Drowning in Fire

EIGHTEEN

Keko rolled to her feet before the sleep had been fully shoved from her head. There was no weakness in her muscles, no lingering rest or stiffness from unexpected sleep. Just power. Only alertness. And a fierce, focused glare, sharp as a blade, on the Ofarian man who watched her with infuriating calmness.

She’d been right. For once in her life she didn’t want to be, but Griffin’s appearance here—following her after he’d admitted to colluding with the Senatus to bring her in—proved he was driven only by his political motives. He was a liar. Nothing more. And nothing he could say would ever prove otherwise.

With a great leap she pushed out of the little cave and jumped down to the flat space among the trees below. The ground was squishy, cushioning her landing. Lowering her center of gravity, she circled around Griffin, arms pulled in and ready to do her fire’s bidding. Her chest filled with magic, her tongue and lips ready to unleash it.

A battle was coming, and this time she wasn’t sure if the loser would survive.

Griffin came away from the tree far too slowly, far too easily. His crossed arms dropped to his sides. A hunter’s gleam brightened his eyes. She knew that look well. He wore deadliness like invisible clothing.

Mist clung to the edges of his skin, blurring them against the early morning sky and the waving tree branches. It made him seem godlike, sprung from the atmosphere. She knew he’d dissolved his body and thrown himself to the wind, tracked her from the air. He carried nothing with him, wore nothing other than those black shorts with the side pockets. His chest and arms and face gleamed with moisture and she didn’t know if it was sweat or his magic. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

He was real now. Corporeal. Threatening. And he was coming for her. His legs made long strides across the dirt and mat of fallen foliage. The space between them halved.

Keko inhaled and showed the flame dancing at the back of her throat. “I’ll fucking burn you.”

“You would’ve done that back at the B and B. You wouldn’t have just left me.”

A pang of guilt hit her hard. It seemed he didn’t know what had happened after he’d left, how her residual magic had caused damage. She chose to say nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, for the eighty millionth time. “You don’t have to fight me.”

She could feel her body heating up with frustration, could see the grass and bushes around her start to shimmer from the terrible temperature she was throwing off. Just let Griffin try to touch her. She’d singe him.

“My only other choice is to stop, to go back with you. That isn’t happening.”

He took another step closer, his shoulders bunching up, fists forming. “It’s not your only choice. If you’d only—”

“I’m not perfect,” she said, thinking about the fire in the B and B. “Neither are you.”

“Never said I was.”

He started to circle around sideways, taking his back away from the edge of the cliff . . . and trying to push her toward it. Wouldn’t work. Not on her island.

His fists released as he raised his palms to her. “Will you please just listen to me?”

She blew a sheet of flame down her arm. “I already did and I’ve heard enough. Now you listen to me.”

After a great pause, in which he rolled and licked his lips several times, swallowing whatever lying words he wanted to spew out, he finally crossed his arms over his bare chest and said, “Fine. I’m listening.”

She pointed the flaming arm, a short spear of sparking fire extending out to him in warning. “You won’t take me back to the Senatus. You will not deny me this chance to do one great thing for my people. I believe that if the Source is what feeds my people our magic, it will grant me access to it. It will give me what I need without the destruction Aya tried to scare you with. You can chase me all you like, Griffin, but I won’t be your trophy on your wall as you sit back and think about how you duped me. About how you used me to get what you want.” She drew herself up. “I’m not yours. I won’t ever be yours.”

“But I,” Griffin said, “am yours.”

“Don’t you dare say that again.”

She released the fire, a great scarlet and gold bomb that barreled toward Griffin. She lost his face in it, her magic consuming her vision. Her will commanded her mind—her will and her anger, her determination and her love. And as the fireball swung toward him, the flames stretching tall, a tiny sliver of her wanted to pull it back. The rest of her, submerged in his lies and his so-called love, pushed the bomb toward him with renewed force.

The fireball imploded. It died midair, sucking into itself, before it could take down Griffin in a blaze of skin and hair and death.

As the fireball shrank and shrank, it changed. Shifted. The air around it blurred in a way she recognized as Ofarian power drawing moisture from the atmosphere, then the whole thing started to harden. Shards of silver and white formed in its center, spiking out. Blades of shimmering ice burst out from what had once been fire, her greatest weapon. Now rendered inert. Inconsequential.

Griffin stood behind the rotating ball of magically forming ice, his expression angry but not malicious. She didn’t understand that. She’d just called his bluff, had just tried to destroy him. Where was his hate? His sense of justice?

Their eyes met over the hovering ball of ice. His wrist flicked and the ball shot toward her, breaking apart into a barrage of gleaming, sharp arrows. So fast, so deadly. She inhaled and sprayed flame across her body, melting what bolts she could, turning their water into harmless steam, but it wasn’t quite fast enough. Some of the ice arrows got through, slicing and stinging across her upper arms.

Then all was still. Even the relentless ocean winds seemed to have paused. Ofarian and Chimeran magic—fire and water, complete and utter opposites—crackled in the air. She didn’t have that Ofarian ability to sniff it out, and she could still feel it.

Griffin’s chest heaved, his arm still thrust out, his fingers curled into icy claws that thawed as she watched. His arm slapped to his side. “We are too evenly matched.”

Keko looked down at the hairline stripes of blood across her upper arms.

“I didn’t come here to fight you,” he said.

“You were just planning to haul me back to the mainland in one of those boxes my old captor—your kinsman—had made.”

“No. I want to help you, Keko. Somehow.”

That again?

The fact that he’d even opened his mouth and said something that ridiculous pissed her off even more. Maybe they couldn’t fight each other with magic because they’d just cancel each other out, but she sure as hell still had her body. She was a Chimeran warrior and this was her land. She knew where the Source was and she was physically stronger than the Queen had been when her time had come.

“You don’t want a fight?” she growled. Then she charged. Head down, thighs burning and toes digging into the dirt. Arms flung out, she slammed her shoulder into his midsection. Took Griffin’s lying ass down.

The sound of his surprise, just before his breath exploded from his lungs, was the greatest music she’d ever heard. She couldn’t stop the grin from splitting her face, though it probably looked like something evil, something animal and violent. Good.

Pinning him to the ground with her knees, she whaled him. Fists and elbows coming down again and again. He threw up blocks but did not fight back, his face twisted in a grimace. After a flurry of punches, she landed one to his cheek . . . and then she was on her back, a rock grinding into her spine, her skin abraded by the dirt. Griffin held her down by her shoulders, the muscles in his arms and chest and neck popping out. If he was affected by her enhanced body heat, he didn’t let it show, didn’t wince or pull away. Adrenaline would do that to you, would erase those warnings you were supposed to feel.

He lowered his head, got right in her face. “If you need a fight, fine. I’ll give you one.”

“I’m not going to hold back this time,” she gritted out.

He came even closer, and for a scary minute she thought he might try to kiss her. “Good. Neither will I.”

Exactly what she wanted to hear.

Power pushed itself out from her core—not fire magic, but sheer physical strength. The strength given to Keko by the Queen and the ancestors she’d brought together from all over the South Pacific.

Keko wrenched one of her legs free and slammed it up between his. He groaned and closed his eyes against the searing pain. His grip on her loosened, just a little but enough for her to wriggle out from under him and get one elbow into his neck, then another into his side. She kicked him off, then flipped to her feet over him, daring him to recover, daring him to come after her. Because she was fucking ready.

She didn’t get to be general for nothing. They hadn’t just handed her the title. She’d fought her ass off, made challenge after challenge, and she’d won them all. Against men and women who were far bigger or older or had more wins under their belt. She’d beaten them all. And now she’d beat Griffin.

Skirting away from the edge of the cliff, going deeper into the open space between the trees, she wanted to give them enough safe room to go at it.

On his knees, Griffin’s teeth were bared in pain, his hands cupping his injured junk, his eyes squeezed shut. Keko dove, going in for another attack, not wanting to miss this golden opportunity. Griffin popped alert, all show of pain instantly gone. She saw his trickery too late. His leg swept out, taking her down, smacking her skull against the ground and laying her out all over again. She saw his stars, winking there above her consciousness.

Then he was standing above her. She glimpsed a knee of his going back, a cocked foot ready to spring forward, ready to get her right in the ribs. With a jolt of power she rolled. Not away but into him, taking him out at the ankle he balanced on. He toppled forward, but true to his training, he didn’t just fall. He used the momentum to drag her with him and they rolled together.

She took an elbow to her cheek. He absorbed a punch to the chin. A heel crunched into her knee.

“You done?” he gasped. “I’m not . . . taking . . . you . . . to the . . . Senatus.”

The lies. The lies! She had to stop them, to make him choke on them. She thrust out her hand, preparing for another slam. The soreness fed her, the adrenaline kept her going. There was no weakness to succumb to. Only purpose. It’s what she was born into, what she’d been given. And to turn her back on that was an insult to her people, to her Queen, to the very Source that pulsed somewhere beneath her feet.

She flipped on top of Griffin now, clamping his waist between her thighs, fist descending again to his face. Blood glistening from cuts beneath one of his eyes and his lower lip. She’d done that. She’d done that, giving him what he deserved.

He caught her fist in his crushing grip. Fuck. Despite her best efforts to stamp it down, the weariness was finally starting to eat at her. She couldn’t give in. Not now. Not when she was so close to finishing him. Finishing this.

With a sharp twist of her arm that had her screaming, he wrenched her body down, her chest flush against his. Sweat and blood sealed them. Fire and water repelled. His closeness, the smell of him and everything he’d said and represented, made her fury burn brighter and hotter than the sun.

He spun her, rolling her again, encasing her in the vise of his legs and arms. He didn’t stop. Just kept rolling her over and over. Body over body, pain over pain. Until she didn’t know which way was the earth and which way was the sun. There was no leverage for her to go at him. There was no way to control the momentum he’d created. He just kept going and going, the ground eating at her body every time he rolled her over, his grunts coming out every time he threw her over his body.

And then there was no more ground.

It took her a mere second to realize what had happened. Where he had taken them. Their intertwined bodies had rolled off the edge of the cliff. Hundreds of feet down before the white, angry water far, far below. No safety net. Nothing but death.

Nothing her magic could ever save her from. Nothing she could do but flail. Powerlessness was the worst kind of weakness.

They fell and fell and fell, her stomach trailing feet behind.

A terror like nothing she’d ever experienced ripped through her. She let go of Griffin out of pure fear. Nothing around her. Nothing but warm air. Nothing between her body and the ocean. She saw Griffin’s face then, floating above hers, just inches away but feeling like miles, like universes, and he wore fear, too.

He was saying her name. She couldn’t hear him but she saw the letters form on his tongue, the shape of her name on his lips. His fingers grabbed her, finding her waist and shoulders. Though they were still falling, falling, falling, wind whistling all around, he managed to pull her to him, wrap her up in his limbs.

Still she fought, because he’d trained her to do that. To push him away. To hate him for how he was killing them. How he was taking away her dreams even now. How he preferred death over letting her beat him.

“I am yours,” came the whisper in her ear. But of course that was just the wind, pushing them toward the sea, into her death.

Death came with the implosion of the whole world against her skin, a great crush and wet suffocation, and the sound of a mountain being thrust into the sea. She went deaf with the power of that sound, and blind from the brightness of the dying sun. Then blackness took over her vision.

To her surprise, the crush lessened. She was being cushioned, bouncing in something unseen. Floating again amongst an undulating black.

Death was surprisingly peaceful. She waited for the Queen’s greeting, for her forgiveness, for her welcome into the afterlife.

And then Keko breathed.

Her lungs contracted, gasping. There it was: Damp, sweet air flowed between her lips and into her throat. It filled her lungs and pumped her chest in and out, in and out.

What the—

Her eyelids flew open. She was floating in a bubbling, frothy world—a water world made of a million shades of blue and green. Water flowed all around—above, below, on all sides—but it did not touch her because she was balanced in the middle of some sort of giant bubble. Her limbs were weightless, her hair swirling around her head.

The foam and bubbles racing around her incredible cage of air popped and fizzled, clearing away the murk, finally giving her a view of the ocean below the waterline. The ocean, as far as she could see.

The water cage shivered, and she knew this was Griffin’s doing. Indeed, the bubble itself was Griffin. Him. All around her.

She was alive but trapped.

The cage began to move. It pushed through the water, slowly at first, dragging her with it. Then it started to pick up speed. Unable to control anything, she panicked, trying to throw her fists against the walls, still wanting to fight the man who’d taken her, but her movements were waterlogged and ineffective.

He was pulling her back to the mainland. She just knew it. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to allow it, to just let him throw her from a cliff into the ocean and drag her back to the Senatus in a cage made of fucking water.

She screamed at him, her voice sounding muffled and wimpy.

She squirmed, her limbs and threats coming off puny and slow.

She reached for her magic, but the fire died on her tongue the second she opened her lips. It was still there, not dead, not diminished, just unable to be released within Griffin’s confines.

Fuck him. Just . . . fuck him.

The bubble cage was zooming now, the parting water churning past, rolling off the sides of Griffin’s magic. Off Griffin himself. He shot them through the ocean, in and out of pockets of shadow and sun, light and dark. Schools of fish darted out of their way. Reefs stretched out their hard fingers, trying to pop the bubble, but Griffin deftly steered around them. The great looming shapes of migrating whales passed in the distance, their eerie, sorrowful sounds amplified in her watery prison.

Keko continued to fight. Her mistakes would haunt her forever, but perhaps no mistake bigger than the one holding her now.

Minutes, or maybe it was hours later, she felt them start to rise, to slant diagonally up through the water. Outside the rounded walls of her cage the shades of ocean blue paled. Rolling onto her back in sluggish, delayed movements, she watched the glitter of the sun lay itself over the top of the water. Long beams of light tried to make their way down to her. Then more and more. They pierced Griffin’s magic, striking her, blinding her.

He was bringing her to land again, and when they popped out, she was sure they’d be surrounded by Ofarians. Griffin—and all of them—better be ready for one crazy fight. She steeled herself, preparing. She expanded her chest and took in all that godforsaken damp air. She liked that—using the very oxygen Griffin gave her to prepare the weapon she was about to use against him.

The light above, twinkling in the water between the bubble and the surface, grew and grew in intensity. The pressure in her ears and body lessened. She could see the waves now, tipped with choppy white.

The bubble cage burst free from the ocean. It tumbled across the surface, spinning and spinning. Land appeared below—a harsh, jagged shoreline. They sailed up and over it, then the cage was no longer water, but a fine mist, swirling all around her in a dizzying, solitary tornado. She was nauseous and disoriented, and when she felt that mist coalesce back into Griffin’s body—his arms and legs still wrapped tightly around her—she felt furious.

They hit the ground, rolling again. With an “oof” and a moan, his clamp on her loosened, and then released her completely. When her body stopped jouncing over itchy dry grass and rocky soil, she somehow got her limbs to obey and pushed herself up to hands and knees. The world seemed determined to pitch her back into helplessness. All she could focus on without heaving was the spinning ground.

A large male hand rested on her back. It calmed her, though she didn’t want it to. When the hand skated gently up her spine to hook her hair off her neck, and a smooth current of refreshing air hit her skin, it jolted her back into reality.

She shook Griffin off, scrambling away and shoving to her feet. He remained kneeling, letting her go, merely looking up at her with oddly resigned eyes.

“Get up,” she snapped. “Fight.”

He dabbed at his cut lip and flicked a glance off to one side. “Look around you first. If you still want it, then I’ll give it to you.”

It was difficult to look away from him, but that’s exactly what she did. And took in a completely unexpected sight.

They were on a tiny island whose entire, uneven shoreline could be seen from their vantage point. Hard, pitted earth rolled in all directions, and beyond that, the vast, endless ocean. No other land in sight. In the center of the island jutted up a flat-topped rock, split raggedly down the middle, looking like a petrified giant clam. From that crack spewed a river of magic that Keko could feel in her chest and in her soul. She knew that magic. She’d wanted it and had made it her prey.

Griffin hadn’t brought her to the mainland. He’d taken her right to the Source.

She swiveled back to him, her jaw working but no words coming out. Maybe there was nothing he could say that would prove his loyalty to her, but apparently there was something he could do.

Another dab at his split lip. “I tried to tell you. I—”

His pupils dilated. His eyebrows came together and he looked far past her shoulder. Just like the day in the canyon with the Queen’s prayer.

And that’s when the Son of Earth burst from the ground and attacked.