Page 131 of Heart of Mischief

Two hundred staring eyes.

Helheim.

She did it. She was back in Helheim, life intact. She had made it through the Trial.

I made it through the Trial.

The crowd erupted with cheers. Charlie stumbled to the side, one hand still clinging to Gungnir. A dazed grin plastered across her face. Loki sat in the front row, a small smile curving his mouth. Beside him, cheering loudest of all, was Mason, beaming smile and elated roar as familiar as the rising sun.

I did it, she thought, brain fuzzy with confused euphoria.I’m a… a…

Her eyes fell to her body.

There, where she normally only saw clothes and freckled skin, was something entirely new: a thin layer of shadow that coveredevery inch of her body. It was translucent enough that she could still see herself beneath it but thick enough that it looked like a second skin. A second version of herself.

Her mare self.

Was this the Separation? The creation of a second being that would live always within her, ready to be called upon whenever necessary? If it was, it didn’t hurt the way she’d expected it to. But perhaps the pain of the Trial had also been the pain of the Separation. Perhaps it had been the last pain she would ever feel.

That didn’t seem too far-fetched. Though the Trial had been awful, Charlie felt amazing now. Not only was she no longer in pain, but she was also free from the strange emptiness that had overcome her in that world of darkness. It was sort of scary, remembering how good it felt to feel nothing at all. But she couldn’t linger on that. She had pushed through. She had made it back to herself. What was all of Elias’s nonsense about forfeiting one’s humanity to become a mare? Charlie didn’t feel empty. She felt strong. She felt victorious. She felt damn nearinvincible.

She looked up from her shadow-tinted body at the crowd. The smile on her face grew even wider. One of her hands still gripped the spear, but she formed the other into a fist and pumped it high over her head, letting out a primal-sounding yell of victory.

The audience roared with approval.

Charlie felt drunk on power. High on conquest. She was a mare, but she’d managed to keep her humanity. Her power knew no limits. She could do anything. She could—

An abrupt hush fell over the crowd. Cheers stopped. Mouths fell open. Frantic whispers swept from one end of the arena to the other. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Charlie looked around, trying to find the source of the trouble. She saw nothing out of place in the crowd, or up on the rim of the coliseum, or on the giant stump of Yggdrasil. Nothing out of place on Gung—

Gungnir.

Gungnir was no longer in the stump.

The spear’s tip hovered just above the wood. Less than a few inches out of the ground, but out of the ground nonetheless.

Loki rose from his seat, staring down at Charlie with mouth agape. “It’s not possible,” he said.

Not possible, Charlie’s mind agreed.Not possible.

No one can pull the Seal out of Yggdrasil. No one but…

But…

…

Free at…

At…

Free at last.

The words sang through Charlie, who was no longer Charlie, no longer human or mare or in Helheim or on Asgard, who had become something else, a being as old as time, neither alive nor dead, crafted by the dwarves, gifted with magic, lifelong servant of the Allfather…

Free at last.

The first words I’ve spoken in centuries.