They ducked into the cool, dim Common House. Long lines of grass-woven mats covered the floor. She didn’t look to the anonymous spot she’d been given right in the center of all the others. The only way she found it was when she came in late at night and all the other disgraced or unworthy Chimerans were snoring. Hers was the only mat without a body. And it was just a place to crash, nothing more.
She tried not to think about the hammock she’d strung up in her house on the bluff, the comfortable, knotted, creaking thing with the perfect view of the valley and the ocean beyond. The house and hammock that belonged to Bane now.
But every now and then, when a piece of grass from her Common House mat broke loose and scratched her skin, she let her mind drift to the feathertop mattress at that hotel in Utah, and the man who had pressed her body deeper into it. Then, just as quickly, she forced her mind back to the cold, hard reality at hand.
The back corner of the Common House had been stacked precariously with leaning cardboard boxes stamped with the name of the fake church charity Chimerans used to get donations from unsuspecting Primaries. Makaha grabbed a box, using his stump to balance it, and dumped the mass of colorful, wrinkled hand-me-downs onto the cracked cement floor.
“Kids’ clothing over there,” he said, pointing to a pile. “Men’s by the door. Women’s just opposite.”
He started work right away, but Keko just watched him, a massive lump in her throat and a terrible tremble shooting through her limbs. She couldn’t move, was absolutely frozen. His piles swirled into meaningless colors, his repetitive motions hammering into her brain. Frustration and humiliation pounded their awful little fists against the backs of her eyes and clogged up her chest.
No. She would not cry. But she also knew she couldn’t handle this. Doing what Makaha had been doing day in and day out for three years, and doing it without emotion. This was not her. It would not ever be her.
Keko’s feet started to back away before she even told them to. When they hit a grass mat, she turned and ran down the rows, the exit doorway a slanted rectangle of dying light in the distance.
Makaha didn’t call after her, but his pity as he watched her go was like a knife in the back. He knew she would have to come back eventually. So did she, and that made her run even faster.
She burst out of the Common House and plunged into the dark under the mango trees. She didn’t stop there, but went deeper and deeper into the vegetation that surrounded the central meadow. She didn’t stop until she was truly alone, bracing her hands on her knees and taking deep draws of wet Hawaiian air. It would rain that night. More water.
Griffin had taken it all—Makaha’s life, her life.
No, that little voice reminded her, as it had every day since her secret affair with Griffin had been revealed to a select few in her clan, and Chief had learned the truth behind Keko’s planned war against the Ofarians. You did this to yourself.
When Keko had been captured and kept prisoner in Colorado, an Ofarian had been behind it, and she’d assumed it had been done on Griffin’s order—a desperate, last-ditch attempt to weasel his way back into the Senatus. She’d planned an attack on him to retaliate, but she’d been wrong, and her war had been exposed for the awful, messy heartbreak that it was. That was what had stripped her of being general. That was truly why Chief had sent her to the Common House.
It was her fault. It was all her fault. She was such an asshole, to keep dragging Griffin into it, for blaming him. She wasn’t here, hiding in the bushes from the people she used to command, because of something he did. She had to get over it. To acknowledge all that she’d done.
She had to fix it. And she had to act soon.
A great shout—a chorus that simultaneously chilled her and sent volcanic-level heat through her veins—shot through the valley. Hundreds of Chimeran voices, low and sharp, full of passion and fire and love for the land and the magic, rose up as one. She knew the chant by heart, had learned it as a toddler, and then led her warriors in it nightly—as Bane was doing now. Though she was still standing beneath the canopy of leaves, her body was mentally going through ghost motions, and making the companion movements to the warriors’ call to action: the slap of the elbows and thighs, the stomp of feet, the lift of palms to the sky, and the power and confidence that came with it.
When it was over, when the chant ended on a terrific roar that shook the leaves around her, Keko released the tension in her muscles one by one. She took a great Chimeran inhale and felt the fire magic surge inside her. Its presence always managed to bring some calm. Inching forward, she parted the branches and gazed out onto the meadow.
Bane had his men and women in the traditional lines, the best, most proven along the front with him, those who were still in training and had yet to issue a challenge at the back. The last line swerved crooked just a hair, and Keko had to fight the urge to jog out and smack the offenders into straightness. They were Bane’s now.
General Bane, the “long-awaited child.” General Bane, who’d been her greatest motivation and the hardest competitor her entire life. It killed her to see him where she belonged, but completely destroyed her to know that she could stalk out onto the meadow right now and issue a challenge to any one of those younglings in the back row, and they wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t be required to take it. Battles for status were mutual, and no one would ever agree to fight her, the general who’d tried to start a war over false reasons.
The general who’d violated kapu by getting involved with a water elemental. Her heart, the traitorous organ, turned sour and huge inside her chest.
If only she’d told Griffin about the “no battle magic during Senatus gatherings” rule.
If only he hadn’t destroyed her best friend, and then asked her to take his side against her own people.
If only she could have forgotten what he’d awakened inside her.
If only he had actually been behind her capture.
If.
If.
If.
She was fucking sick of ifs. Chimerans weren’t made like that. They acted. They fought. She was a warrior. Period. And she would fight tonight—not with fire or fists, but with words.
Beyond the lines of warriors who had now paired off and were working on stretching and strengthening drills, rose the ali’i’s house, a lone light coming from the kitchen window. Chief’s thick silhouette moved behind the glass.
Yes, she’d made some pretty hefty mistakes, but Chief had been the one to strip her life away. And he was the only one with the power to give a portion of it back. She started toward the house. Not across the field where the warriors would see her, but around the perimeter, sticking to the cover of the trees and vines, and relying on the deepening dark of twilight.
It was dangerous to beg. It was shameful. But she didn’t have any further to fall. She’d struck the bottom and bore the bruises to show for it. She had absolutely nothing to lose.
The garden behind the ali’i’s house was barricaded by a low stone wall, overgrown with neglect, and cool and dark at this time when day merged with night. Her uncle had been ali’i so long that Keko remembered the placement of each paving stone, having skipped across them as a little girl whenever she’d come to the house for personal lessons. Her aunt had lived long enough to see Keko best Bane for the generalship, but after her aunt had died, the house had fallen into the same poor, weather-worn state as the rest of the valley.