“No.” She sat slowly, her eyes dancing back and forth in thought. “He’s doing it for Ikaika. He wants me to cure Ikaika.”
“Why—oh.”
The embrace of the two men, the way they’d touched, witnessed through the grimy window of that convenience store, came back to Griffin.
“I think he wanted me to do it for you, too,” Griffin added. “To make sure you’re safe.”
Keko shook her head at the ceiling. “That’s not how the Chimeran world works, Griffin. I’m a threat to him. I always have been.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Look how you’ve changed.”
She recoiled at that, like personal change was evil.
“You have,” he asserted. “And yeah, maybe Bane wants his lover cured and maybe he wants to see the chief go down in the process, but he’s still your brother. I saw his face. He wants you to succeed and he wants you back in the valley alive.”
Hands on her knees, she took a breath and leaned forward. “Now do you understand what I have to do? And why?”
He did. Oh, how he did. Because it was exactly the same thing he would have done for his own people. And she wasn’t even their leader.
A surge of emotion washed over him, took him under. He was helpless against it, flailing, gasping for air. Drowning in her.
He must have been wearing an odd expression, because Keko suddenly flared with rage, a wave of heat exploding out of her. “You gave me your word, Griffin. You use this against me or the Chimerans and this time I will come after you.”
Reaching out, he took her face in his hands. She tried to fight him off at first, but he dug into her hair, finding the back of her skull, and brought her to him for a kiss. A tender, swift meeting of the lips that had less to do with passion and more with promise. She stiffened, understanding.
When he drew back, a profound look of shock transformed her face.
“You are amazing,” he whispered.
Not a day ago, he’d thought her foolish and suicidal and selfish. Beautiful and desirable and . . . his . . . but still all of those things.
She blinked under the shadow of those words, then cleared her throat. “And you have something I need.”
He did, didn’t he? Going to the bar, he asked the bartender for a piece of paper and pen, and a map of Hawaii. The silver-haired, leather-faced man handed him a ratty tourist map marred by brown coffee cup circles.
“Come with me,” he told Keko. “And bring those burgers. I’m starving.”
They walked in silence away from the lights of the bar and the tiny town center, chowing on the cold burgers that tasted like ambrosia, heading down to the edge of the land where a rickety fence half-heartedly kept people from falling over the side. He could hear the ocean far below but could not see it.
The stars threw a billowing blanket over their heads, and he knew each and every one. Kneeling before a bench, he spread out the Hawaiian island map and took up the pen and paper.
Keko crowded him on one side, peering over his shoulder. Her breathing quickened.
An image of Aya came to him, of her emerging from the ground, horror on her humanlike face and words of doom and destruction on her tongue.
Great stars, what had he done, making these bargains with Aya and then with Keko? What the hell was he about to do by giving Keko the key to triggering a potential natural disaster? Why was he about to send her right back into the violent arms of the Children of Earth?
Because of her purpose. That damned honorable purpose that he understood so well.
His mind reeled with doubt and confusion. Then he realized that by deciphering the map tonight she wouldn’t be waltzing into the Source right at that very moment. It was far away and it would take some finagling to reach it. That would give him some time to work shit out. And he would. He would figure everything out—how to let Keko heal her people, how to appease Aya and the Senatus, how to protect the Earth—but right now . . .
Twisting his head to the sky, he scanned the beautiful map of stars, instantly knowing his position below them. Pen in hand, he made a series of dots on the paper as he remembered them from the star map, taking into account the three-dimensional nature of it and adjusting it accordingly. A square marked the location the stone prayer had showed to be the Source, that glowing circle in the center of the carved figure’s chest. Then he turned to the map of the Hawaiian Islands and marked where he and Keko currently stood.
In his head he overlaid the current pattern of stars above with how they would change from the vantage point of the Source. His pen flew over the map, the angles and dimensions automatically shifting in his mind, pen lines mimicking his thought processes. Primaries would use equations and fancy tools and computers, but the stars were part of his Ofarian blood, and he just knew.
“There.” A swish of the pen out in the open blue part of the ocean northwest of Nihau, the last main Hawaiian island past Kauai.
Keko bent close to the circle and the X he’d drawn. “Are you sure? There’s nothing out there.”
He sat back on his heels, ignoring the sick feeling starting in his stomach. “The islands are an archipelago. Thousands of uninhabited little land masses stretching for thousands of miles into the Pacific. Your Source is on one of them. That one. Way out there.” He tapped his circle.
She straightened and gazed off into the dark inland. “I thought it might be a—”
“Volcano? Like Kilauea?”
“Yeah.”
He frowned. “Maybe it is. I don’t know what’s there.”
She faced him in her confident way that turned him on like nothing else. “Are you still going to try to stop me?”
Oh, that answer? He still didn’t know it. Still didn’t know which truth he would speak.
He could tell her now what Aya said, what she’d warned the entire Senatus about, but Keko wouldn’t believe him. She would still see it as manipulation, and he wouldn’t blame her.
Time. He had some time. And neither of them was going anywhere tonight.
Closing the space between them, he slid his hands around her body, loving how her arms came around his neck almost instantly. Brushing his mouth against hers, he murmured, “Not at this moment, no.”
He might have to, though. And he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think what that might mean to the Chimeran people. To her.
Didn’t want to admit that stopping her would annihilate every last thread of connection he and Keko had ever formed. And that hurt most of all.
She tilted her head back, her dark eyes simmering. “But tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, I will think about tomorrow.”
A long, slow blink. “And tonight?”
Like his vision, his very existence at that moment narrowed down to her. He stole a page from her book of honesty and forthrightness and made every word count, let her see everything he felt inside. “Tonight? Be with me.”
• • •
It would be a long, cold hike across the fields to the natural, protected area by the tree at the edge of air elemental property. If only she could get out of the compound first.
The premier had dismissed Aya from his office, then locked the door in her face. Through the mottled glass she watched his shape righting the toppled bookcase and replacing the objects and books upon the shelves. He got a broom and swept up the broken glass, all but erasing the confrontation with Jason. Who was, chances were, already heading for Reno to destroy a human mind.
Aya went to the door leading out into the false church and knocked. A few minutes later the door swung open and fresher air rushed into the tiny, gray-painted room that was beginning to close in on her like the caves Within.