Drowning in Fire Page 5

  Her rage came off her in pulsing, sour waves of heat. She was trembling, her hand shaking as she jabbed a finger into the trees. “What the fuck happened back there?”

  He gasped. “I could ask the same of the premier. Or your chief. Or Makaha.”

  She recoiled. “You attacked him!”

  Icy wind raked through his jacket and clothing, scraping at his already chilled skin. “I what? No—”

  “You are never allowed to use magic as offense during the Senatus.”

  Griffin threw his bag to the ground. “Keko, I didn’t attack. Makaha did.”

  “No. He didn’t—”

  “I saw what was coming, what he was about to do to me, and I threw the ice as a defense.”

  “Defense?” She laughed, that kind of hysterical laughter that often partnered with disbelief. With hatred.

  “Fire was coming out of him. I saw it in his mouth. I saw it in his hand. He was coming for me, about to throw it at me. I will swear by it until the day I die.”

  “He birthed fire to throw it into the sky. It’s a sign of frustration and warning among my people.”

  “Well, maybe if you’d actually told me all that instead of fucking me, none of this would have happened.”

  That hit home. She opened her mouth, her lips ready for a retort. Only there would be none because she knew he was right.

  She slowly started to back away. “You destroyed him, Griffin,” she whispered, and her voice was broken again.

  He cleared his throat. “He will live.”

  But she was shaking her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “So tell me this time!”

  She glared. “He’s a defeated warrior now. Disfigured. Disgraced. When we take him back to the stronghold he will lose his warrior status. He will lose his home and have to go live in the Common House with all the others who are no longer worthy. He will serve everyone above him. He will have no sexual contact. He will lose his familial rights. And I will no longer be able to have any contact with my best friend.”

  “Jesus.” The Primary invective came shockingly easy, the harsh whisper swirling between them. But she just stared at him. Challenged him. “Great stars, Keko, that’s barbaric. It’s medieval.”

  “It’s Chimeran. It’s how it’s done.”

  The wind tossed her loose hair around her head. Griffin took a brave chance, moving closer. “I think you know me better than this. It’s only been a few days, but I believe you know me. You know how much the Senatus means to me, how much you”—he licked his lips, cutting short that sentence. “Please understand my side, that I was protecting myself against an attack. Please. I’m asking you to take me back there and give me the opportunity to tell your chief that. To explain myself to the premier.”

  The formal speak sounded insincere, even to his ears. It sounded like Griffin the politician, the leader. Not Griffin the Ofarian man.

  Fire consumed her eyes, and it was dangerous and explosive. “You want me to take your side? To defend you?”

  “I would like you to come with me as I explain my side. They won’t let me back in without you. I’m asking for your help.”

  The silence between them grew more and more dense. “Nothing you can say to them will matter. Because to my people, Makaha no longer matters. It would be like speaking about a ghost.”

  The loss in her eyes was too great to be measured. She was right. An apology wouldn’t mean a thing to anyone involved. Griffin would have to bear the regret on his own and figure out a new way to make things right.

  “So it’s over?” He wasn’t talking about the Senatus.

  Her expression was painfully blank. “Yes.”

  Then she turned and disappeared back into the forest.

  ONE

  Present day

  Griffin’s jacket had lost its scent.

  For the millionth time, Keko wondered why she’d kept it these past two months, this tangible proof that she’d been wrong and Griffin had been telling the truth. And for the millionth time since he’d found her being held captive in that Colorado garage and had given her the jacket to cover up her nakedness, she held the jacket at eye level and remembered how his body had filled it out.

  The black all-weather coat lined with the zippers and pockets of a soldier now smelled like any other article of clothing in the Big Island’s Chimeran valley, but if she closed her eyes, she could inhale and recall his scent.

  There was no point in keeping it any longer. She knew very well what she’d done. The consequences of her actions had transformed her world. She didn’t need to be constantly reminded of what she’d lost. Or whom.

  With a fling of her arm, she tossed Griffin’s jacket over the cliff on which she stood. The warm Hawaiian wind caught it, flinging it about, but Keko easily hit it with her fire, the spout of flame from between her lips striking true. The jacket caught, dancing on the air as it burned, as it fell down, down, down, to flutter as ash into the ocean waves far below.

  Take it back, she thought at the water, at Griffin. It’s yours.

  “There you are.”

  The male voice came from behind, drifting up from lower down the slope that dropped off into the Chimeran’s hidden valley. Shading her eyes with her hand, Keko peered over the ragged face of rock she’d climbed to get up to this spot. Makaha stood where the winding trail ended abruptly, his face turned upward, the hair that was now too long brushing his shoulders.

  “Do you need me?” she called down.

  He grinned, and the sight of it hurt her heart. Three years after Griffin had taken half of Makaha’s right arm in a storm of ice, and she was finally able to speak with her oldest friend on equal ground again, the disparity of their stations and status within the clan erased.

  Because she’d fallen just as far down as he.

  “Hold on,” she told him. “I’ll come to you.”

  He couldn’t climb, after all.

  The rock tore into her fingertips and toes as she scrabbled her way down, faster than what was probably careful. On the last few feet, she shoved away from the rock and leaped, dropping into the dirt right in front of the man who used to be one of the most ferocious warriors of the race. Makaha. Fierce. He’d been named well, but Griffin had snatched away that meaning, turning it into a joke.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Makaha, hoping against hope that it might be something of worth. Something she could use to get her status and dignity back.

  His grin saddened but didn’t die, because he knew very well how she felt. “Nothing. The final drums for dinner came and went and I knew you hadn’t eaten all day. If you hurry there might be something left.”

  Scrambling for scraps after the ali’i and the warriors and the rest of the Chimeran people had eaten their fill. This was her life now.

  She pressed a hand to her hollow stomach. She barely ate these days, but she didn’t really miss it. She didn’t need that massive amount of energy anymore. Not for beating clothes against rocks in the stream. Not for dragging garbage to the trucks to be hauled up and out of the valley.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice hollow. “Okay.”

  Makaha didn’t move. The stump of an arm gestured to her spot up on the cliff. “Was that what I think it was? That fire?”

  She thought of the jacket’s ash, floating on, and then mixing into the waves, and said nothing.

  Makaha stared hard at her. He’d caught her once, a little more than a month ago, with the jacket draped around her shoulders, her nose buried in the collar. But he’d left her to her own grief, her own regrets, her own anger. Makaha’s thoughts about Griffin were his own, and rightfully so. They’d never spoken directly of the Ofarian who’d hurt them both in different ways.

  With a terse nod down the slope Makaha said, “Come on. Let’s go be pitiful together.”

  He could jo
ke because he’d accepted his status. Moved on. To Keko, the very idea seemed foreign.

  Yet she followed him down into the valley, turning her back on the myriad blues and greens of the ocean that surrounded her island home. Water, water, everywhere. She would never be able to escape him.

  The ground flattened out, a ring of dense foliage surrounding the great meadow that was the crux of the Chimeran stronghold. White boarded homes with tin roofs climbed the sides of the valley, their foggy windows looking toward the water in the distance, their yards little more than patches of dirt. A giant canopy made of mismatched waterproof fabrics sewn together stretched over a mass of picnic tables at the far end, the adjacent cooking fires now reduced to smoking embers. And in between Keko and the satiation of her growling stomach stood a mass of Chimeran warriors.

  A flood of brown-skinned fighters streamed onto the meadow, forming lines along the green to prepare for their evening drills and exercises and prayers to the Queen. Bane appeared, half a head taller than any other, and started to meander among his men and women, hands on hips, assessing with his trademark frown.

  “You know what,” she told Makaha, who’d stopped next to her behind a fountain of giant banana tree leaves, “I’m not hungry after all.”

  Her friend heaved a sigh, but it was one of commiseration. Maybe he’d gotten to the point where he could walk in front of the warriors he’d once been a part of, but as their so recently disgraced former general, she could not.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked him.

  He jutted his only thumb toward the Common House, the one-story building with the seemingly never-ending row of cracked and crooked windows that sat in perennial shadow. Almost two months of having to sleep in there, and she’d never, ever get used to it.

  “Runners brought in boxes of clothing today,” he said. “I’m sorting them before the sun goes down.”

  How long had it taken him, Keko wondered, to shake off the shame? To have been able to say that without cringing? Because her shame still clung desperately to her back, its claws sharp and deep and painful.

  “Can I help?” It took a few tries to get it out.

  He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Sure. I’ll show you what to do.”

  They ducked into the cool, dim Common House. Long lines of grass-woven mats covered the floor. She didn’t look to the anonymous spot she’d been given right in the center of all the others. The only way she found it was when she came in late at night and all the other disgraced or unworthy Chimerans were snoring. Hers was the only mat without a body. And it was just a place to crash, nothing more.

  She tried not to think about the hammock she’d strung up in her house on the bluff, the comfortable, knotted, creaking thing with the perfect view of the valley and the ocean beyond. The house and hammock that belonged to Bane now.

  But every now and then, when a piece of grass from her Common House mat broke loose and scratched her skin, she let her mind drift to the feathertop mattress at that hotel in Utah, and the man who had pressed her body deeper into it. Then, just as quickly, she forced her mind back to the cold, hard reality at hand.

  The back corner of the Common House had been stacked precariously with leaning cardboard boxes stamped with the name of the fake church charity Chimerans used to get donations from unsuspecting Primaries. Makaha grabbed a box, using his stump to balance it, and dumped the mass of colorful, wrinkled hand-me-downs onto the cracked cement floor.

  “Kids’ clothing over there,” he said, pointing to a pile. “Men’s by the door. Women’s just opposite.”

  He started work right away, but Keko just watched him, a massive lump in her throat and a terrible tremble shooting through her limbs. She couldn’t move, was absolutely frozen. His piles swirled into meaningless colors, his repetitive motions hammering into her brain. Frustration and humiliation pounded their awful little fists against the backs of her eyes and clogged up her chest.

  No. She would not cry. But she also knew she couldn’t handle this. Doing what Makaha had been doing day in and day out for three years, and doing it without emotion. This was not her. It would not ever be her.

  Keko’s feet started to back away before she even told them to. When they hit a grass mat, she turned and ran down the rows, the exit doorway a slanted rectangle of dying light in the distance.

  Makaha didn’t call after her, but his pity as he watched her go was like a knife in the back. He knew she would have to come back eventually. So did she, and that made her run even faster.

  She burst out of the Common House and plunged into the dark under the mango trees. She didn’t stop there, but went deeper and deeper into the vegetation that surrounded the central meadow. She didn’t stop until she was truly alone, bracing her hands on her knees and taking deep draws of wet Hawaiian air. It would rain that night. More water.

  Griffin had taken it all—Makaha’s life, her life.

  No, that little voice reminded her, as it had every day since her secret affair with Griffin had been revealed to a select few in her clan, and Chief had learned the truth behind Keko’s planned war against the Ofarians. You did this to yourself.

  When Keko had been captured and kept prisoner in Colorado, an Ofarian had been behind it, and she’d assumed it had been done on Griffin’s order—a desperate, last-ditch attempt to weasel his way back into the Senatus. She’d planned an attack on him to retaliate, but she’d been wrong, and her war had been exposed for the awful, messy heartbreak that it was. That was what had stripped her of being general. That was truly why Chief had sent her to the Common House.

  It was her fault. It was all her fault. She was such an asshole, to keep dragging Griffin into it, for blaming him. She wasn’t here, hiding in the bushes from the people she used to command, because of something he did. She had to get over it. To acknowledge all that she’d done.

  She had to fix it. And she had to act soon.

  A great shout—a chorus that simultaneously chilled her and sent volcanic-level heat through her veins—shot through the valley. Hundreds of Chimeran voices, low and sharp, full of passion and fire and love for the land and the magic, rose up as one. She knew the chant by heart, had learned it as a toddler, and then led her warriors in it nightly—as Bane was doing now. Though she was still standing beneath the canopy of leaves, her body was mentally going through ghost motions, and making the companion movements to the warriors’ call to action: the slap of the elbows and thighs, the stomp of feet, the lift of palms to the sky, and the power and confidence that came with it.

  When it was over, when the chant ended on a terrific roar that shook the leaves around her, Keko released the tension in her muscles one by one. She took a great Chimeran inhale and felt the fire magic surge inside her. Its presence always managed to bring some calm. Inching forward, she parted the branches and gazed out onto the meadow.

  Bane had his men and women in the traditional lines, the best, most proven along the front with him, those who were still in training and had yet to issue a challenge at the back. The last line swerved crooked just a hair, and Keko had to fight the urge to jog out and smack the offenders into straightness. They were Bane’s now.

  General Bane, the “long-awaited child.” General Bane, who’d been her greatest motivation and the hardest competitor her entire life. It killed her to see him where she belonged, but completely destroyed her to know that she could stalk out onto the meadow right now and issue a challenge to any one of those younglings in the back row, and they wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t be required to take it. Battles for status were mutual, and no one would ever agree to fight her, the general who’d tried to start a war over false reasons.

  The general who’d violated kapu by getting involved with a water elemental. Her heart, the traitorous organ, turned sour and huge inside her chest.

  If only she’d told Griffin about the “no battle magic during Senatus gath
erings” rule.

  If only he hadn’t destroyed her best friend, and then asked her to take his side against her own people.

  If only she could have forgotten what he’d awakened inside her.

  If only he had actually been behind her capture.

  If.

  If.

  If.

  She was fucking sick of ifs. Chimerans weren’t made like that. They acted. They fought. She was a warrior. Period. And she would fight tonight—not with fire or fists, but with words.

  Beyond the lines of warriors who had now paired off and were working on stretching and strengthening drills, rose the ali’i’s house, a lone light coming from the kitchen window. Chief’s thick silhouette moved behind the glass.

  Yes, she’d made some pretty hefty mistakes, but Chief had been the one to strip her life away. And he was the only one with the power to give a portion of it back. She started toward the house. Not across the field where the warriors would see her, but around the perimeter, sticking to the cover of the trees and vines, and relying on the deepening dark of twilight.

  It was dangerous to beg. It was shameful. But she didn’t have any further to fall. She’d struck the bottom and bore the bruises to show for it. She had absolutely nothing to lose.

  The garden behind the ali’i’s house was barricaded by a low stone wall, overgrown with neglect, and cool and dark at this time when day merged with night. Her uncle had been ali’i so long that Keko remembered the placement of each paving stone, having skipped across them as a little girl whenever she’d come to the house for personal lessons. Her aunt had lived long enough to see Keko best Bane for the generalship, but after her aunt had died, the house had fallen into the same poor, weather-worn state as the rest of the valley.

  That’s what happened, after all, when a people cut themselves off from the modern world.

  Chief usually drank a glass of fresh fruit juice on his upper terrace in the evenings, watching the practice of the warriors he commanded. That’s where he would be now, and when he came downstairs after the sun had set, she would surprise him. And she would make her final argument.