Page 111 of Heart of Mischief

Surely Elias wasn’t sober when he said that. Surely that had been an alcohol-fueled slip of the tongue.Surely.

No, Charlie didn’t believe that Elias had been sober. She couldn’t. Because the only other option was… what? That he’dmeantwhat he said? That he’d withheld from drinking so she could be wild and carefree while he kept a close watch on the forest? That he’d done it toprotecther?

She saw it again: his expression when she said it was a drunken mistake. The way his jaw had clenched, his eyes had gone dead. The way his entire being had seemed to shut down, to seal himself off from the outside world. And the question that followed, the one she still couldn’t believe had even crossed her mind:

Does Elias Everhart have feelings for me?

She might have stopped to worry about the answer to that question. To worry about what it meant for Elias’s reawakened emotions or the friendship that had begun to grow between them or whether she had squashed all of that under her clumsy feet before she’d even known what she was doing. But she couldn’t, because all she could think, over and over, were those three words, the ones that scared her to her very core:

Elias is dying.

They were a knife at her throat.

All she could do was focus on making sure he didn’t.

They reached the end of the tunnel, where Henry sat on the floor, waiting. The last time they had been there, the entrance to the cavern had been sealed off. They’d had to solve a puzzle boxcontaining the key to the door. This time, there was nothing but a giant hole where the door should have been, as if someone had gotten frustrated with having to do the trick too many times and decided to blow the wall up instead.

Charlie and Mason exchanged a look. In unison, they said, “Elias.”

Inside, the cave was just how they remembered it: smooth stone floors, walls lined with glowing green light, and a low platform in the middle of the room. At the center of the pedestal was a small divot—the slot in which Charlie would place the dödssten jostling about in her pocket.

Scattered across the floor were chunks of the door that Elias had blown apart. They littered the space like the remnants of a long-forgotten battle. Charlie, Mason, and Henry picked their way over the rocks until they made it to the pedestal. Only then did Charlie finally relax her magic, allowing Elias to settle gently onto the floor. She rearranged his body so that his head and torso leaned against the pedestal, then crouched down and took out the dödssten. Henry scampered up her side, coming to sit in his usual spot on her shoulder. Mason squatted, resting one knee on the pedestal.

Charlie held the stone aloft between them. The light at its center was burning far brighter than it had in the woods, as if it sensed the portal to Helheim was near. Neon green illuminated Charlie’s and Mason’s faces, their eyes transfixed by the death stone.

Charlie broke the silence first. “Are you sure you want to come with me?”

Mason nodded, not looking away from the stone. “I’m sure.”

“Because there’s still time to change—”

“Charlie.”

She tore her gaze away from the dödssten to find Mason staring at her intently.

“Remember this moment,” he said. “Remember that I amchoosingto come with you. Okay? This is my choice. You haven’t made me do anything. So, if things go sideways down there and anything happens to me, it’s not your fault. Understand?”

Charlie gave a noncommittalmmm.

“Do. You.Understand?” Mason asked, enunciating each word carefully, as if he were plunging three distinct swords into the earth.

Finally, Charlie sighed. “I understand.”

“Good. Now. Do we just put it in the platform? Last time Elias did that, itsummonedLoki from Helhrim, rather than sending Elias there himself.”

Charlie hesitated. “I’m not sure. Maybe if you say aloud that we’re trying to enter, not allow someone to exit…?”

Mason shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

Slowly, he laid his right hand on Elias’s chest. He nodded for Charlie to do the same with her left. She complied. Then Mason reached out with his free hand and closed his fingers over Charlie’s fist—the one holding the dödssten. When that was done, the three of them were connected in a loose triangle, the death stone at its tip.

Mason looked into Charlie’s eyes and asked, “Are you ready?”

She nodded, even as her stomach lit up with fluttering nerves.

We’re doing this, she thought.We’re really going to see our father.

“With this stone,” Mason said, filling his voice with a ringing authority, “we send ourselves to Helheim.”