Drowning in Fire

NINE

“How do you know you’re heading in the right direction?”

Keko didn’t turn around, didn’t even slow down, when Griffin’s voice came up behind her. His eventual arrival had been expected. She hadn’t even bothered to disguise her path.

The first, predawn chirps and squawks of the birds had awakened her. After putting out the fire and taking the ash and smoke back into her body, she’d struck out for the coast without a glance backward.

“Because I know.” She threw the words over her shoulder as she sidestepped a fallen tree, half rotten.

She wasn’t Ofarian but even she could tell she was approaching a place of legend, as though the old magic was calling to her. Excitement mixed with the fire dancing in her belly.

A landmark from the Queen’s lover’s tale appeared on her left: a slope of land that looked like a woman’s body arched up in ecstasy. She would follow that to a specific ravine and waterfall, splash her way to the ocean, then scrabble around a rock ledge lining the harsh coast to find the Queen’s hidden cove and her final prayer.

“The chief told me about a prayer.”

Griffin didn’t sound out of breath today. He sounded strong, alert. Focused.

“What did he say?” Keko asked, feigning boredom.

“That the Queen carved something into a stone in the evening, and in the morning her lover woke up to find her gone. There’re a whole bunch of holes in that story. Care to fill them in for me?”

The thing was, a little part of her wanted to tell him. An even bigger part of her had actually enjoyed their heated discussion last night about religion. She could hear the skepticism in his voice—about what she was doing and about the Queen. Though he’d been fed lies about her true quest and seemed to be eating them up—as she wanted—his cynicism about the Queen bothered Keko greatly. If he would know nothing else, he would know the correct history about the woman Keko revered, religion or not.

“When the Queen split the Chimerans from the Primaries,” she began, “she moved them all around the Big Island trying to find the Source.”

Griffin fell into step beside her, but she didn’t look over at him. She just kept talking, her eyes on a specific place ahead where the land dropped dramatically down to sea level.

“Wherever she moved she carved prayers into the lava rock, pleading with the Source to reveal itself. It never answered, but she could feel it, dream of it. She tried thousands of different prayers and thousands of different pictures, trying to find one to make the Source acknowledge her.”

“What were they of?”

How could he watch her and still walk a straight line? It was disconcerting.

“Mostly people. Chimerans. But she tried animals, objects, ancient symbols from the old world.”

Griffin reached up to lift a branch that dangled across their path, but Keko’s arm shot out to get there first and lift it up for herself. After he went under and she let the branch snap back, he looked at her with odd amusement. She turned and walked on, making him catch up again.

“The prayers are still there, you know,” she said.

“Yeah? Where?”

She shrugged. “All over the island. The state protected all the petroglyphs—that’s what the Primaries call them—and they put up signs about how no one really knows what they mean. You can walk right up to them, I heard. In the middle of golf courses and resorts and stuff.”

“Wow. But not the one we’re headed to.”

“No, not the one I’m going to.” She let that switch of words sink in, then added, “The others are all in huge groups. This one is alone, hidden. Her final prayer. The one that worked.”

“This man, this partner and lover of hers, said that the Queen found the Source, but how did he know that since she was gone when he woke up and he never actually witnessed it? How do you know that? How can you be so sure?”

Keko stopped and turned on him. “Because the Source killed her and made her a goddess. It gave her back to us in the way it wanted her to serve.”

He made a sound of disbelief that she wanted to snatch from his throat. He kept running his big hand between ear and chin, over and over again. It took him a long time to speak, and when he did she wished he hadn’t. “What if she really fell into the water and drowned? What if she tripped down the side of a cliff and snapped her neck at the bottom?”

She narrowed her eyes. “It won’t work, what you’re trying to do. Trying to discredit my beliefs.”

“I’m trying to make you think in another way. I’m not going to stop either, until I know you’ve given this up.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re relying too much on faith.”

“I would say you don’t rely on it enough. I remember that about you. How you know exactly who you’ll be talking to before you enter a room, exactly what you’re going in there for. You draw road maps between every possibility and make planned detours to get your way. You won’t do anything if it’s not planned, not considered a million different ways.”

“Because I have to. It’s my job, my responsibility, to think that way.”

With every moment that passed, the closer he seemed to draw to her. He was like a magnet and she couldn’t pry herself away. She could feel herself losing focus when she could least afford to. If she couldn’t tear herself away from his nearness, she would have to use their proximity. Manipulate it. Bring him in closer to throw him off guard so she could find a window and escape through it.

Keko leaned in, tilted back her head. “I also remember what you’re like when you let it all go. I remember, so, so vividly, Griffin, how your walls cracked and you just . . . surrendered.”

For a moment she thought he’d gone Chimeran, because the heat that flashed in his eyes was potent and nearly visible.

“It was the first thing I thought when I saw you,” she went on. “That I wanted to break that cardboard leader into a million pieces. You were my delicious, forbidden challenge, and I knew I was going to love seeing you crumble. I knew I was going to love seeing you strip down and get into what you truly wanted.”

Though the air was moist and Griffin was made of water, his voice sounded scratchy and dry. “And did you love it?”

“You know I did.”

She’d forgotten she was supposed to be using this situation and these words for her benefit. She’d inadvertently neglected her original intent. Her honesty had just slipped out because he—even after all these years and across their great divide—could still make her crumble, too.

Stupid, stupid.

He shifted on his feet. Just a little movement, but enough to break the spell. Enough for her to nudge herself back a step. Once she’d done that, her whole body turned and she walked away.

He followed a few seconds later. This time he trailed in silence.

When she came to a steep decline peppered with rock and tricky soft ground, and flagged by the telltale landmarks, she pointed. “I’m going down there.”

At the bottom trickled a silver line of a stream, twisting its way to the ocean. Follow that, and she’d find the hidden cove sheltering the Queen’s prayer.

Griffin came to her side, peering down. “Where you go, I go.”

• • •

At midday, she finally scrabbled over the last part of the treacherous, jagged lava rock shelf that paralleled the ocean, and stepped into the Queen’s hidden place. It was little more than a crevice in the island, a narrow fissure carved by water and wind over millennia, bordered with steep green land, carpeted with vegetation, and divided from the sea by a small stretch of black sand.

This was where she’d find her fate. This was where she’d discover how to heal her people and vault her name into the heavens.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Griffin asked.

All morning he’d never trailed more than a few feet from her. Not when lowering themselves down to the stream bed. Not when picking their way over the slippery banks. Not when clinging to the rock ledge along the ocean. Now he jumped down from the rock, landing on the sand right next to her.

“You can’t feel it?” she said.

The shimmering black sand clung to her toes and the soles of her feet. Peering down the length of the little valley, she found another landmark the story mentioned: a promontory of rock sitting halfway up the cliffside that looked like a face. The nose was worn and the chin shallow, but it was a face. Somewhere below that, in a bed of pahoehoe lava rock that rippled like frozen, smooth, black water, the Queen’s prayer would be waiting.

“I do feel . . . something,” Griffin said, and when she looked over at him, he was frowning. He stared off into the tangle of trees and brush between the beach and the prayer.

She smiled. “See? Told you the—”

He lifted a sharp hand, his eyebrows drawing together as he squinted hard into the valley. “Not the Queen,” he whispered, impatient. “A signature. A Secondary signature.”

Keko swept a long look over the small valley, the whole thing easily spread out and visible to her eye. The place was untouched, virtually impossible to get to unless you shimmied along the rock ledge like they had. The surf was white and angry against the beach, admitting no boats.

“No one’s here,” she said.

“That you can see,” he murmured cryptically, his eyes flitting from side to side.

“Then let me get what I came here for and we can get the hell out of here fast.” She was about to correct herself, to backtrack and say “I” instead of “we,” when she realized exactly what he’d revealed, what signatures he was talking about.

Senatus backup. Other Secondaries—more Ofarians? Air elementals?—come to help him keep her away from what she needed to do. Fuck that.

“You asshole.” She spun and took off running, but not before she saw the shock on his face.

“Keko, wait!”

No way was that happening. She sprinted, her toes digging in the sand, her thighs pushing her off the narrow crescent of beach and onto firmer ground. Her arms swung ahead, slapping aside branches and leaves, making way for her bullet of a body.

Behind her Griffin was shouting her name, crashing after her. He’d have to take her down again, and even that wouldn’t stop her. She’d crawl for the prayer with him clinging to her legs, if it came to that.

“Keko, stop!”

Then there was nothing but the wind in her ears, and the sting and scrape of bark and leaves on her skin as she flew. She could see the land just below the face in the rock now, the patch of lava rock tilting toward the ocean that would hold the prayer. She could see the lone, gnarled Acacia koa tree pushing up through a crack in the rock, bending over the prayer, its canopy sheltering what had been carved by the Queen’s hand.

Almost there. Push. Run. Charge.

The valley rumbled. The ground shook, branches and flowers and hanging fruits vibrating against the wind. She momentarily lost her footing, stumbling to one side before correcting herself. All she could think was: What sort of magic was Griffin loosing at her back? What were his minions doing to try to stop her?

And finally—how would she humiliate them all when she succeeded?

A cloud of birds dislodged itself from a stand of red flowering ohia trees off to her right and took to the sky.

Another terrible rumble. Except this time it didn’t come from behind. It originated in front of her. Near the prayer. She could see it plainly now, the flat rock of the histories, the thing her people had been forbidden to search for but which was now hers.

The earth was angry, its shaking tossing her from side to side. The Senatus would have to do more than that to get her to turn away. A Chimeran warrior woman was hunting. Didn’t they know nothing could ever block her from her quarry?

Distantly, she realized that Griffin had stopped shouting.

Keko reached the edge of the patch of lava rock and launched herself onto it. If she could just touch the prayer, the Queen would protect her. The Queen would bless her.

Thunder emanated from beneath her feet. It wrinkled the rock, flowing toward the prayer, making the great tree over it shudder and tip.

Then the tree itself moved.

The trunk straightened, lengthening, like a man unfolding to stand from a crouch. The bulk of the tree swiveled toward Keko, its dome of branches becoming tens of waving, threatening leaf-tipped arms. A face shifted among the boughs. A man’s face, snarling and menacing, its eyes gold and silver, its amorphous mouth open in a soundless scream.

Keko skidded to a stop, the lava rock tearing into the pads of her feet.

The tree’s trunk cracked up the middle, becoming legs that ripped free from the earth, dislodging chunks of rock and sending Keko falling backward. Immediately she scrambled back to her feet.

The treeman was coming for her, his great strides eating up the space between them, each step grinding rock under the tangle of roots that were his feet.

What magic was this? Ancient Hawaiian she’d never heard of? The Queen’s? Elemental?

A great bough swung toward her, sweeping away everything in its path. Crackling, crashing, rumbling. The movement was lumbering and heavy, but coming fast.

She drew a Chimeran breath, but the bodily shock of hitting the ground and the narrow window of time only allowed her a shallow inhale. Deep enough to let her release a small stream of flame, though, and she spewed it at the bough coming for her. The tree was wet, however, its bark damp from the ocean proximity and the perpetual rain, its leaves unable to light. That shouldn’t have mattered to her magic, which meant he was doing something to parry her flame. The bough arm kept coming at her. Then another joined the attack.

She’d be crushed if she didn’t run, so that’s exactly what she did. She sprinted toward the edge of the valley, where she could use the steep sides, maybe climb above the tree. Then she’d make her way back to the beach and onto the narrow rock ledge. The treeman was too large and couldn’t follow her there.

A terrible screech filled her ears—one that sounded vaguely like her name being pushed through a grinder made of rage and vengeance. Did this thing know her?

Keko refused to panic. Chimerans didn’t fight this way, didn’t run—this was a new enemy, a new challenge—but she would find a way to defeat it, to get around it. There was no chance, however, to stay still enough to catch her breath. No chance to dig for her fire and let out enough to burn away and eat through the damp of the tree and whatever magic it was using. Fire knocked against the inside of her chest, begging to be let out. To do what it was meant to do.

For the first time ever, she wished Chimerans had been taught ways to defend themselves other than with fire and fists.

A powerful gust of air came at her back, the suck of forces that told her another bough arm was coming her way. The treeman had closed the distance between them.

“Keko! Keko!”

A man’s voice this time. A voice she knew. A voice that created more conflict than ease.

She couldn’t see Griffin but she could hear him drawing closer, the sound of her name getting louder. He was coming for her like the treeman. Working together? An attack from both sides? This awful creature was part of Griffin’s larger plan, maybe. A last-ditch effort to turn her away. His chase and his words had failed, so he’d summoned this thing. Or maybe it was a soldier of the Senatus, sent for her because Griffin had failed. Who knew what sort of magic the premier had access to? And Chief had hid so much from her, why not this?

The great splinter of tree boughs filled her ears and she knew it was close.

She veered to one side, changing course, trying to throw off the treeman, but his bough caught her in the back of her left shoulder, tearing across her skin, making her howl with pain. Sending her body airborne.

She flipped midair and hit the ground hard, skidding. Dirt and sticks wedged into what she knew to be a bad laceration across her upper back and shoulder. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rolled to her side. The valley winked, and she could vaguely make out Griffin’s shape through the vegetation, sprinting toward her, a giant knife clutched in his hand. A two-pronged attack then.

It only made her more pissed off.

She would not lay eyes on the Queen’s prayer only to be destroyed by a magic being that could be leveled if only she could get enough fire. She would not fail her people because Griffin Aames wanted to sit gabbing with other elementals around a campfire in the middle of nowhere.

Biting back the agony, she flipped onto her raw back. Her knee felt wrenched, too, though she hadn’t known when that had happened. With her back pressed to the ground, she looked up. The treeman—massive and trembling with rage, that strange face among the leaves twisted in determination—loomed over her. He looked more man now, each terrible limb delineated in powerful muscles made of razorblade bark. Every bough arm pulled back, some ends making fists, others sharpened into spear-like points. He was gathering his strength, intent on smashing her, pulverizing her into the earth.

If she was going down, she was going down with her fire.

And she’d take Griffin with her, because she could plainly see him now. He charged through the last barrier of brush. Toward her. Mouth open in soundless fury. Blade shining in the blast of sunlight that shot down from the parting clouds.

Keko found her breath, took control of her heaving chest, and inhaled. Deep and long, the kind of breath that tasted of death. Fire magic built inside and shot up her throat. It dared her to use it. Despite the chaos, despite the danger, it brought her peace.

Oh, Griffin, she thought in the moment the fire touched her tongue and she scrambled to her feet. For a few days we were magical.

The boughs with their clubs and spears were descending, descending toward her.

She brought her hand to her mouth and fed her palm fire. Dropped her arm back to throw.

Griffin planted a foot on a chunk of tilted lava rock and launched himself off it. His body soared, making an arc. His face twisted with murderous intent, the long knife in his fist.

She released the fireball, arm and shoulder muscles screaming from the injury and the force of her pitch. Both targets were in range and scope: Ofarian and treeman. They would feel the power of her burning weapon.

Griffin’s body hit the apex of its curve and came down. Only not on her. Not anywhere near her.

He slammed into one of the legs of the treeman high up on the thigh, and held on in a three-limb clutch. The arm with the knife stabbed downward, piercing the bark that was somehow now half flesh. The treeman howled, boughs pulling up.

It was too late. Too late to realize that Griffin was helping her. The fire had already left her hands and was catapulting toward the treeman’s leg. Toward Griffin.

“Griffin!” she screamed.

He was holding on to the knife handle with both hands, the blade dragging down and through the treeman’s strange flesh, when he looked up and saw what was coming for him.

The fireball hit.

Griffin fell. His body struck the ground, crumpling at the feet of the treeman. The stink of burned hair filled the air.

One of the treeman’s boughs shaped into a human hand as it plucked out the knife from its thigh. A piercing wail—a shriek not born in this world but delivered through the mouth of one of its strange, awful creatures—drowned out all other sound.

The treeman was shuddering, stiffening. Its movements turned jerky and rigid as the human parts of him surrendered to the tree. It bent forward, cracking branches pressed to the leg that bled a mixture of red human blood and a clear, viscous substance. Its screams faded, trickling out through the tips of each leaf.

Keko could see the human part of him leaving the tree, moving down from the top of the canopy as though the man were being sucked into the ground through the trunk. The legs jammed back together, the trunk bulging outward as the tree expelled the inhabiting humanity into the dirt. The roots shivered, clamping to the ground, burrowing down.

With a final sigh, the treeman went perfectly still. It was no longer any sort of a man, but just a tree. A gnarled, twisted Acacia koa tree half bent into itself, with a pale, bulbous, jagged scar running down the right side of its trunk.

Griffin lay sprawled at its base.

Worry and panic overtook Keko. But it was the anger and confusion that set her feet to the earth, sprinting over to him.

He lay on his back, heels kicking into the ground, hands covering one half of his face. The one visible eye was squeezed tightly shut. He bared his teeth, sounds of pain leaking out from his throat.

In a terrible flash she was reminded of the story of the Ofarian man who’d wandered into the Chimeran valley a quarter century earlier. How her people had set him aflame and sent him back to the mainland permanently scarred to serve as a warning. A living, breathing KEEP OUT sign.

Brave Queen, what had she done?

She hated this concern, this fear over having injured someone. It was such a foreign feeling and it completely threw her off guard. Chimerans weren’t supposed to question their victories. They were just supposed to have them.

Then she finally noticed the thin but constant stream of water that poured out from under Griffin’s hands. It trickled over his temple and ear and right cheek. The sounds of his pain lessened, his lips closing over his grimace, the tension in his body slackening. Finally his visible eye opened, blinking up at her. He peeled away his hands.

The water had washed away the dirt on one half of his face. He had been struck, but not full-on as she’d pictured or feared. The flames had grazed a bit of his temple, taking a small section of hair near his ear. There was some blood and bubbling of skin, too. He’d scar, but the quick application of water had helped, and the whole thing was much, much smaller than his entire face melting off, as she’d imagined.

“Griffin . . .” She had absolutely no idea how to react. How to deal with or show the relief and shock and turmoil that raced through her. She fell to her knees a safe distance away—because her legs simply gave out and because she didn’t want to be close enough to touch him. “What the hell . . .”

He struggled to his elbows first, then pushed up to sitting, his long legs bowed out in front of him. He tested the tender, oozing spot on his head and looked up at her from under his lashes. “Good thing I wasn’t expecting a thank you.”

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She was just so . . . confused.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

The hands came away. “Huh?” Dimly, she thought that maybe she had been injured in the fight, but nothing could get past the image of Griffin attacking the treeman in her head.

He eyed her questioningly, and she ignored him, turning instead to look at the bent and inert Acacia.

“What was that thing?”

“My best guess?” he said haltingly. “A Child of Earth.”

Her head whipped back around, and she could feel her stupid hands trembling from one shock after another, coming like blows to her body. “You think . . . you mean . . . that was Aya?”

No. No way. She’d spent many hours talking with the small woman with the golden skin and wispy white hair, and those sparkling green eyes that owned both unimaginable depth and attractive innocence. Keko had actually enjoyed those moments, speaking with someone on a level that did not involve Chimeran politics or sexual desire. She had felt the kindle of friendship, of caring and interest on an entirely new level, and she would have sworn that Aya had felt the same.

“No.” Griffin, too, frowned at the tree. “I don’t think that was her.”

Keko pressed fingers to her throbbing forehead. “You must be right. I hope you’re right. It felt male to me.”

“It did to me, too.” A dark look swept over him that spoke of anger, which didn’t make much sense. None of this did.

A distinct, thudding pain began in Keko’s shoulder and started to shoot down and across her back, but she had no time for it. No brain space left to address it. “I didn’t know they could do that, change themselves. In all my years at the Senatus, I’ve never seen that. And I’ve only ever seen Aya.”

Griffin’s face was blank. Too blank.

“Have you?” she asked.

“I saw . . . something similar.”

“From Aya?” Keko rocked to her feet and the world gave a little lurch. “Is that how this happened? You were at the Senatus and saw her do something similar? And then you two banded together to come after me? Was that treeman part of—”

Her body and head felt strange. Pockets of numbness and pain traded places, sending her mind reeling and making her tongue feel thick.

“That’s not what happened—Keko?” A familiar face appeared before her. Concerned dark eyes capped by straight, dominant eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

Why couldn’t she see Griffin clearly? Why did he sound so far away?

“Keko?”

The sky tilted, turning on its side. Weird. And then she was flying. No, not flying. Falling. Falling from where she’d just shot up into the clouds. She toppled sideways, knowing she was about to hit the ground but unable to stop herself.

Something caught her, and it wasn’t lava rock or wet Hawaiian sand. She was cradled on her side, the embrace around her both firm and kind, dusty and sticky. Grit scraped against her legs and side, and she was surrounded by a scent that was decadently familiar.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” A voice in her ear. A voice she’d heard in her dreams many, many times.

He was touching the skin on her shoulder and back in places just outside the borders of her pain. Those hands she knew, too.

“Keko, stay with me. Can I get you to sit up?”

He jostled her body, pulling her up as she tried to find her core muscles to help him. She couldn’t do it on her own, couldn’t remain upright no matter how hard she gave herself a warrior’s order. Griffin propped her uninjured shoulder against his chest. More swearing, but she didn’t mind because it gave her something to focus on.

The sound of a zipper, and then a rustle of fabric. A distinctive gloop of packaged liquid, and then a rip of plastic.

An icy, breathtaking, unbelievable sensation hit the wound on her back. It spread out, dug in. It was water, she realized, but also something more. Water and sparkling magic, making its way into her body.

His voice again, murmuring words in that language she loved.

She started to feel stronger in slow increments, and with that strength came recognition and memory. This man had come here to stop her from saving her people. She twitched, tried to pull away, but she was still weak and he held her fast.

Then his face appeared in front of hers. That beautiful, beautiful face of a man concerned. Frightened and determined. That was the face she knew.

He was not her enemy, but a healer. He was healing her fire body with his water.

As power and ability slowly marched its way back into her muscles and bones and blood, she couldn’t break her stare from his face. Couldn’t look away as visible relief softened his features and full awareness bloomed inside her mind.

He exhaled so deeply his chest went concave. “You’re back. You scared me.”

His hand pulled away from her shoulder and when he brought it around to her front she saw what he held in his palm: a foggy bubble of magicked water that wobbled between his fingers. With easy movement, he set the bubble on the earth and released it into the dirt.

“I scared you?” Keko blinked at the wet spot. “What is that stuff?”

He picked up an unmarked bag made of thick plastic, now empty. “Ofarian water magic blended with Primary medicine. Something our head doctor has been working on for years. Experimental still, but promising.” He shifted, walking on his knees to get a better look at her back and shoulder, and whistled. “Very promising.”

In the Chimeran valley, if you got injured you lugged yourself down to the stream, slapped water over your wound and pretended you didn’t ache. The greater the pretender you were, the more you were respected. Pain had always been part of the process, but now, feeling this incredible care and healing so soon, she questioned the good in holding on to that kind of pain. In pretending.

She questioned the shame she should be feeling in allowing Ofarian water magic on her body—the shame she should feel, but didn’t.

“Are you going to tell the Senatus about that stuff?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. “Eventually. Maybe someday the Primaries, too.”

Of course. All part of his big plans. Which she’d thought she’d known so well but now couldn’t stab with a fork.

“It speeds up healing,” Griffin said, deftly switching the subject away from the Senatus, “but doesn’t immediately cure. The Child got you good. A nice, deep laceration that’s still open. Can I bandage it?”

She was aware she was staring, wide-eyed, like a fool. Annoyed with herself, she ripped her gaze away and looked straight ahead.

“It needs it,” he pressed, knowing full well she was debating jumping up and heading over to the prayer as though this whole violent interlude had never happened. “Otherwise it’ll get dirty and infected.”

“Fine. Sure.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his twitch of a smile as he pulled off his vest. Bare-chested, he unzipped another pocket and pulled out sterile packages of large bandages and tape.

“Any more of those water magic doohickey bags?”

“Nope.”

He pushed her hair to one side and the way he touched it, fingers slow and sliding, reminded her of how he’d looked at it back in the hotel room—with marvel. Now it was with purpose, but he still lingered. She grabbed the knotted black mass of it and held it out of his way.

“You got my only one,” he added quietly, then pressed a bandage over a particularly sore spot. She refused to hiss or acknowledge the pain.

His sole bit of healing magic, that he could have used on his own singed head, and he’d used it on her.

“Maybe you should turn back now,” she said, “so you can put one on that burn.”

He ripped off pieces of tape with his teeth and laid them over her skin with care. The second she felt him finish, she popped to her feet, amazed at how stable she felt, how much the pain in her back and shoulder had ebbed. She watched him rise, slowly, still bare chested, his vest hanging loosely from his hand. Though he stood still and patient, there was worry in his eyes and a certain tension to his muscles.

Looking over his head where the ocean surged into the small canyon, she tried to piece together everything that had happened since she’d stepped onto the beach. Turning, she went to the tree and placed her hand on the scar Griffin’s knife had given it.

“The Children want to stop me, too,” she said. She sensed Griffin come up behind her. “Did they learn about me from you?”

“No.”

“Chief, then.”

Griffin didn’t respond to that, but instead said, “I don’t know any more about them than you do. I don’t know why they did this.”

As he came around to place his own hand over the scar, just below her own, she saw the frustration and bewilderment on his face. The kind you couldn’t fake or hide.

Her hand slid from the bark and she stepped back, suddenly feeling drained. Suddenly realizing all that had just happened. “You helped me, Griffin.”

“Yes. I did.” His brow furrowed. He came closer, erasing the space she’d just given herself. “You couldn’t see that’s what I wanted from the moment I sensed him?”

“I . . . no. I thought you were trying to stop me from getting to the prayer. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You need to stop and listen, get out of your own head sometimes. That kind of thinking could have gotten you killed.”

“I could’ve sworn you were coming after me.”

She thought of Makaha, how Griffin had sworn that her friend had attacked, too. Look how wrong Griffin had been. She gulped down bile made of personal disappointment.

“Maybe if you’d listened,” Griffin said, “you would’ve known the truth.”

“I saw you were trying to help me too late. I couldn’t stop the fireball.”

“I know that. I saw it in your face.” Griffin’s gestures were curt. “And I know you were just trying to protect yourself, but you have got to stop thinking that you’re alone. It worries me. It saddens me. This whole thing is not about whether I’m for or against you. It’s not that black and white. I know that’s how you’ve been raised, what you’re used to, but that’s not how it is with almost everyone else in the world. Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that.”

“But I thought—”

“Keko, I know.” His eyes closed briefly on a deep sigh, and when he opened them, they were wet. “I understand you.”