Griffin pushed aside another fern frond and showed himself. “It’s me,” he said, echoing the simple declaration she’d given him just days ago on the phone. “Just me.”
A terrible pause, filled with silence and the consistent, pleasurable thrum of her signature. He’d never forgotten its song, the way it meshed so well with his mind. Even when he’d come upon her as a captive in that garage, even when she’d been flaring with rage, he’d been unable to deny how the thing she couldn’t even feel herself affected him. It was a layer of connection between them that she’d never truly understand.
Even across the ravine he could almost hear her mind working, considering, questioning, weighing what to do, how to respond.
“Use your fire as light,” he said. “I’ll prove it.”
Another pause, and inside it he feared she’d run. Then he heard her draw a breath—a Chimeran breath, the kind he so vividly remembered Makaha taking—and a gorgeous stream of sunset gold fire spouted from her lips, arcing up and over the ravine, drawing a hot, crackling, radiant line between them. Her mouth closed but the firelight remained, and in that brief moment he witnessed a world of emotion cross that beautiful face he hadn’t seen in two months.
Disbelief and joy. Distress and relief. Resolution and doubt. Then shock. Then fear. Then a clench of her jaw and a narrowing of those lava black eyes, and a reappearance of that anger he knew so well.
She always managed to send him tilting.
Griffin stood his ground, the rainbow of fire hitting its apex and starting to come down right for him. This flame arrow could easily kill him. He had no water magic left to fight it. No strength left with which to dodge it. He had nothing but his own courage, his own purpose. He had to believe that Keko, whose people valued physical strength and bravery above all, would not kill a person in such a way.
The fire’s heat slicked over his skin, getting closer and closer. He took his own deep breath, standing tall, staring across the void at Keko. Those fathomless eyes, as dark as the deepest part of the ocean, pierced him.
The fire died. Sputtered out mere feet above his head.
Something else charged through the twilight between them. Something old and familiar. Something he’d missed terribly.
He opened his arms. “It’s just me, Keko.”
It had been only a second of darkness, and he already ached for the vision of her face.
“How’d you find me?”
“I’m Ofarian.”
She let out a sound of derision that carried effortlessly through the quiet Hawaiian landscape. “Goddamn bloodhound. Forgot about that.”
He doubted that.
“You should be at the Senatus gathering.” He remembered that tone of voice from the garage. The low one, the threatening one. The one that made clear she wouldn’t be anyone’s prey.
So that was it, why she’d followed the Queen’s footsteps at this particular time. She’d thought the chief would be gone at the Senatus and wouldn’t find her note until he returned. And she never, ever expected Griffin to get involved.
“I was,” he said. “Chief and Bane told me you’d disappeared.”
Even in the silent darkness, her surprise was evident. “What did they say?”
“Give me some more fire. I want to see your face.”
She laughed. “Not a chance.”
“You know it’s just me.”
Tiny, twin flashes of flame sparked and died, and he knew it was annoyance manifesting in her eyes, but that was the extent of light she gave him. “What. Did. They. Say.”
He knew what he could tell her, and what he shouldn’t. He knew what might make her pause, and what would send her sprinting in the opposite direction so fast he’d never have a prayer of catching up.
He said, “They told me, in secret, about the Fire Source. That you were going after it.”
It took her a long, long time to answer. “Did they say why?”
“They didn’t have to. Once they told me the story of your Queen, I figured it out.”
He hoped that was cryptic enough to satisfy. She didn’t supply any more.
“Why are you here, Griffin?”
“I’m going to sit. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t run, okay?” He let his knees give out, let his ass hit the dirt. His body released a grateful sigh. If she were to run, this would be the perfect opportunity.
“Why are you here?” she asked again.
“When Chief and Bane told me you’d gone,” he slowly replied, thinking through every word, “I knew they wanted me to go after you. To bring you back.”
She laughed again, and it sounded like sorrow.
“Let me finish. Chief wants me to bring you back because he doesn’t want you to find the Source and rise above him. Bane wants me to find you because you’re his sister and he’s worried. Your fucking clan laws won’t allow him to go after you himself.”
It was the truth. At least part of it. The part she might actually buy. There was so much more—and so much he didn’t understand himself—but dumping it on her at once was the absolute wrong way to go, not when she was poised to take off from the starting blocks and he was exhausted. He couldn’t mention the Senatus’s demands. He couldn’t even mention what Aya had told him about the Source’s danger. She would despise the first and scoff at the second, thinking that Aya’s warning was just a ploy to get her to back off.
He added, “But that’s not why I came.”
She still hadn’t moved, her body a dimly lit statue at the lip of the ravine. “So tell me.”
The stars were incredible out here, he thought, then realized that he couldn’t be sure if the stars he saw were actually those in the sky or the ones sparkling at the edges of his vision.
“I came for you.” Fatigue had a way of pulling out the truth.
“No, you didn’t.”
“You don’t deserve this end. Throwing yourself into the Source in the hopes that it might give you a name after your death. It’s fucking stupid, Keko. I’m just going to say it.”
“And what if that name is ‘Queen’?”
“Pride is internal. So is strength. Everything else is bullshit.”
“You’re such a fucking boy scout, such an Ofarian, always thinking you know what’s best for everyone else. You’re not Chimeran. You couldn’t possibly understand.”
“I understand you want to lead. Remember when you told me that? I understand that your one dream is gone, and you think this is the only way to get it back.”
“You don’t know anything.” It came out sounding sad and detached, which was unnervingly like how she’d sounded when she called him. “Because you were given what you never really wanted. You were just handed my dreams.”
Ah, now he got it. She was resentful over what he’d told her in the Utah hotel room about how he’d reluctantly taken the Ofarian leadership.
“That would never appeal to you, though,” he said, “just being given something that big. It’s not in your blood. You’d still find something to fight for. But this . . . this”—he waved a hand around the ravine—“is not worth it.”
“You are fighting, too. Don’t tell me you aren’t. All that stuff you told me about, the class system and such, how much you love your people. That’s why you want the Senatus—”
She cut herself off and the warm Hawaiian night suddenly went frigid.
“That’s it. The Senatus sent you to stop me.”
“No.” The denial came too easily.
“Don’t fucking lie to me. You have some sort of deal with them, don’t you?”
This was going south, fast. To admit to that would only lose her. In more ways than one. To deny it would at least buy him some more time. And that’s exactly what he needed.