the aisle as well, but weddings never go entirely to plan. Case in point: it's raining when they proceed down the aisle, a soft summer rain that fills the air with its scent. Elias takes this development in stride, even though Avalir doesn't get weather like this, and hands off the rings.
When Laerryn and Loquatius take their positions at the altar, for a moment Zerxus sees fire around them, not rain. Then he blinks, and it's just rain after all. Elias's hand is still in his, and Evandrin smiles at him from his position on the altar. Zerxus's two dear friends are marrying, and all is well.
*
Nydas cries during the ceremony, of course. No one is surprised that Loquatius's vows are achingly romantic, a beautiful collection of words so much greater than the sum of their parts. But Laerryn's vows! Laerryn, who typically wields words as blunt instruments, sounds magnificent as she declares her devotion before the world. This is Nydas's favorite type of show, where the show itself is as true as what's happening inside the players' hearts.
"Loquatius would say you missed your calling to the stage," Patia says when he expresses this sentiment to her on the way into the reception hall. (The reception hall, thankfully, has a roof to keep out the rain. Nydas understands the happy couple's preferences, but there are limits.) "Cerrit tells me you've joined the hunt. Any leads?"
"Only that our quarry was able to slip past the wards and set up amusing little traps all over the reception hall." Nydas signals to a server with a tray of champagne glasses and takes one, drains it, and puts it back, all in fewer than six seconds. "Lucky that Cerrit was able to dodge the vat of ink, or he'd have to change his alias to Bluebird."
"The pranks and the ability to slip past the wards suggest that yours is the correct theory." Patia taps a long, ornately painted nail against her chin. "I overheard Elias telling Zerxus about three beast-men that frightened him. And the thing is, no adult guest that I've spoken to has seen them at all. One would think they would be memorable."
"Ah yes, fools and children can see fairies in all the tales," Nydas says. "Well, I suppose a fairytale wedding would operate by those rules."
A slight wrinkle appears in Patia's nose, as good as a full-fledged sneer on anyone else. "Imagine, a plane where a child can see through invisibility, as opposed to an arcane practitioner casting a proper spell."
"Instinctive magic, how terrible." Nydas polishes one of his rings on his tunic, one eyebrow raised.
"The last I checked, neither you nor any of the children you want to educate were trying to demolish our friends' special day." Despite her cool words, Patia slips a second glass of champagne into Nydas's hand. It's as close as Patia will get to an apology, at least in public.
"Now I know what to do for your birthday." Nydas toasts her, then goes to find Cerrit.
When Nydas passes on the information to Cerrit, he comes to the same conclusions as Patia about the identity of their merry pranksters. Unlike Patia, he expresses his thoughts with fewer dramatic flourishes.
"Beast-men, huh? Now that I know what I'm looking for, I should be able to spot 'em," Cerrit adds, satisfaction in his sharp eyes. Cerrit, more than anyone else in the Ring of Brass, enjoys spotting the invisible and the impossible.
(Lucky for Nydas and Loquatius that Cerrit is too preoccupied to track down the wedding chocolates laced with an exquisite magical hallucinogen. In their defense, the chocolates are labeled, just labeled in such a way to provide plausible deniability.)
"I have a spell that will allow you to see invisibility," Nydas offers. "Although these fey creatures seem to have a glamor that goes beyond a simple invisibility spell, and I'm afraid a spell for true seeing is beyond my capacity at the moment."
"Don't need a spell to see true." Cerrit surveys the crowd, looking as relaxed as Nydas has ever seen him in such a throng of distinguished people. "That's the thing about not being a mage in a city full of mages. You learn to use all five senses to make up for the sixth sense you haven't got. You don't rely on one thing."
Nydas pinches the bridge of his nose in faux horror. "All five senses, you say? Please don't tell me you're going to lick the floor to pick up their trail."
"Very funny." But Cerrit is a good sport about having a dramatic monologue interrupted, a far better sport than some members of the Ring of Brass would be, Nydas included.
Just because he can, and not because he expects it to work, Nydas casts See Invisibility on himself. There is quite a tryst happening over in a dark corner, but otherwise he sees nothing besides the occasional now-Visible Servant floating around.
"There!" Cerrit says, pointing at a patch of air approximately thirty feet in the distance. He breaks into a run.
At the same time, a familiar voice shouts in the distance.
*
One moment, Loquatius is on top of the world, his bride on his arm, radiant and golden. Then his bride pushes him to the side, her hand tracing arcane sigils that he recognizes as Counterspell. There is a slight shift underneath his feet, as though something wanted to burst out of the earth but didn't, and the scent of vegetation that dissipates with the last of the magical energy.
"Darling, I think you've had too much champagne!" he says for the benefit of the curious onlookers--and oh, there are several, given that they are the stars of their own wedding. Loquatius shoots a few harmless sparks from his fingertips for good measure.
Laerryn's gold eye makeup enhances her already spectacular eye roll. "Someone just tried to cast Entangle on us, and Cerrit just tackled the empty air, and you're not even surprised? Quay, what is going on?"
A lie hovers on Loquatius's tongue, a lie he could tell well enough for even his new wife to believe. But sometimes a version of the truth is a safer refuge than an outright lie, and it's one that won't weigh him down with guilt later on.
"A bit of fairy mischief from our Feywild guests," he says, as Nydas wrestles another invisible opponent to the floor. Zerxus charges over to investigate the noises, his sheer bulk parting the crowd like a firebolt through sheet metal. "Harmless pranks, but not ones we or our guests would enjoy. I asked a few of our friends to look into it."
"You told a few of our friends, but not your wife?"
In the silence following Laerryn's question, Patia glides over to the throng of people near the three, or possibly six, combatants. With a few graceful motions and a snap of her fingers, the people move away from the action, their eyes glazed over, their memories undoubtedly modified. She follows it up with a perfectly cast Silence spell to muffle the sounds of combat. There is no one better at damage control than Patia, save for Loquatius himself.
"I'm sorry," Loquatius says, and tucks a lock of hair behind Laerryn's ear. "I thought to spare you a burden on our wedding day, but I see I've caused you more distress."
"I wouldn't say distress," she says, softening quicker than she usually does. (They've been enjoying the champagne, and the rain, and also the champagne, again.) "But I'm me! I like knowing things better than not knowing things. Walk me over to our unexpected wedding guests so that I can greet them."
Whatever special fey invisibility their pranksters were using, it's worn off after their encounter with the flat end of two axes (Cerrit), dragon breath (Nydas), and bare knuckles (Zerxus). Three figures, their overall shapes humanoid but their features animalistic, sit tied up on the floor. The Ring of Brass stands around them, cutting off any hope of escape.
Loquatius sighs as soon as he gets close enough to recognize them. "Don't look so sheepish, boys. For one thing, none of you can shift into sheep." To Laerryn, he adds, "These are the Beastling Boys. They were a promising musical trio when I left the Feywild, but apparently a lot has changed since then."
"Punks," mutters Nydas, although the old pirate sounds amused in spite of everything.
"Agreed," says Laerryn, who sounds distinctly unamused. "What did you hope to gain by sabotaging our wedding, beast boys?"
"We're the Beastling Boys," the tiger man mumbles, but without any real heart to it. Loquatius can't remember his actual name, just the trio's moniker. Their commitment to a bit is impressive, frankly.
Laerryn leans forward, her golden wedding dress shifting and rippling with the motion. "What. Did. You. Hope. To. Gain."
Intimidation is not one of Laerryn's strong suits, but in this moment, she is glorious. Watching the Beastling Boys shake in their proverbial boots makes Loquatius fall in love with her all over again. This is what he gained by leaving the Feywild, a sense of life greater and wilder than any he ever felt as a member of the Seelie Court.
"A name for ourselves!" cries the wolf man. "People don't take us s--"
Before he finishes, Laerryn casts Banishment on the trio. She dusts her hands off, oblivious to the rest of the Ring of Brass staring at her.
"I wanted to interview them," Cerrit says, a bit forlorn. "Who knows what else they've hidden around the city?"
"I want to know why their glamor felt different than Greater Invisibility," Patia sighs.
Nydas lifts his nose and inhales, smoke still curling from his nostrils. "It did smell different, didn't it? I suppose you had a point earlier, Cerrit."
"I think Laerryn can eject anyone from her wedding reception that she wants to," Zerxus says, before Laerryn explodes at their friends. Extraordinary, when the warrior outsmarts the Eyes of Avalir, the Keeper of Scrolls, and the Dragon of Avalir himself. "Who were they, again?"
"No one important." Loquatius raises his angry wife's hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles. "Darling, I appreciate you taking care of them for me. I apologize for inviting such chaos into our special day, but there is a particular way things are done in the Feywild. Otherwise people tend to get cursed. How do we feel about cutting the cake?"
"My feelings about cake are generally positive. You, Quay, I'm not so sure about." But a smile is playing around Laerryn's lips, and she looks around to their circle of friends. "An adventure on our wedding day. I suppose that's fitting."
"Certainly we're the only capable people in the vicinity," Patia sniffs. "No one will gossip about any fey creatures running amok at your wedding, I've ensured that."
"Oh, I fully intend to run amok." Loquatius squeezes Laerryn's waist, grinning unrepentantly. "But first, cake."