Drowning in Fire

SIXTEEN

Regrettably, the sun rose.

Griffin opened his eyes to find Keko already awake. She lay on her back naked, her long, strong legs crossed at the ankles, fingers interlaced over her belly. Her dark nipples rose and fell as she breathed, and he found that he could still taste them on his tongue.

Her head was turned on the pillow toward him, a thick chunk of black hair swooping over her ear and under her chin to make a dark line across her neck. Despite the new light coming through the curtains, her eyes were somber and shadowed, and they absorbed everything. No amount of water magic could save him from drowning in her fire, and it did not frighten him. He reached out and covered her hands with one of his, giving her a mild tug, a subtle hint that he wanted her arms around him. On him. It had the opposite effect.

Instead of Keko rolling into him, she yanked away from his touch. Throwing her legs over the edge of the bed, she pressed her hands to the mattress. He stared at her back and triceps, at the shadowed lines between her muscles, at the sexy dimples above her ass.

Then he noticed the way she was almost gasping for breath. “Keko?”

So many things had happened between them last night, many of which he’d never be able to name, nor would he ever want to. They were singular occurrences, precious seconds and moments that could never be repeated. He’d distinctly felt, in a triumphant instant, when all the walls between them had been completely demolished, crackling into a zillion pieces. Even that final wall had come down—the one he’d been trying to remove slowly, brick by brick—and he’d nearly shouted with relief. With her body surrounding his, he sensed that she’d decided to turn back from her quest. He’d drifted into sleep holding on to that final thought, that he’d succeeded in keeping her alive. Keeping her with him.

But now, with daylight striking the tension in her back, he knew she’d reconsidered. In her own sleep she’d rebuilt that last wall and had awakened with renewed purpose. No matter what had happened between them, she was going to head for that island. She was still going to try for the Source.

And he couldn’t be the one to stop her.

Sitting up, he positioned himself behind her but didn’t touch her rigid body. He feared what he might say, so he didn’t speak.

When she finally opened her mouth, she spoke to the floor between her knees. “I don’t want to be the Queen anymore. And I don’t want to die.”

He couldn’t help it; his heart soared. The stars seemed to blink all around him, sparkling motes in the daylight, as though they’d answered his prayers to make her change her mind. They would figure out another way to both help her people and mollify the Children of Earth. They would—

“But if I don’t make it,” she added quietly, “I want you to know something first.”

He gripped handfuls of bedspread. The air stilled around them. He could barely breathe. “What?”

“That I l—” She looked down, chin to chest. When she raised her head, he couldn’t see her face. Only the generic painting of a breaching humpback whale on the opposite wall had that privilege.

She said, “I love you.”

The words hit him like an arrow, slicing through skin and bone to reach his heart. He released the bedspread and lifted a hand, his palm hovering just above her shoulder blade, her heat a beacon.

His hand descended, wanting to tell her with a touch that he felt the same. Perhaps more, if that was even possible. But before he could make contact she bolted from the bed and lunged for the bathroom. The door slammed behind her, the click of the lock following two seconds later. The shower came on, full blast.

The euphoria died with her exit.

She loved him. He’d come here to stop her and had lied his way into her presence.

She loved him. He was withholding from her a terrible piece of information about the severity of the Source and its capability for destruction.

She loved him. He absolutely understood what she had to do to save her people.

She loved him. He loved her.

Nothing good could come of it.

Fuck.

• • •

Keko never spent this long underwater. She’d never wanted to. But her fingers and toes had gone pale and wrinkled, and she still made no effort to remove her hands from where they were braced on the shower wall. Still didn’t want to duck out of the spray hitting her body and covering it in smooth sheets.

Her head dropped and the water shot over her skull, crawling over her shoulders and down her back. Between her legs. She imagined being back under the waterfall in the ravine. She imagined Griffin sliding all around her.

Mighty Queen, she prayed silently, why didn’t you tell me love was such a weakness? Why didn’t you tell me it could be such a strength?

Keko had nearly quit her quest last night. Griffin had been moving inside her and she’d looked up at him and actually thought to herself, I can’t do it. I can’t leave him. I can’t chance ending this.

Then she realized that even though the distinct emotion she felt emanating from him was very real, it was all still part of his argument to get her to abandon her quest. It didn’t matter that he knew her true reason for going after the Source, or even if he agreed with her; he hadn’t made any vow to stop trying to get her to turn around. Last night he said he would think about tomorrow, tomorrow. Well, tomorrow was here, and she thought that when she stepped out of this bathroom he might use her confession of love against her. He might touch her and beg her not to chance death. For him.

She should hate him for that, but she didn’t. She shouldn’t love him, but she did.

And that was why love was a strength and a weakness. Because at that very moment she felt incredibly emboldened, like she could conquer and accomplish anything, yet it was her love for him that was holding her back. Making her doubt her own purpose and the inherent risks. She could not let doubt take over.

This morning she would give Griffin a choice: help her reach the Source without complaint or asking her to turn back, or return to the mainland and let her do what she must. Regardless of his decision, she would hunt for her people’s cure. Either way, it would likely be the end of them.

First, however, she would bring him under the water with her. To feel close to him one last time in the presence of his element.

Leaving the spray on, she climbed out of the tub and stepped from the bathroom.

The outer door to their room was ajar and the long, kinked cord between the phone and the receiver stretched from the nightstand all the way to the front porch. Griffin was outside, shirtless, shorts back on, his ass against the railing, sunlight on his back. The receiver was to his ear. He was already pale, but when his unfocused eyes cleared and he finally noticed her standing in the middle of the room, soaking wet and naked, his olive skin lost even more color.

“I understand,” he mumbled into the phone. “I have to go.”

He came back inside, shutting out most of the light in the room when the door closed behind him. Going to the nightstand, he replaced the receiver on the cradle. Far too slowly.

Her heart felt like it had dropped into her feet, and she couldn’t say why. “Who was that?”

His fingers dragged off the phone and he finally looked at her, taking his sweet time to answer. “The premier’s been murdered.”

All air punched out of her chest, but did not result in flame. “What?”

“His wife found him dead. Couple of hours ago. Throat slit.”

Her hand flew to her neck in sympathetic horror. “My god. Who did it? Why?”

“Aaron said it was one of their own. Someone who didn’t want to pay his debts. That’s all I know.”

“Is Aaron the new premier?”

He rubbed at his chin, then scratched fingers up and down his cheek. The gesture unsettled her even more.

“Ah, no,” he said haltingly. “The other delegates haven’t voted a new one in yet. They’re . . . waiting.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Voting is usually immediate. I’ve been through two other premiers.” She bent to pick up her shirt and saw only the tatters of the tank top he’d ripped apart last night, so she threw on his black T-shirt instead, pulling the bottom tight around her waist and tying it in a knot. Snagging her jeans from the floor, shoving her legs into them and yanking up the zipper, a sudden realization hit her with the speed and pain of a bullet. “Wait a second.”

She looked up to find Griffin staring at her. Guilt made a single line of his eyebrows and she felt like the Queen had reached down from the sky and snatched the earth from under Keko’s feet. “I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“You were in the shower.” It was nearly a whisper.

Though she couldn’t move, her voice jumped up a couple of notches. “But I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“It did.” The words came out of his mouth sounding sticky-dry.

“How’d they know where to find you?”

He swallowed and it looked like it hurt. He even winced.

“How the fuck did they know where to find you?”

The curse emphasized the rage of blood in her ears and the crackle of the fire building underneath her skin. The last of the water from her shower evaporated, encasing her in wrath-induced vapor.

“Because I called the premier. Last night. When you went out.”

Her blood turned to thousands of tiny knives, scraping her raw from the inside. It was like the treeman had come for her again and she was running for her life, unable to catch the breath that would give her flame.

“Why?”

His blink was a beat too long. “To confront him about sending an earth elemental to attack you.”

The sweet ash and smoke from inside her body crept up onto her tongue, begging to be released. “And why would you ever think that the head of the Senatus would come after me? Why would he even know where I was?”

When he didn’t answer, she took a Chimeran breath and spit fire into her hand. It was an involuntary reaction, that thing she’d tried to explain to Griffin years ago, when Makaha had used fire to express frustration and Griffin had read it as an attack.

“Talk,” she said. “And don’t fucking lie to me. You’ve already been caught. They sent you, didn’t they? They sent you and you’ve been lying to my face this whole time.”

“No.” He came for her, arms raised as if to touch her face, his expression a fake seriousness that did nothing but mock her. “That’s not what—”

“No more lies!” she screamed, the fire leaping from her hand. She snapped it back before it could hit the bed and do any damage, but her control was weak under the pressure of growing rage, and the odor of singed polyester clung to the air.

“Fine.” He was the Ofarian leader now, all glower, his body set like a statue. “No more lies. Let me explain.”

“Explain that the Senatus ordered you to stop me from going for the Source? Explain that you fucking lied to me about it? Over and over again? Explain that all this”—she waved her unlit arm at the bed, the sheets rumpled and twisted from the writhing of their bodies—“was to get me to turn away and satisfy them?”

“That’s not true.”

She laughed bitterly. “Which part?”

“The last part.”

She wasn’t dumb enough to fall again for the emotion in his eyes. “Bullshit!” He turned his face away from the blast of heat her word threw at him. When the heat died his eyelids flipped up, and there was such torture dancing across his brown irises. Oh, he was good. A real goddamn actor.

“The Senatus didn’t send me,” he said, his voice far too even. “I volunteered. And yes, I came to stop you. But you already knew that. I never lied about that.”

The word “Senatus” sent an uncharacteristic icy shiver across her skin. “They promised you a seat if you brought me in. Didn’t they?”

“Yes. They did.” And by the way he answered without pause or expression, she knew he was telling the truth. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

“No, you didn’t want me to find out, period.”

“It was me or them coming after you, Keko. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it be them.”

“Why you? And do not feed me some rancid meat story about how you care so much for me you didn’t want to see me hurt.”

He rolled his lips inward, slowly shaking his head. “I didn’t want to see you dead. If the premier’s team hunted you, you would’ve run twice as hard to get away. You would’ve found a way to get to the Source, I have no doubt about that. And when you got there, the Children would’ve had free rein to kill you. They said exactly that. I wasn’t going to just stand there and let that happen. Not when I knew, deep down, that you would’ve paused for me. If anyone had a chance to get you to turn back and remain alive, it would’ve been me.”

She felt like a worse fool than the day her kapu affair and her broken heart had been revealed to Bane and the chief. “Why do the Children care so much?”

He had the nerve to step closer. She blew more fire up her arm, the whole thing one giant, beautiful flame. She didn’t care, as long as the traitor stayed away.

Griffin stopped and raised his palms. “Keko. The Fire Source is part of the earth. If it’s disturbed, it has the power to move tectonic plates, make volcanoes erupt, cause massive earthquakes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t believe that. There’s nothing in the legends or history that talk about that kind of destruction.”

“Aya said it herself. She overheard Chief and Bane telling me privately about you and your quest, and she sprung up out of the earth, almost exactly like that treeman did, and she demanded in front of the whole Senatus that you be stopped, or else they would kill you.”

Aya? No. Not quiet, inquisitive Aya. Not the strange woman whom Keko had dared to consider a friend. Keko felt disturbingly weak and painfully blind. Brave Queen, why was she so damn stupid sometimes?

Unless . . . unless Aya had placed faith in Griffin that he could stop Keko and prevent a Chimeran death at the hands of the Children. That tactical and political maneuver made more sense, but it still hurt—all this deception, all this manipulation, when Keko just wanted to make things right for her people.

“Do you see now?” Griffin said. “Do you get it? I couldn’t let that happen, just let them hunt you. So, yes, I came to stop you, but it was to prevent massive destruction, too. I didn’t tell you that part because I knew you’d think I was lying just to make you give it all up.”

She stood there so long trying to process his words that the fire on her arm died. When it went out, he heaved a visible sigh.

“When I came here,” he said, “I thought that you were about to destroy yourself in the name of a ridiculous, outdated bit of Chimeran culture. I continued to think that up until last night, when you told me the real reason why you’re here. Your conviction and your purpose are stronger than anything I’ve ever known, stronger than any Source, touched or untouched. Something changed in me last night. You changed me.” He placed a hand on his bare chest, the gesture infuriatingly sincere. “And I want to tell you that I no longer wish to stop you. I want to help you succeed.”

The only sound in the room was the still-running shower. It created a drone in her mind, convoluting all these statements and stories he’d fed her. Messing with her emotions.

Water. Ruining everything.

“You don’t want to help me.”

“Yes. I do.” Another step closer. “These last three years have been a waste. An absolute fucking waste. I believe in what you have to do for your people—this disease, this cure—because I would do exactly the same for mine. And I want to help you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly she saw stars. Stars. His stars. The ones he swore on before she told him about the Chimeran disease.

What had she done?

Opening her eyes, she saw him inching closer. She showed him the fire in her irises and in the back of her throat, and he stopped coming forward.

Then he repeated, “I want to help you.”

No. She would not fall for his words again. “Stop. Fucking. Saying that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“There is no truth when it comes to you. Except maybe for this.” Right as she said it, his game became entirely clear. The whole thing unfolded before her, taking on the color of fury. She formed a new fireball in her hand and went right up to him, teasing him with death and magic.

All he did was fold his arms and stare her down. “This should be good.”

“What if you orchestrated the premier’s death?”

He sputtered before finally ejecting a: “What?”

“It makes sense. I think you had no trouble at all trading me for your precious Senatus seat. I think the moment you heard about me running loose you saw your opportunity and grabbed it.”

He vehemently shook his head but she wasn’t buying it. “Wait a sec—”

“You come to Hawaii to bring me back and then you’ll finally get your seat around the bonfire. Meanwhile, since you’re nowhere near the mainland and the murder couldn’t be traced to you, you hire this other rebel air elemental to off the premier. Since the Senatus is waiting on word of your success with me to admit you, they decide to postpone the election of a new premier.”

His jaw clenched. “I thought you learned your lesson about jumping to conclusions. At least that’s what you told me. You’re paranoid and grasping for any explanation now. That’s so fucking ridiculous.”

She let out an ugly laugh. “Is it? Pardon me while I jump to a few more conclusions. How goddamn convenient for you, this timing. You’ll show up at the next gathering having saved the day—no, wait, the whole entire world—and they’ll have to be stupid not to vote you premier. Ta-da. You get everything you’ve ever wanted.”

His chest pumped hard. “Not everything, Keko.”

“And the killer part?” She choked on her voice, trying to stamp down the rising tears. “I told you my people’s biggest weakness. Are you dying to exploit that?”

“You need to calm down.” He stepped closer to her fire. “I swore on my stars. That secret stays in here.” He tapped his forehead.

Flame crackled between them, the ball in her hand jumping and dancing.

“I never should’ve picked you up at the airport.” Seconds later she realized she’d whispered it, but no amount of fire could burn the sentence from existence.

His shoulders dipped, his head sagging to one side. “It would’ve happened anyway. You and me. Don’t you see that? Don’t you get what’s between us?”

That snapped her focus and anger back into place. “It was a mistake. All of it.”

“You don’t mean that. Keko, I’ve lied to you, yes. But I think you really know that I won’t turn you over to them. It’s just easier for you to be angry, to react to surprise. It’s your nature and I get that, but you’re thinking crazy. Listen to my words, to all that I’ve just told you right here, right now in this room. Because that is the truth.”

“What are you going to do? Pray tell, oh mighty Ofarian leader. Tell me how you plan to heal my people and win their favor without ever disturbing the Source. Tell me how you’ll get that Senatus seat and be voted premier, and everyone will gaze up at you in admiration. Tell me, oh fabulous Griffin, how you plan to trick me into never being able to let you go for the rest of my life. How you plan to conquer and trap my heart, but never let yours go.”

“Keko . . .”

He reached for her then. For her face, where her flames didn’t touch. He wasn’t scared, didn’t remotely flinch. And that scared her.

She stumbled backward, out of his reach. “God, I hate you. I hate you so much.”

She had to get away from him. Immediately. Only one option remained.

Gathering all her fire—everything that she held in her palm and every little spark from deep inside her—she let it build and smolder, a great balloon of heat that turned her skin to shimmering white-hot red, like metal buried in coals.

Fear finally came to Griffin’s expression and he backed away, but it was too late. Keko released her magic—a blast from a furnace, an invisible cloud of heat. It slammed into him, flipped his body backward, sent him sprawling. Keko let him lie there. No movement from his twisted limbs. She went over, toed his shoulder to roll his body onto his back, and saw that his chest still moved. The lights of consciousness, however, were completely out. Good.

She swallowed, looking down at his slack jaw and jelly limbs. “I’m leaving now,” she said. “And I can’t have you following me. Can’t have you stopping me. This time, it’s really over.”

Before she could change her mind, she sprinted from the B and B, pausing only for a second at the bottom of the porch steps to consider her direction. Griffin knew the location of the Fire Source. So did she, and she’d need a boat to get there. Hilo was by far the biggest place to grab a charter on this side of the island, and that’s where Griffin would expect her to go.

So she fled the opposite way.

When she’d made it up the steep, windy slope, she felt a profound tug on her conscience. Stopping, she turned around to see the B and B, a hundred yards below, nestled in a vee of green land. As she stood there, the door to their room banged open and Griffin stumbled out. Shirtless, holding his head and weaving on his feet, he leaned heavily against the railing. At this distance she couldn’t make out his face, but she saw his head swing around. Looking for her. Quickly she ducked behind a tree. What was the range on his damn Ofarian bloodhound senses?

I can always feel you.

Her lungs suddenly felt clogged, like she’d been the one hit with that blast of heat. Running now might draw his attention, so she slid to the ground and carefully peeked around the trunk. Griffin stomped down the porch steps and took off on a wobbly jog toward Hilo.

Keko waited until he was out of sight . . . but waited for what? He was gone and she still couldn’t move from that spot. Slowly coming to stand next to the tree trunk, she gazed down at the B and B, seeing the ghosts of her and Griffin walking in last night, and then both of them running away. Alone. Separate.

A strange movement in the window caught her eye. A flicker of yellow and orange, when the room had been done in greens and blues, and the drapes white. Then she smelled it. Smoke. The fluttering gold in the window dimmed as black smoke leaked out from underneath the door.

No. No, no, no!

She’d thrown too much magic, too much heat, at Griffin, and it had lingered. Festered. Ignited.

Merciful Queen, that wasn’t what she’d intended at all. It wasn’t what she wanted! The Source still pulled her out to sea, but her legs brought her back to the B and B, sprinting as fast as she’d ever run.

The smoke coming out of the room thickened, the dance of flames in the window taller, larger. She flung open the door and inhaled—a Chimeran breath of the greatest kind. The fire and smoke instantly obeyed, swirling back into her body. She took it all back in, every last flame of her mistake. For once, the fire tasted awful.

She stood there in the doorway, looking down at the charred black oval on the wood floor where Griffin had once lain, and the ashen, teetering remnants of the table that had been placed beneath the window. The bottom half of the drapes were gone, the ends now jagged and crisp with black.

Hand to her mouth, she whipped around and fled back into the hills to the northwest, guilt making her feet impossibly heavy.