Wonderfully, frighteningly warm.
TWENTY
Keko awoke on a bed of nails, a thousand sharp points gouging into her skin, the pain both extreme and welcome. It forced her back into awareness when she knew she couldn’t afford to be in the black any longer.
The sun was setting, and she awoke a different person. Only she didn’t know why. Or how.
Rolling her head, she winced at the scrape against her scalp. Her fingers flew to the back of her skull and brushed what she knew to be the rough and blocky ‘a’a kind of lava rock. The stuff had been borne of fire, deep within the earth, but it was wicked on the body, Chimeran or not.
The sound of waves filled her ears. Easy, insistent waves.
The earth was still, free of smoke and fire.
How did she get here? And where was here? The last thing she remembered was the island rumbling beneath her feet, the anger of the Source bubbling up from below, throwing her down. The force and shock of the quake had jarred loose her control over her magic. She’d watched Nem’s fire cage collapse, then witnessed him clawing his way back into the enraged earth. Then . . .
Keko gasped as panic consumed her.
Griffin. Griffin had turned to vapor and disappeared into the fissure, and then a long time later the world had exploded around her.
“Keko.”
Maybe she was only hearing her name in his voice because she wanted to so badly. And maybe, after she turned her head on the spiky rock and found the Ofarian stretched out beside her, his normally olive skin gone pale, his lips colorless, it was only a vision her desperate mind had created.
But then the vision struggled to sit up, and she knew he was real. Griffin was real and alive. And he was weak.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice as torn up as his body.
She peeled herself off the rock, grimacing at the way it had punched divots and cuts into her skin. Glancing around, she knew immediately that they were back on the Big Island, on the remote coast south of Hilo, close to the Chimeran valley.
She could not answer Griffin. She could only look at him, take him all in. And wonder.
Then she sensed it again, that clear difference in her body and being. Her skin felt the same, familiar, but everything inside—from the darkest reaches of her brain to the smallest, most insignificant muscle—pulsed to a tune she’d never heard before. Her inner fire burned with a permanent light, a never-ending source of energy.
Like she’d never have to take a Chimeran breath ever again.
“What happened?” she said.
Her voice sounded odd. Deeper and more resonant. She put a palm to her chest, where it felt strange.
Griffin’s stare dropped to where her hand lay and his eyes widened. Then she looked down and saw what he did. She still wore his black T-shirt, and through the fibers glowed a light, outlining her fingers and beating in time with her heart.
Keko scrambled to her feet, her hands slipping into the neckline of the T-shirt and ripping it down the center, exposing the skin just above her breasts, now possessed of a soft, blue-white light.
“What is it?” she cried, even though she knew. “What is it?”
Griffin stood and lifted a hand toward the glow, but did not touch her. “The Source,” he said, meeting her eyes. “A tiny part of it anyway.”
Each pulse of the muted light sent a new bit of magic into her system. Its purity was undeniable, its beauty almost able to be tasted. Sweet like the smoke she loved, but a sweetness no one before had ever had the pleasure of rolling on her tongue. Unlike Chimeran blood that had been diluted by history or mixed breeding with Primaries, this magic was uncontaminated and whole. And even though that tiny part was now inside her, it was still the Source, and it would never die.
It was the Queen’s mana, her spiritual power incarnate.
Griffin had done it. But . . . how?
Another bit of memory came back to her. Him, in mist form, feeding her the little blue-white spark he’d brought up from below. Her swallowing the fire magic, how it had burned going down. How it had felt like death.
Turning, she looked toward the setting sun, the lowering light calling out the thick plume of smoke far, far on the horizon.
“Brave, mighty Queen,” she murmured, the name scratching at her throat. She swallowed, gathering strength and moisture, and faced Griffin, who watched her with overwhelming intensity. “What happened?”
“You wouldn’t’ve survived,” he said, shaking his head, “if you’d gone down there.”
And then he told her the most incredible story that ended with a volcanic eruption out in the middle of the ocean, and a piece of the Fire Source inside Keko Kalani.
Griffin had succeeded. In the end, he’d told her the truth. And he’d helped her.
She honestly did not know what to do in the face of that remarkable sacrifice—him giving up his dreams of the Senatus and risking his life to hand her the resolution to her own goals. Her very first thought was one of shame, that even though she’d found the Source and now carried a bit of it inside her, Griffin had been the one to retrieve it. She was Chimeran through and through, and her blood told her that Griffin’s actions on her behalf called out a weakness.
She did not know if she’d ever be able to erase or appease that feeling. Or even if she wanted to.
“Do you think you can cure them?” he asked.
She looked deep into his eyes and drew a Chimeran breath. With the inrush of air, the burgeoning new power inside accelerated and bloomed with a force she could barely control. It wanted to scream out of her throat and dance all over everything. She just barely yanked it back before it loosed itself upon Griffin.
“Keko.” He still didn’t touch her, his hand hovering between them. “What is it?”
For the first time in her life, she feared her own fire.
“It’s so . . . different. Scary.”
She opened her palm to the sky and pursed her lips, intending to blow flame into the cup of her hand. It was the very first trick a Chimeran child learned when they came into their power, something any fire elemental knew and could control with barely a thought.
Keko had meant to create a tiny flame, a flicker of the red and orange and gold she knew so well.
What came out was a fireball as large as her head. Beautiful and wondrous and deadly in a whole new sense of the word. And it shimmered in a sparkling, searing blue-white.
“Yes,” she murmured, transfixed by the color and power that had come from her body. “Yes, I believe I can cure them.”
• • •
They stood in the misting rain, far enough inland that she’d lost sight of the ocean. Far enough away that she could not watch the sun setting behind the massive smear of smoke and lava she’d created. At first she did not recognize the sentiments that tangled in her gut, because regret and doubt had never kept space in the limited emotional arsenal the Chimeran culture allowed, but as she and Griffin stared at each other, what she felt now became all too clear.
The Keko who’d hiked out of the Chimeran valley, intent on taking the Source at any cost, would have simply turned her back on the damage she’d done to the B and B, and the chaos she’d caused out in the ocean. But the Keko who now held pure fire magic within her body worried about who and what she’d affected, and how badly.
She had Griffin to thank for that, and she did not hate him for it. In fact, she found that she did not hate him at all.
He stood close but did not touch her, eyeing her carefully. Lovingly. That’s how it had been the whole time as they’d stumbled off the coastal lava rock and hiked inland. Bloodied, weary, dirty, they’d stopped only when they’d found a phone and she’d made her call to the stronghold.