No time to wonder. No time to doubt.
Calling the blue-white flame to her hand again without taking a breath, she slapped her palm over Chief’s right pectoral. The little chunk of lava rock—the symbol of the Queen she’d once coveted—bounced on his chest.
He cried out, his face instantly contorting in pain. His legs buckled. He went down, knees hitting the tile, but she bent forward and held on. Source flame, intense and blue-silver like the dusk, rolled down her arm in waves and sank into the chief’s body, like he was the shore and her power was high tide.
She had to battle for control of it. It kicked and fought, and wanted free rein to explode into him, but she knew if she did that—if she let it take control—he’d die. She could also feel it working. Could feel the fire pumping back into him, restarting his system, cracking through invisible barriers, and feeding back to him what had been withering inside.
A long, low moan streamed up out of his throat. His whole body shook with violent tremors. She’d never witnessed such agony—on his face or the face of any Chimeran—but he didn’t resist. Didn’t try to pull away. Despite everything he was, everything he had said or done to her, she had to commend him for that.
The pain and power grew and grew. It got so bad that he ceased making any sound or movement at all.
In the end, it was not Chief who stopped the flow. Of their own accord, the flames pulled out of his chest and retreated back up her arm, then flickered and died. The second she removed her hand from his skin, he pitched forward, just barely catching himself on his hands before striking the floor.
A fine line ran between healing and death.
Bane rushed forward, taking Chief by his shoulders and helping him to sit back on his heels. The ali’i’s head lolled on his neck, his arms limp at his sides, and his chest . . . Bane saw it the exact moment Keko did, and her brother looked up at her in panic.
Griffin came to her side. “Is that . . . ?”
It was. Her handprint, charred and black, embedded in Chief’s flesh. Proof that he’d needed healing. Proof that he’d needed her.
Chief looked down and saw it, too. Bane released him and the ali’i scrambled to his feet, his shaking fingers picking at the edges of her mark like a scab, his face ashen.
“Did it work?” Bane demanded, the desperate tone of his voice clearly speaking for another diseased Chimeran male. “Are you healed?”
Chief finally stopped staring down at the permanent charcoal reminder, and lifted his chin to meet Keko’s eyes.
“Reach for your fire,” she told him.
Chief drew a Chimeran breath. Upon the exhale, he raised a hand to his lips and blew out a thin stream of gold and orange flame. The tips of each finger danced with gorgeous fire and he watched them with a childlike glee.
He started to cry. The venerated ali’i of the Big Island Chimerans was crying.
Between his sobs he inhaled, sucking the fire back into his body. Then he relit his fingers with a laugh, rolled the flame into a ball, and passed it from hand to hand. Holding it before him like an offering, he gazed over its flickering top and said to Keko, “Thank you.”
She hadn’t done this for him. She did it for all Chimerans, whether they’d lost their magic or not. She did it for the fire itself, the element that wanted to be used by her people. And she did it for the Queen whose dream was finally realized.
No, she hadn’t done it for her uncle . . . but she couldn’t help but be moved by his reaction. By this reunification. It gave her a tremendous joy and satisfaction to see the same on his face.
It made her feel completely selfless.
She sensed Griffin edge even closer, and when she turned her face to him he was watching her carefully.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
The Source sent white-hot waves of power and strength and excitement shooting through every vein in her body. She tried to think of something to compare it to. Maybe sex, if every time could be like that last time with Griffin in the coastal B and B. Perhaps love, if it was absolute and unshakeable. If it were perfect. If it were undeniably mutual.
But unfortunately, love was none of those things.
Griffin looked at her with grave concern. She wanted desperately to share this feeling with him, for him to experience the power, the healing, the giving of something to help another in need—but then, it was entirely possible he already knew.
She didn’t know if she could love him any more than she did at that very moment.
“Keko.” His voice was a breath, a small, invisible container of emotion she could not dare herself to believe in.
The brush of air by her ear was his hand as he raised it to touch her. How she wanted that! But she could not chance it. Not when he had no loss of fire magic to cure. Not when she’d seen the great pain she’d caused the chief—and the resulting mark. She ducked out of Griffin’s touch. Not a big movement, but enough to warn him off.
He sighed and let his hand fall yet again.
“I’m fine,” she said to Griffin. Then she turned to the ali’i who was still playing at his flame as though he were a child just come into his powers.
Bane had locked his hands around the back of his skull again, and he stared with undisguised horror at the askew black handprint on Chief’s chest.
Keko went to her brother and said low, “They’ll all be marked. If they want to be cured, they’ll have to wear shirts to hide it.” No other way to keep it secret, not in their culture of bared skin. “They’ll have to make the choice. No magic or a scar.”
Bane unlaced his fingers and turned to her. “But you will get no choice. If the people find out about the disease, they’ll know about the cure. They’ll have to know about you.”
She saw the devotion in his eyes, what she’d seen when he’d fallen to his knees once before. “I’m still no Queen.”
He tightly shook his head. “That’s not for you to decide.”
But it was for her to believe.
“Bring me Ikaika,” she said, deliberately changing the subject, “and let him be the first to make his choice.”
Bane pressed both fists to his chest, a gesture of worship usually meant only for ceremonies involving legends of the Queen. The ali’i, seeing this, stiffened but said nothing. He could not, after all. Not when he was no longer the most powerful in the valley.
Bane hurried out. Keko moved to stand before Griffin.
“You know about Ikaika,” she said, “but not the others. I think, for the sake of their privacy and the sanctity of our culture, because you are Ofarian—”
“I’ll go.” Griffin glanced at the ali’i. “My oath still stands, Keko. My word and my stars are yours.” Then he turned and left, the latch in the glass door making a soft click that sounded far too loud in the dense, silent room.
A short while later, Bane returned with Ikaika through the shadowed and secret back entrance, both men slightly out of breath. Bane’s eyes glimmered in anticipation. Ikaika’s brow furrowed in confusion when he finally saw Keko.
“I know about your fire,” she told Ikaika without preamble. When the warrior threw a harsh look at Bane and then a fearful look at Chief sitting on the darkened corner of the couch, Keko held up a hand. “Your general said nothing. It doesn’t matter how I know. You’ve lost your magic. But I can give it back.”