“You are Kekona?” Aya asked. “The Chimeran general?”
Kekona eyed her, then nodded.
“Why are you out here?”
“Why am I out here?” Kekona wrapped her bare arms around her waist. The Chimerans were so fascinating, being able to withstand such bitter cold without protective layers. “Why am I out here—good question. Because I don’t want to go back yet.”
Aya looked down the hill toward the bonfire, which was a speck of dying orange through the trees. “I am sorry about what happened to your warrior. I saw that you went after Griffin. Did you hurt him?”
Kekona made an odd sound that was difficult to decipher. Aya thought it might have been a laugh, but it also could have been a sob. Emotions had such blurred lines. So much to learn.
“I did,” Kekona said. “And he hurt me, too.”
By the haunted look in Kekona’s eyes, Aya thought she understood what the Chimeran meant. She had observed interaction between human men and women who were interested in mating, and Secondaries were not any different. There was a benefit to being the quiet one, the observant one, the one others seemed to forget was there. Over the past few days, she’d thought she’d witnessed a change in the way Griffin and Kekona had acted toward each other. They tried very hard to hide it under the veil of the Senatus rules, but Aya had noticed little things here and there. Little things that signaled their interest was growing, deepening. The scene around the fire, Griffin’s reaction, and now the pain of Kekona’s aftermath, confirmed it.
Only, to Aya’s eyes, their connection meant far more than simple mating. It reached much deeper into their souls than just the base need to reproduce. It was beautiful and overwhelming, and it spoke to Aya on a level she’d yet to personally experience Aboveground. Perhaps something as powerful as this kind of desire was worth living a life for. Perhaps it was what would make death palatable.
“Wounds will heal,” Aya told her. “Even those you can’t see.”
The Chimeran woman’s shoulders lost some of their tension. She looked at Aya for a long time, then shook her head as if to clear it. “It doesn’t feel like that now. It feels like I’m going to be in pain forever.”
Aya thought of the vast difference between Within and Aboveground, when it came to time. “Forever is just a word. It will have a new definition tomorrow.”
Keko’s brow furrowed as she dropped her gaze to the frozen stream.
Something told Aya that perhaps she should feel awkward in this silence, but strangely, she didn’t. There was something about this scene that made her heart feel warm. Like keeping Kekona’s secret about her feelings for Griffin and offering support was the right thing to do. The human thing to do.
And right then and there, Aya knew that she had made the most important choice of her existence.
“When I left the fire,” she finally said, “your chief was looking for you. The other warrior, the taller man, took the injured one back to your car.”
At the words “injured one,” Kekona’s eyes teared up, but then she immediately blinked the moisture away.
“Okay,” Kekona said. “So, uh, thanks. This made me feel better.”
“It did?”
Hands on her hips, Kekona nudged some muddy snow with her bare toe. “Yeah. I think it did. Listen, will you be here again? At the next Senatus?”
“Of course.”
Kekona gave a stiff wave and started back for the bonfire. “I guess I’ll see you then.”
• • •
Here, Within, Aya clung to the shadows of the dim cave, a painful ache in her all-too-human heart, and watched Keko work with her brush and bucket.
Keko swept up dirt and pebbles, the remnants of the Children’s travel through the earth, her movements sluggish, her eyes dead. The blue-white glow of her Source flame had gone out, as had her spirit.
Aya watched her a lot, remembering every single one of their private conversations outside of the Senatus. Remembering Griffin’s reaction as Aya had pulled his love away.
She had yet to approach Keko, her sympathy too great, her sorrow too infectious. Keko needed hope, and Aya had none to give.
She trudged through the caverns until she reached their end, then she threw herself into the earth and tunneled toward her private cave, thankful for its distance and solitude and secrecy. But when she finally pushed out of the wall and assumed human form, she wanted to scream all over again.
There on the clay floor lay a single, pristine sunflower petal.
• • •
So this was how a Chimeran fight ended, Griffin thought. There was pain even in the afterlife. How strange. And unfortunate.
The light that leaked through his cracked eyelids was incredibly bright and not remotely holy, so he shut them again.
“Welcome back.”
At the sound of the oddly familiar male voice, Griffin pried open his eyes fully. One aching arm rose to try to block the harsh light, but a lance of pain pierced his shoulder, and he had to drop it.
Someone walked across his blurry vision, followed by the sound of drapes being drawn closed. In the softer, easier light, Griffin recognized Bane’s silhouette.
“That better?” asked the general.
Griffin nodded. On his whole body, his head hurt the most.
Bane came to the side of the bed Griffin was lying on. A woman sat on a chair, her Chimeran face round, her black hair cut unusually short. A long swatch of fabric had been unrolled on the sheets in front of her, and on it rested little sachets and pots of powders and herbs. Dirty bandage strips spotted with a rusty color sat in a pile to the side. She gathered everything up, stuffed them all into a bag, drew one long, assessing look down Griffin’s body, and nodded firmly. He, too, glanced downward, noting that he was naked and covered in newly white bandages over a patchwork of wounds. The medicine woman tugged a sheet over him, then left without a word.
“You lost,” Bane said.
No shit. “And Makaha?”
“He won.” Bane gave Griffin a small smile. “You’ve been out for two days.”
Two days?
“Keko?” Griffin asked.
Bane’s smile died. “No word. I want to know what happened.”
Griffin’s eyes stung, but it hurt too much to reach up and wipe away the liquid emotion that leaked from them. All he was able to say was “She is trapped.”
Bane turned and said, toneless, “Chief? He’s awake.”
A chair creaked somewhere Griffin couldn’t see. Then the sound of bare feet padding across a tiled floor, coming closer. The chief appeared, bending over the bed. He still wore a shirt, this time fully buttoned to cover the handprint. The Queen’s rock hung perfectly framed in the V, and it looked dull and unassuming.
He frowned down at Griffin, his eyes deeply troubled. “Can you walk?”
Griffin didn’t think he could even sit up at this point, but he wasn’t about to admit that, so he nodded.
“Then get up,” said the chief, “and come outside. I need to talk to you.”
TWENTY-THREE
Griffin hobbled out of bed, testing the ability of his body and finding nothing broken, though the stiffness made it difficult to walk. The shorts he’d been wearing on his days running through the Hawaiian backcountry had been washed and placed on a chair, though they were so stained and ragged they hardly looked any better. It didn’t matter. He pulled them on and left the room, having to duck beneath the low ceiling beams in the hallway.