Now they waited for a specific Chimeran to bring the car.
The rain cleansed her, rinsing her skin, trickling into her mouth. She licked at it gratefully. Griffin had to cup his hands to drink from a puddle. That alone told her that his magic was depleted.
Her black T-shirt was thoroughly soaked, enabling her to fold the ripped section over her gently glowing chest and hide what made her eternally different. She would have to do this, she realized, for the rest of her days.
She gripped a fistful of the fabric, feeling the pulse of new magic through her skin, and looked deep into Griffin’s eyes. “Why?” she whispered.
He reached for her, hands peeling off his wet torso where he’d tucked them underneath his arms, but she quickly stepped back with a warning look. If she felt this different inside, she had no idea what her skin might do to him. That distance—the idea that she might never be able to touch him again—hurt more than the gashes on her back or the bruises dotting her arms.
Griffin didn’t look worried, but he let his arms drop without argument. “I’ve never told you about my brother,” he said.
She looked at him quizzically. “No. I don’t know anything about your family. Other than what you told me in the hotel, about being born a soldier.”
“I have this brother—well, I have five of them, but I’m talking about the youngest, Henry. He’s twelve and he’s . . .” Griffin finally looked away from her, off toward the great slopes of the old, dead volcanoes rising in the distance, long since gone green. He turned his face up to the rain and ran a hand through his wet hair, making it gleam black. “Henry’s mine. My heart. My reason. I didn’t know it before the Board fell, but since then . . .”
It suddenly made sense. Everything he’d done—it all made sense. “You see yourself in him.”
He still didn’t look at her, his focus somewhere distant. “I saw myself in him. I saw chances for him—and all Ofarian kids, really—that I never had. And it frustrated the hell out of me that he didn’t see what I did, that he wasn’t chasing down this new life. But the thing is, he’s not me. He’s Henry.” At last his eyes trailed back to hers and she saw in them a love and devotion that existed on a plane she’d never personally known. “I can give him what I can,” Griffin said with a shrug, “but the rest is up to him. All I can do is help him along his own way.”
And Keko thought, with a bloom in her heart that had nothing to do with fire magic, You will make an amazing father someday.
“The Senatus,” she said, “and all the stuff with the Primaries—”
“To me, my kid brother wore every Ofarian child’s face, and I stopped seeing what Henry truly looked like. I pushed the Primaries and my dreams on him and everyone else, because of what my birthright made me do. Because of what the old Chairman made me do. All I want is something better for Henry and the other kids, and I want to give them those chances. I thought the Senatus was the way. Now? I don’t know.”
She released the clutch on her shirt, suddenly feeling hollow. “I have only ever lived for me.”
Then Griffin was there, as close as he could get without touching her. “That’s not true.”
She shook her head. “It is. I went for the Source to get the cure, yeah, but in my heart I wanted to be bigger than I was. To lead, to be the Queen. I’ve never known how to be selfless.”
“Stop it. It’s not the same thing as being selfish. Which you aren’t.”
Long moments of silence passed. “I admire you,” she finally said. The admission surprised her. “So much. I need to figure out what to do now, what I can do . . . after I go back.”
He rubbed at his jaw, and she was starting to figure out that he did that when there were many things he wanted to say but couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Like he was massaging the words on his tongue to keep them calm, to keep them from escaping on their own. Finally, very slowly, he said, “You will figure it out. I can help you. If you’ll have me.”
She had to close her eyes, because the tenderness and understanding on his face was simply overwhelming. “You’ve already done so much. This”—her hand hovered over her chest—“is difficult for me to accept. That you got to the Source and I did not.”
“I know.”
And when she opened her eyes, she saw that he really did know.
“I’m sorry it went down like that,” he said. “If I could erase my presence here and let you have that, I would. If you wanted, I would take away all that happened between us in the waterfall and the B and B and . . . in here”—he touched his heart—“to give that to you.”
Is that what she wanted? Could she ever do that? Trade this precious, exciting, beautiful connection with him for the ability to walk into the Chimeran valley and say she’d succeeded where the Queen had not?
Griffin was too good. Too sacrificial. She’d grown up believing she was deserving of the best, that she was worthy of fighting for what she wanted, but this man had been touched by the stars and the Queen alike, and his light was so very bright. It chased away her shadows, and she’d always relied on those shadows to guide her. To remind her of her bad decisions and past experiences.
“Griffin—”
The whine and grind of an approaching Jeep cut her off, and she turned to watch the familiar yellow vehicle jouncing over the dirt road. It stopped between two white flowering trees and the driver got out.
Bane slid from behind the wheel. He just stood there holding the door open, staring over the top of it, his gaze bouncing between Keko and Griffin. At last he slammed shut the door and stalked toward them, his bare feet pounding through puddles.
As he drew closer, Keko could barely believe what she was seeing. Bane, the Chimeran general, looked like he was on the verge of tears. He pulled up ten feet away and repressed his emotion in a most Chimeran way.
“You’re alive,” he said, and she heard the unmistakable relief in his voice. “The sky went dark . . . we knew there was an eruption somewhere . . . I thought . . .”
“You knew about Aya’s warning,” Keko interrupted, “about the danger to the Earth and myself if I touched the Source?”
Bane nodded once, thin rivers of rainwater swooping down his neck and bare chest.
“And yet,” she went on, “you still asked Griffin to help me.”
Bane looked to Griffin, but the Ofarian was standing slightly behind her so she couldn’t see Griffin’s reaction.
“Because you knew that if I came back bearing the power of the Source, I could cure Ikaika. You could stop covering for his loss of magic.”
Bane paled but, to his credit and training, did not otherwise react. He’d always been so good at hiding the true depth of his feelings for the other Chimeran warrior. “How did you know about that?”
“Because the chief is afflicted, too.” She had no qualms in saying it now. She needed her brother’s help and it required his knowledge.
“Holy shit.” Bane blew out a breath and raised his arms, locking his hands around the back of his skull. “That changes everything,” he muttered, his dark eyes darting from puddle to puddle. She knew he was already considering his formal challenge. Plotting the ali’i’s downfall, just as she’d done only days earlier.
“No.” She advanced on her brother, one hand coming up to pull back the flap of her ripped T-shirt. “This does.”
Now Bane reacted. And not at all in the way she’d expected.
His attention immediately dropped to the soft white glow beneath her breastbone. He rubbed his own chest, as though able to sense what did not reside there, and then his stare snapped back up to her face. His eyes went impossibly wide. He breathed hard. His massive shoulders sagged.