Unlike myself.

I stripped off my duster cardigan and tugged off my boots, shedding all the items that would weigh me down once I got wet. My teeth began to chatter as soon as my bare feet touched the chilly stalks of grass. I walked over to the edge and knelt, bending down to dip my fingers in the water; it seeped into my skin in moments, and then dug down into the bone, coiling in my joints like arthritis in liquid form.

I yanked my hand back out, cursing under my breath. What the hell was I supposed to do now? It wasn’t like I had time to portal to the nearest sport supply store to get myself geared up in a wet suit.

I rocked back onto my heels with my arms around my knees, seething at being foiled by something so maddeningly basic. If Gareth or Rowan appeared, I was screwed; this hurdle wouldn’t hold either of them back for more than a minute at most. This was why Harlows didn’t compete in the first place; like an overgrown Goldilocks, we were so magically feeble we couldn’t even handle temperature extremes.

Except when it came to drinks, I thought, an unlikely idea taking slow shape in my head. Even as a child, I’d always been able to cool or heat my beverages to the perfect temperature. Obviously I couldn’t extend that to the gallons upon gallons of water a lake would hold, but what if, instead . . .

Standing up, I summoned the Temperate Charm, the one and only little cantrip at which the Harlows truly excelled.

As magic built in my hands, warm and crackling, I ran them slowly over my body, from the soles of my feet up to the crown of my head. Bespelling myself, so that wherever the water touched me, it would turn to a pleasantly warm bathing temperature. Then, without giving myself too much time to doubt, analyze, or overthink what I was about to do, I took a running jump into the lake, scrunching my eyes shut just before my feet struck the star-speckled black of the water’s face. Bracing myself for a paralyzing gush of ice against my skin, cold pressing into my ears and nose.

Instead, I slipped under into a pool of blissful heat, lapping against me in all but the few places I hadn’t been able to properly reach with my magicked hands. There was a patch of blistering cold right between my shoulder blades, and another under my left armpit where I clearly hadn’t lingered long enough with the spell.

But it was nothing I couldn’t handle, at least for as long as it would take to reach the sunken tokens.

I breached the water with a gasp, air icing my cheeks, then breast-stroked toward the spot where the blue glowed like a watercolor wash, my unprotected back and armpit burning with chill. I couldn’t even begin to think how it would have felt all over me, without the protection of the spell; my heart would probably have seized up and then given up the ghost. Despite having been born and bred in Illinois, I was decidedly not built for such severe cold.