Drowning in Fire

TWENTY

Keko awoke on a bed of nails, a thousand sharp points gouging into her skin, the pain both extreme and welcome. It forced her back into awareness when she knew she couldn’t afford to be in the black any longer.

The sun was setting, and she awoke a different person. Only she didn’t know why. Or how.

Rolling her head, she winced at the scrape against her scalp. Her fingers flew to the back of her skull and brushed what she knew to be the rough and blocky ‘a’a kind of lava rock. The stuff had been borne of fire, deep within the earth, but it was wicked on the body, Chimeran or not.

The sound of waves filled her ears. Easy, insistent waves.

The earth was still, free of smoke and fire.

How did she get here? And where was here? The last thing she remembered was the island rumbling beneath her feet, the anger of the Source bubbling up from below, throwing her down. The force and shock of the quake had jarred loose her control over her magic. She’d watched Nem’s fire cage collapse, then witnessed him clawing his way back into the enraged earth. Then . . .

Keko gasped as panic consumed her.

Griffin. Griffin had turned to vapor and disappeared into the fissure, and then a long time later the world had exploded around her.

“Keko.”

Maybe she was only hearing her name in his voice because she wanted to so badly. And maybe, after she turned her head on the spiky rock and found the Ofarian stretched out beside her, his normally olive skin gone pale, his lips colorless, it was only a vision her desperate mind had created.

But then the vision struggled to sit up, and she knew he was real. Griffin was real and alive. And he was weak.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice as torn up as his body.

She peeled herself off the rock, grimacing at the way it had punched divots and cuts into her skin. Glancing around, she knew immediately that they were back on the Big Island, on the remote coast south of Hilo, close to the Chimeran valley.

She could not answer Griffin. She could only look at him, take him all in. And wonder.

Then she sensed it again, that clear difference in her body and being. Her skin felt the same, familiar, but everything inside—from the darkest reaches of her brain to the smallest, most insignificant muscle—pulsed to a tune she’d never heard before. Her inner fire burned with a permanent light, a never-ending source of energy.

Like she’d never have to take a Chimeran breath ever again.

“What happened?” she said.

Her voice sounded odd. Deeper and more resonant. She put a palm to her chest, where it felt strange.

Griffin’s stare dropped to where her hand lay and his eyes widened. Then she looked down and saw what he did. She still wore his black T-shirt, and through the fibers glowed a light, outlining her fingers and beating in time with her heart.

Keko scrambled to her feet, her hands slipping into the neckline of the T-shirt and ripping it down the center, exposing the skin just above her breasts, now possessed of a soft, blue-white light.

“What is it?” she cried, even though she knew. “What is it?”

Griffin stood and lifted a hand toward the glow, but did not touch her. “The Source,” he said, meeting her eyes. “A tiny part of it anyway.”

Each pulse of the muted light sent a new bit of magic into her system. Its purity was undeniable, its beauty almost able to be tasted. Sweet like the smoke she loved, but a sweetness no one before had ever had the pleasure of rolling on her tongue. Unlike Chimeran blood that had been diluted by history or mixed breeding with Primaries, this magic was uncontaminated and whole. And even though that tiny part was now inside her, it was still the Source, and it would never die.

It was the Queen’s mana, her spiritual power incarnate.

Griffin had done it. But . . . how?

Another bit of memory came back to her. Him, in mist form, feeding her the little blue-white spark he’d brought up from below. Her swallowing the fire magic, how it had burned going down. How it had felt like death.

Turning, she looked toward the setting sun, the lowering light calling out the thick plume of smoke far, far on the horizon.

“Brave, mighty Queen,” she murmured, the name scratching at her throat. She swallowed, gathering strength and moisture, and faced Griffin, who watched her with overwhelming intensity. “What happened?”

“You wouldn’t’ve survived,” he said, shaking his head, “if you’d gone down there.”

And then he told her the most incredible story that ended with a volcanic eruption out in the middle of the ocean, and a piece of the Fire Source inside Keko Kalani.

Griffin had succeeded. In the end, he’d told her the truth. And he’d helped her.

She honestly did not know what to do in the face of that remarkable sacrifice—him giving up his dreams of the Senatus and risking his life to hand her the resolution to her own goals. Her very first thought was one of shame, that even though she’d found the Source and now carried a bit of it inside her, Griffin had been the one to retrieve it. She was Chimeran through and through, and her blood told her that Griffin’s actions on her behalf called out a weakness.

She did not know if she’d ever be able to erase or appease that feeling. Or even if she wanted to.

“Do you think you can cure them?” he asked.

She looked deep into his eyes and drew a Chimeran breath. With the inrush of air, the burgeoning new power inside accelerated and bloomed with a force she could barely control. It wanted to scream out of her throat and dance all over everything. She just barely yanked it back before it loosed itself upon Griffin.

“Keko.” He still didn’t touch her, his hand hovering between them. “What is it?”

For the first time in her life, she feared her own fire.

“It’s so . . . different. Scary.”

She opened her palm to the sky and pursed her lips, intending to blow flame into the cup of her hand. It was the very first trick a Chimeran child learned when they came into their power, something any fire elemental knew and could control with barely a thought.

Keko had meant to create a tiny flame, a flicker of the red and orange and gold she knew so well.

What came out was a fireball as large as her head. Beautiful and wondrous and deadly in a whole new sense of the word. And it shimmered in a sparkling, searing blue-white.

“Yes,” she murmured, transfixed by the color and power that had come from her body. “Yes, I believe I can cure them.”

• • •

They stood in the misting rain, far enough inland that she’d lost sight of the ocean. Far enough away that she could not watch the sun setting behind the massive smear of smoke and lava she’d created. At first she did not recognize the sentiments that tangled in her gut, because regret and doubt had never kept space in the limited emotional arsenal the Chimeran culture allowed, but as she and Griffin stared at each other, what she felt now became all too clear.

The Keko who’d hiked out of the Chimeran valley, intent on taking the Source at any cost, would have simply turned her back on the damage she’d done to the B and B, and the chaos she’d caused out in the ocean. But the Keko who now held pure fire magic within her body worried about who and what she’d affected, and how badly.

She had Griffin to thank for that, and she did not hate him for it. In fact, she found that she did not hate him at all.

He stood close but did not touch her, eyeing her carefully. Lovingly. That’s how it had been the whole time as they’d stumbled off the coastal lava rock and hiked inland. Bloodied, weary, dirty, they’d stopped only when they’d found a phone and she’d made her call to the stronghold.

Now they waited for a specific Chimeran to bring the car.

The rain cleansed her, rinsing her skin, trickling into her mouth. She licked at it gratefully. Griffin had to cup his hands to drink from a puddle. That alone told her that his magic was depleted.

Her black T-shirt was thoroughly soaked, enabling her to fold the ripped section over her gently glowing chest and hide what made her eternally different. She would have to do this, she realized, for the rest of her days.

She gripped a fistful of the fabric, feeling the pulse of new magic through her skin, and looked deep into Griffin’s eyes. “Why?” she whispered.

He reached for her, hands peeling off his wet torso where he’d tucked them underneath his arms, but she quickly stepped back with a warning look. If she felt this different inside, she had no idea what her skin might do to him. That distance—the idea that she might never be able to touch him again—hurt more than the gashes on her back or the bruises dotting her arms.

Griffin didn’t look worried, but he let his arms drop without argument. “I’ve never told you about my brother,” he said.

She looked at him quizzically. “No. I don’t know anything about your family. Other than what you told me in the hotel, about being born a soldier.”

“I have this brother—well, I have five of them, but I’m talking about the youngest, Henry. He’s twelve and he’s . . .” Griffin finally looked away from her, off toward the great slopes of the old, dead volcanoes rising in the distance, long since gone green. He turned his face up to the rain and ran a hand through his wet hair, making it gleam black. “Henry’s mine. My heart. My reason. I didn’t know it before the Board fell, but since then . . .”

It suddenly made sense. Everything he’d done—it all made sense. “You see yourself in him.”

He still didn’t look at her, his focus somewhere distant. “I saw myself in him. I saw chances for him—and all Ofarian kids, really—that I never had. And it frustrated the hell out of me that he didn’t see what I did, that he wasn’t chasing down this new life. But the thing is, he’s not me. He’s Henry.” At last his eyes trailed back to hers and she saw in them a love and devotion that existed on a plane she’d never personally known. “I can give him what I can,” Griffin said with a shrug, “but the rest is up to him. All I can do is help him along his own way.”

And Keko thought, with a bloom in her heart that had nothing to do with fire magic, You will make an amazing father someday.

“The Senatus,” she said, “and all the stuff with the Primaries—”

“To me, my kid brother wore every Ofarian child’s face, and I stopped seeing what Henry truly looked like. I pushed the Primaries and my dreams on him and everyone else, because of what my birthright made me do. Because of what the old Chairman made me do. All I want is something better for Henry and the other kids, and I want to give them those chances. I thought the Senatus was the way. Now? I don’t know.”

She released the clutch on her shirt, suddenly feeling hollow. “I have only ever lived for me.”

Then Griffin was there, as close as he could get without touching her. “That’s not true.”

She shook her head. “It is. I went for the Source to get the cure, yeah, but in my heart I wanted to be bigger than I was. To lead, to be the Queen. I’ve never known how to be selfless.”

“Stop it. It’s not the same thing as being selfish. Which you aren’t.”

Long moments of silence passed. “I admire you,” she finally said. The admission surprised her. “So much. I need to figure out what to do now, what I can do . . . after I go back.”

He rubbed at his jaw, and she was starting to figure out that he did that when there were many things he wanted to say but couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Like he was massaging the words on his tongue to keep them calm, to keep them from escaping on their own. Finally, very slowly, he said, “You will figure it out. I can help you. If you’ll have me.”

She had to close her eyes, because the tenderness and understanding on his face was simply overwhelming. “You’ve already done so much. This”—her hand hovered over her chest—“is difficult for me to accept. That you got to the Source and I did not.”

“I know.”

And when she opened her eyes, she saw that he really did know.

“I’m sorry it went down like that,” he said. “If I could erase my presence here and let you have that, I would. If you wanted, I would take away all that happened between us in the waterfall and the B and B and . . . in here”—he touched his heart—“to give that to you.”

Is that what she wanted? Could she ever do that? Trade this precious, exciting, beautiful connection with him for the ability to walk into the Chimeran valley and say she’d succeeded where the Queen had not?

Griffin was too good. Too sacrificial. She’d grown up believing she was deserving of the best, that she was worthy of fighting for what she wanted, but this man had been touched by the stars and the Queen alike, and his light was so very bright. It chased away her shadows, and she’d always relied on those shadows to guide her. To remind her of her bad decisions and past experiences.

“Griffin—”

The whine and grind of an approaching Jeep cut her off, and she turned to watch the familiar yellow vehicle jouncing over the dirt road. It stopped between two white flowering trees and the driver got out.

Bane slid from behind the wheel. He just stood there holding the door open, staring over the top of it, his gaze bouncing between Keko and Griffin. At last he slammed shut the door and stalked toward them, his bare feet pounding through puddles.

As he drew closer, Keko could barely believe what she was seeing. Bane, the Chimeran general, looked like he was on the verge of tears. He pulled up ten feet away and repressed his emotion in a most Chimeran way.

“You’re alive,” he said, and she heard the unmistakable relief in his voice. “The sky went dark . . . we knew there was an eruption somewhere . . . I thought . . .”

“You knew about Aya’s warning,” Keko interrupted, “about the danger to the Earth and myself if I touched the Source?”

Bane nodded once, thin rivers of rainwater swooping down his neck and bare chest.

“And yet,” she went on, “you still asked Griffin to help me.”

Bane looked to Griffin, but the Ofarian was standing slightly behind her so she couldn’t see Griffin’s reaction.

“Because you knew that if I came back bearing the power of the Source, I could cure Ikaika. You could stop covering for his loss of magic.”

Bane paled but, to his credit and training, did not otherwise react. He’d always been so good at hiding the true depth of his feelings for the other Chimeran warrior. “How did you know about that?”

“Because the chief is afflicted, too.” She had no qualms in saying it now. She needed her brother’s help and it required his knowledge.

“Holy shit.” Bane blew out a breath and raised his arms, locking his hands around the back of his skull. “That changes everything,” he muttered, his dark eyes darting from puddle to puddle. She knew he was already considering his formal challenge. Plotting the ali’i’s downfall, just as she’d done only days earlier.

“No.” She advanced on her brother, one hand coming up to pull back the flap of her ripped T-shirt. “This does.”

Now Bane reacted. And not at all in the way she’d expected.

His attention immediately dropped to the soft white glow beneath her breastbone. He rubbed his own chest, as though able to sense what did not reside there, and then his stare snapped back up to her face. His eyes went impossibly wide. He breathed hard. His massive shoulders sagged.

And then he fell to his knees, hitting the mud with a splat. He gazed up at her in what she could only describe as divine awe.

“My Queen . . .” he murmured.

Behind her, Griffin sucked in a breath.

She should have known this might happen. She should have realized that it was not for her to determine how others might view her when she stumbled back into the valley.

Keko stood over her brother, whose tears were now very real. The dark orbs of his eyes shone with them, even in the deepening twilight.

“I am not your Queen,” she said. “But I am a cure. And I want you to bring me to Chief. In secret.”

Bane blinked, finally looking again like the general she knew. “But . . . why? You should enter the valley in the darkness and let everyone see what you’ve done. What you have inside you. They’ll want to know you. They’ll want to follow you.” He pounded a hearty fist on his chest. “You should take what you’ve earned.”

Now Keko finally looked to Griffin, who watched her with his lips flattened in assessment. If she wanted, he would tell the story of how he’d actually been the one to face the Source, but she did not will it.

“No,” she told Bane. “I won’t do that.”

Because she had not earned it. At least, not in the Chimeran way. A gift alone did not merit such praise. What she did with that gift, however, just might. She had some proving to do.

She met Griffin’s eyes. He gave her the faintest of smiles and a small nod, and she knew he understood. Because he was extraordinary like that.

“What I will do,” Keko said, focusing again on her brother, “is cure the diseased. One by one, starting with the ali’i. To reveal myself and my true reason for going after the Source would compromise all of the victims, and I won’t have any of them looked down upon because of a weakness they were powerless to fight. It is their secret to reveal. Not mine to use against them. I will give the same order to the chief.”

Bane, still on his knees before her, looked like he might try to throw another argument her way.

“You say nothing,” she said. “Understand?”

He rose to his feet and bowed with a speed she’d never before witnessed. Not even when he’d responded to the ali’i.