Chapter 33 #2
Elias’s eyes were like lightning hitting a power line.
She was electrified, from top to bottom.
Charged up with the same high that she felt when she broke one of her mother’s rules, or skipped class for the day, or told a lie.
All her inhibitions fell away at once. She didn’t want to hold herself back.
So she didn’t.
Charlie danced with wild abandon, twirling around the dock and bumping into everyone standing beside her.
She tossed her head back, letting moonlight pour over her.
She probably looked ridiculous, but she didn’t care.
She wanted to move. To spin and dip with a lack of self-judgment that she hadn’t felt since she was a little girl dancing to Rihanna in her bedroom, little Lou and little Sophie her only audience.
Eyes closed. Hair whipping about her face. Arms tossed toward the sky.
Huge, elated smile on her face.
She sensed his presence before she even opened her eyes.
Perhaps it was a whiff of his scent, dark and musky like the forest around them.
Perhaps it was the tinge of darkness that followed wherever he went.
Or perhaps she was just tuned in to some current she hadn’t known existed, one that ran between only them.
Whatever the case, when her eyes fluttered open, he was there. Standing before her on the dock. Waiting.
Her feet came to a halt. Arms dropping to her sides. Her chest rising and falling. Her face damp with a light layer of sweat. Hair clinging to her cheeks and forehead. She didn’t push it aside.
“Yes?” she asked between breaths.
Elias’s eyes glinted in the moonlight. “I came to deliver an important message.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” He tilted his head. “I don’t even remember walking up here. I think a witch may have cast a spell on me.”
“Witches don’t exist.”
“Sure they do. You just haven’t met one yet.”
She laughed. “Fair enough. Where’s Mason?”
Elias nodded his head over toward the cooler, beside which Mason was sitting and chatting with two junior guys, water bottles in hand. “The same place I left him five minutes ago. After forcing four water bottles down his throat and not allowing him to touch a single beer.”
“That’s … oddly responsible of you.”
He shrugged. “If Rattatosk does show up here, I don’t want Mason shit-faced when he does. It’ll be much harder to save his ass if it’s crack up in the sand.”
“Hmm,” said Charlie, studying Mason. He did seem considerably more sober than he had been an hour ago, and for that, she was grateful. “Interesting.” She looked at Elias. “And yes, by the way.”
He wrinkled his forehead. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ll dance with you.” She raised her eyebrows. “That’s why you actually came up here, isn’t it?”
The corner of his lip twitched. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, he says.” She placed her hands on her hips. “That’s hardly an enthusiastic invitation, Elias Everhart. I expected something far more Victorian. Your name signed to my dance card, perhaps, or a flute of champagne on a golden—”
But she didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence, because, without further ado, she was flying.
Not twirling through the air, as she’d expected. Unlike at homecoming, Elias didn’t toss her up and spin her around, dipping and scooping with nothing but his remarkable strength before finally setting her on the ground. This time, she flew clear off the dock—because he pushed her.
She hit the bay, plummeting through the clear, cool water until her toes brushed the muddy bottom. Kicking hard with her legs, she swam until her face broke the surface, gasping and sputtering as she did.
Wiping the water from her eyes, she zeroed in on Elias’s face, which was grinning down at her from up on the dock.
“I’m going to kill you,” she said.
“Good luck with that,” he replied. “Many have tried, but none have succeed—”
Lou had shoved him from behind, sending him careening through the air and into the water with a satisfying splash. He surfaced, coughing up water in surprise.
“Swim time!” Lou hollered. She crouched low and threw herself off the dock in a front flip, letting out a victorious whoop as she did so.
It didn’t take long after that. Lou’s flip set off a general exodus, everyone leaping from the dock without bothering to change into swimsuits. The Gut filled with the sounds of laughter and splashing, of cheers and gleeful yelps whenever someone landed a particularly impressive cannonball.
Charlie turned over to float on her back.
The moon was bright above her. The ?lvor tittered and zipped overhead.
A distant part of her mind told her that she shouldn’t be so relaxed.
She should be worried about Rattatosk, plotting escape routes and brushing up on her incredibly limited magical abilities.
But even knowing the risk … even knowing the danger they could all be in …
She loved it.
Elias was right, she realized. I love this. I love flirting with danger.
And for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel any shame at the idea. She felt only the truth of it, burning in her core like a star on the brink of supernova.
Ever since I believed Sophie had died, I’ve held myself together like a tightly bound fist, she thought. Study close-up magic. Go to school. Attend parties with your friends but don’t enjoy them. Don’t let yourself be free.
Even after she discovered Asgard, she didn’t let herself relish in its magic. In fact, she did everything she could to keep it away. To protect the people she loved, sure, but also to protect herself. To protect herself from the truth staring her so plainly in the face.
“Charlie?”
The sound of his voice brought Charlie rushing back into her body, as if she had momentarily left it to float among the stars and fairies. She blinked several times, then let her legs sink back down through the water, moving her arms in slow circles to keep herself afloat.
When she was finally upright again, arms and legs paddling, head just above water, she found herself staring right at him.
Elias looked concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Perfectly,” she said. “Why?”
“You were just … floating there.” He shook his dark, wet hair. “For, like … five minutes.”
“No I wasn’t. I was having a telepathic conversation with one of the mermaids.”
“You were…” He blinked those long eyelashes. “What?”
“Yup. She’s going to do me a huge favor, actually.”
“What’s that?”
“Eat you alive.”
Elias let out a surprised laugh. “Is that so?” he asked once he caught his breath. “Because I had a chat with one of the Asgardian freshwater sharks earlier tonight, and—”
But before he could finish his fake threat, Charlie lunged forward and grabbed his shoulders, shoving him under the water.
Elias reemerged spluttering and shocked, arms splashing. For a long moment, he just stared at her, water running in thick rivulets down his forehead, along the bridge of his nose, and dripping from his chin. His eyes said, Are you really goofing around with me?
Charlie smirked.
Like the Cheshire Cat laying eyes on Alice for the first time, Elias’s lips spread slowly into a wide, dangerous grin.
Then he lunged.
Charlie screamed with glee as he tackled her torso, plunging them underwater in a tangle of flailing arms and legs.
She wriggled furiously, but Elias kept a firm hold on her body.
When her eyes popped open, she was baffled to find that, not only could she see Elias and the glowing fish and the weeds wriggling on the bottom, but she could see them clearly.
The bulging black eyes of the neon bass.
The crisp edges of the rocks. Elias’s hair waving gently in the current.
It was as if she’d spent her entire life looking through dirty goggles underwater and someone had finally rubbed the grime away.
Elias’s eyes were already wide open, hands on Charlie’s sides as he watched her with acute focus. There was none of the shock or bewilderment on his face that Charlie knew was on hers. If she had to guess, he’d been able to see underwater since he first became a mare.
Charlie watched bubbles drift from her lips as she mouthed the words, How is this possible?
Elias mouthed nothing in response. Instead, he slid one of his hands down her side, coming to rest on her lower back. Charlie felt the trail he traced down her body as if it were carved in hot coals. A tightness pulsed just below her belly. Her skin sang, and ?lvor flapped madly about her stomach.
When he finally parted his lips, they formed the words You’re so beautiful.
Charlie’s entire body caught fire.
Those mouthed words didn’t carry the same feeling as his usual “compliments,” the sarcastic little remarks he made about her being “gorgeous” or wanting to get her alone. No, these words felt different. Too soft. Too much truth in the bubbles of his lingering breath.
Truth.
That was just it. Charlie could no longer protect herself from the truth. The reality that stared her in the face and whispered at the back of her mind from the moment she awoke to the moment she fell asleep.
The truth was this: she was Loki’s daughter. Born for mischief. Born for mayhem. Born to make bad decisions and deal with the consequences later. Born to let go.
So, she did.
She didn’t care that they were in public. Didn’t care that anyone could see what they were doing if they thought to look. She did what she wanted to. What her body was begging her to do.
At last, she closed the distance between her and Elias.
At last—at long, long last—she kissed him.