Page 72 of Heart of Mischief

“Just a few more bites,” she said, chomping off a big hunk of her remaining sandwich.

Elias laughed. “You’re the slowest eater I’ve ever seen.”

“Iss nah my faul,” Charlie said through a full mouth. Sheswallowed thickly, then went on. “I was too captivated by your story to think about eating.”

“Is that…” He laid a hand on his chest, opening his mouth in mock shock. “Is that… acompliment, Charlotte?”

“Yes,” she said, shoving her trash into the paper bag. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll hire Abigail to strangle you in your sleep.”

He snorted, pushing himself up and jogging down to stand at the foot of the steps. “She would be good at that, wouldn’t she? All that suppressed rage. She’dthriveas an assassin.”

“No kidding.”

As she took a drink from her water bottle, Elias lingered at the base of the stairs. His head was tilted back, as if he were merely enjoying the afternoon sun, but Charlie had a feeling that he was really waiting for her.

She stood and walked slowly down the stairs. When she reached the grass, Elias lowered his head, then nodded toward her rock from earlier.

“Back to work,” he said, turning to walk away. Charlie reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“Wait,” she said.

Elias froze in place, staring with wide eyes down at her hand. For several seconds, Charlie could only do the same. Could only look blankly at what she had just done. At her fingers wrapped around his warm skin.

She hadn’t known she was going to do it. Hadn’t thought,This will play nicely into my plan, and she wished desperately that she could say she had. Wished that she could blame any voluntary contact between them on her plot for revenge. But she had acted without thinking. Had grabbed his wrist simply because it felt like the thing to do.

Just like when she’d shoved him out of harm’s way from Mason’s fist.

With a steadying breath, she lifted her eyes to look him in theface. He did the same, their gazes locking over their outstretched arms. For one long, breathless moment, they only stared at each other.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last.

His brow knit in confusion. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Elias. For what happened to your family. That you grew up not knowing whether your sister was alive or dead.” Her brain was screaming at her to drop her gaze, to pull away before she let herself get any more emotionally invested in the situation. But another, even louder part of her couldn’t help but feel for him. Couldn’t help but say something to show that she recognized his pain. “No one should have to go through something like that. It isn’t fair, and I’m sorry it happened to you.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Elias had nothing to say. He could only stare at her with what appeared to be a mixture of confusion and trepidation, as if he didn’t know whether to believe what she’d said. And she didn’t blame him; since the moment he returned to Silver Shores, she’d made her loathing of him perfectly clear. He had no reason to think that she’d changed her mind.

But the truth was, Charlie—the master of lies and deception, of tricking audiences into thinking they were seeing one thing when they were really seeing another—couldn’t pull that kind of trick off.

She meant it. She meant every word.

It wasn’t trust. It wasn’t forgiveness. But it was the truth.

After several seconds of searching her face, Elias must have come to the same conclusion, because his expression suddenly changed. Opened up. Confusion fell away, leaving a sort of bewilderment in its place.

Before Charlie could linger too long on the implications of that look, she cleared her throat and dropped her grip on his wrist, turning to head for the rock.

“Anyway,” she said over her shoulder. “What should we practice next?”

24

Charlie didn’t make it homeuntilafter sundown. She and Elias worked all afternoon, stopping only for water breaks and one brief snack provided by Bjorn (some sort of skewered reindeer sausage that she’d only nibbled on out of politeness). When she trudged back to Elias’s convertible, Henry napping on her shoulder as ifhewere the one who’d spent the day trying to access previously unknown magical powers, she was more exhausted than she could ever remember being. Even more than the time Abigail forced her and Lou to participate in an all-night dance marathon fundraiser.

The exhaustion was worth it, though. They had made progress.Realprogress. It had taken hours, but she’d finally figured out how to harness the energy within herself on command. Elias had been right; it was a current, a constant sense of forward motion within her. Earlier, her mistake had been to try to “find” that current. To think it lived in one part of her body. But it wasn’t located in any one place; it was everywhere, from the tip of her littlest toe to the funny bump on the top of her scalp. To harness it, she had to feel all of her body, all at once. When she did, she could use that energy to levitate herself—or others, as she’d learned by accidentally launching Elias ten feet into the air.

Seeing the terror on his face as he whooshed up into the sky had been the best part of her day.

Next up: dredging. She shuddered to think of how difficult itwould be. Even Elias didn’t know much about it, but he promised to do as much research as he could before they met tomorrow.