Achan laughed and caught up to her as she struggled along behind the dog.
“So, what naughty things does the mayor do when his will is lax?” he asked.
“Ugh, you name it. Playing favorites, bribing influencers, skimming funds, watching porn in his office, cheating on his wife at every opportunity. He’s a piece of trash, honestly.”
“Aren’t all politicians?”
“True.”
“We could remove him from the picture,” Achan said. “The town would have to elect someone else, and we could arrange for a better candidate to take office.”
Soleil smacked his shoulder. “Are you suggesting that we kill him?”
“Not necessarily, although I love where your mind goes.” Achan gave her a wolfish grin. “We could just make him incapable of fulfilling his duties. An accident, a disease—non-lethal and curable, of course.”
Soleil didn’t deign to reply—just shot him a look that said,Seriously? No.
“Okay, I see you’re not too happy with that solution.” Achan rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe it’s best to begin with justoneof the problems—the infidelity, for instance. I have a tether to his wife, the lovely Elena Brownell, so I can give her instructions.”
“Instructions?”
“Sure. I can’t do physical chaos magic through the tether, and I can’t make her obey me, but I can observe, and I can plant thoughts—wreak a little emotional chaos. Once Florence is tucked in, we’ll check on the mayor and his wife, break open all their secrets, and see what the fallout is.”
Soleil frowned. “That’s a very haphazard way of doing things. I don’t like it.”
“Did you expect a chaos witch to be orderly?”
“I guess not. But you seemed so tightly controlled when I first met you,” she said.
“That’s how I have to act around people who don’t know me, whocan’tknow me, or what I’m capable of.” His fingers brushed her cheek, moving a strand of hair, and she shied away without thinking. He fell silent, and she wished she could take back the reaction.
“You keep yourself under tight control, too,” he said, so low she barely heard it.
“Because there are things I want,” she said. “And if I make foolish choices, I won’t get them.”
“It’s exactly the same for me.”
“But we want different things. I want to be Highwitch, and you want—what is it that you want, Achan?”
She watched his crisp profile, mottled golden and gray in the late afternoon light filtering through the canopy.
When he didn’t answer, she wrapped her fingers around his hand. He sucked in a sharp breath, as if she’d doused him in the cold torrent of Hatter’s Fall.
“Achan. What do you want?”
His voice was a visceral whisper. “Everything.”
32
Achan pressed a hand over his stomach. His abdominal muscles were actually sore from laughing all evening over board games with Soleil and Florence. He hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time, not even with Delaney and the others.
Soleil’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners, and her face was flushed with laughter, too, even though her awkward drawings had incited most of the hilarity. “Oh my gosh.” She fanned herself. “That was too much fun.”
“What did I tell you?” Florence grinned from her spot at the table. “Pictionary. Haven’t been able to enjoy a game of it in years though.” She nodded toward Achan, a silent thanks. “Care to escort an old lady to her room?”
Achan leaped up, leaning in and crooking his elbow. “My pleasure.”
“Wait! Medicine first.” Soleil wiped the laugh-tears from her eyes, poured Florence a glass of water, and dropped a few pills into her hand. Achan watched her loose brown braid whisking against the bare skin of her shoulder, the coppery earrings bobbing against her jawline, and the unconscious, perpetual smile playing across her lips. He craved these tiny snapshots of her, replayed them over and over in his mind when he was alone. If he could paint, he’d never paint all of her at once. Impossible to capture everything that she was in a single portrait. No, he’d paint a thousand tiny canvases, each one a bit of her, and still it would never be enough.