Page 106 of Heart of Mischief

“For now.” Charlie straightened back up. “Rattatosk is gone, but whoever was controlling him is still out there.”

“And too cowardly to show their face,” Mason said. “Whoever it was, it’ll take them time to regroup. We can come up with a plan before then.” He grinned. “You did it, sis.”

“Wedid it,” she corrected, smiling down at Henry and nudging Elias with her elbow.

Henry chirped.

“We did it,” Elias echoed. He was smiling, but his voice was oddly soft, his eyes distant.

“Elias?” Charlie asked, tilting her head. “What’s—”

Elias’s knees crumpled beneath him.

“Hey,” Charlie yelled, leaping forward to catch him before he hit the ground.

She wrapped her arms around his torso, and together they fell to the forest floor, her butt hitting the ground as Elias’s limp body flopped over her lap. His arms and legs were dead weight. His head sagged, neck completely useless.

“Elias?” Charlie shook his body, trying to wake him up. “Elias?”

Panic rising, she shook harder and harder. One of his arms flopped over, exposing soft flesh.

That was when she saw them.

There, just inside his elbow, where she should only have found smooth skin:

Three shallow, red gashes.

Her vision constricted and tilted on its axis. She knew whatthose lines were. She knew what they meant. They were barely there; if they’d been regular cuts, they would have already disappeared, given Elias’s remarkable healing abilities. But they hadn’t, because these were no simple incisions.

They were cuts from the claws of Rattatosk.

Claws so venomous that one cut meant the end.

“Char?” Mason asked. “What’s going on?”

Charlie no longer felt like she was inside her own body. She watched from above as the girl below her raised her head to look up at her older brother. Her face was blank. Her eyes dead. When she spoke, her voice was like a computer, toneless and mechanical:

“He’s dying.”

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As soon as the wordswere outof her mouth, the numbness vanished. Evaporated, like water droplets flicked onto a searing-hot cast-iron pan.

In its place?

Panic.

He’s dying.

Elias is dying.

Once those words entered her head, they were all she could hear. She thought Mason might be talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him. Not right now. Not when Elias was dying.

Panic. That same sinkhole of darkness from which Elias had only just pulled her returned to devour her yet again.

A world without Elias Everhart.

She couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’tbearit. The words alone made her stomach churn. And she knew how preposterous that was. She’d hoped for this moment.Prayedfor it. Asked each of the Asgardian gods in turn,Please, please, bring me vengeance. Let me find a way to destroy him. His death was all she’d wanted. It was the shovel she’d grabbed when she thought the fear would bury her alive.