Drowning in Fire Read online

  As she crossed the garden, Bane’s voice echoed throughout the valley, guiding his warriors in a new series of exercises that practiced fighting at night. She blocked out the sounds as best she could as she padded along the narrow patio toward the back door. Inside, Chief ambled out of the kitchen and made his way to the sitting room on the other side of the glass door from Keko.

  She frowned. Chief was a creature of habit and embraced rituals, so for him not to be up on the front balcony, fruit juice in hand, watching and nodding down at his warriors, made Keko’s skin prickle with a chill. Enough that she had to tap into her inner fire and crank it up.

  Her uncle, her father’s brother, was somewhere in his sixth decade of living but looked only in his fourth. A little softer now but still strong. An imposing figure worthy of his title and too beloved to have been challenged for his position in all his years. That love and respect had kept her from challenging him, too, and now she stewed with regret.

  Keko had been planning on it, however, and Chief had known her challenge was imminent. They’d even discussed it, because when he eventually accepted the challenge and she beat him—because she would have—it meant he was endorsing her as ali’i.

  That would never happen now. There was only her name and her dignity to earn back.

  Inside, an empty-handed Chief shuffled toward the burgundy couch with the hardened, dipped cushions. Something in the way he moved kept Keko riveted to her spot just outside the back door. She crouched, watching through the glass, her movements nothing but a whisper.

  The faint light coming from the kitchen just barely illuminated Chief as he went to the wobbly end table. He paused with his hand on the knob of the single drawer, then slowly opened it. He took something out, but with his back to Keko she couldn’t see what it was. Then he turned around and the shape of it was unmistakable: a tapered candle.

  Chief drew a deep breath—the breath of a Chimeran, the one that used the oxygen from the atmosphere to stoke their fire magic inside, the one that expanded their special ribs. It was odd, though, because the depth of a breath indicated the level of magic you wanted to conjure, and you didn’t need to take that deep of a breath to create the small flame needed to light a candle. Yet Chief’s chest expanded like he was calling forth a great inferno needed at the height of battle.

  His lips parted. His chest deflated. The magic escaped his body.

  And no flame came out.

  Not a single spark. Not even a curl of smoke. Nothing.

  The mighty Chimeran ali’i stumbled backward as though struck. His calves hit the couch and he collapsed onto it, his normally erect and powerful body a boneless mass. His chest, empty of magic and fire, heaved. He lifted the candle to eye level and stared at the wick as though willing it to light with his mind. Then he bent at the waist and shoved a hand underneath the couch cushions, removing something hidden. Keko couldn’t tell what it was until a tiny burst of hot, gold light briefly illuminated the room.

  A match. There were matches in the Chimeran ali’i’s house.

  Keko couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. The earth could have opened up behind her and she wouldn’t have known.

  Chief touched the match to the candle, and the newly lit wick threw his distressed, hopeless, and fearful expression into terrifying focus.

  Still crouching, still in a daze, Keko lost her balance. Her body tilted forward before she realized it, and her hand shot out, catching the door. The latch was faulty and the door creaked open. Only an inch or so, but enough for the sound to slice through the silent house.

  Chief’s head snapped up. The matchbook disappeared behind his back. He jumped to his feet.

  Keko rose, too. She pushed the door open wide and ventured into the cool interior, lit by the dancing flame of the single candle. Another rare wave of goose bumps rolled across her skin, but this time she couldn’t find the focus to reach for her fire and erase them.

  The door clicked shut behind her. Chief was struggling to breathe, the sound ragged and nervous.

  “Uncle?”

  “Kekona.” His hand shook and the candle flame jumped. He turned to set the taper into a holder on the end table, and the table’s uneven legs rattled on the tile floor. When he faced her again, she barely recognized him. Such terror deepened the creases along his forehead and strained the lines around his mouth. He seemed pale, the silver along his temples pronounced.

  She advanced slowly into the room. “You have no fire.”

  He took a step back. Never had she seen him retreat. Not when facing a warrior, and certainly never when confronted by one of the disgraced.

  “What happened to your fire?” She heard the rise in her voice, the demand, but did not try to rein it in.

  His panicked eyes flicked to the door at her back.

  “I came alone,” she said. That made him even more apprehensive and it empowered her to move closer. “In the name of the Queen, what’s going on? What happened to your fire?”

  He licked his lips, and a single whispered word dropped pitifully from them. “Gone.”

  “Gone.” The word reverberated inside her. She would mark his claim as impossible if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

  “It’s still inside.” His voice came out stressed and thin, and she barely recognized it. “I can feel it, but I can’t reach it. Can’t call it out. It doesn’t listen to me.” He touched the candle flame and it danced on his fingers like it should, then he blew it out. “But I can still manipulate it.”

  A great wave of realization crashed into her. “When? For how long?” When he didn’t answer she lifted her voice to the level she used to use as general. “Was it gone when you denounced me for inciting a false war in front of the whole clan?” Still no answer. “Was it gone when you sent me down to the Common House and made Bane general?”

  He held up a hand, but the gesture was weak. “The day . . .” his voice cracked and he cleared his throat to get it back. “The day Cat Heddig came here and exposed your affair with that Ofarian was the last day I used it. The last day . . .”

  Two months ago. And all this time he’d been commanding the Chimerans. Pretending that he was still the most powerful one of them, still the most respectable. Playing the hypocrite as he stripped her of title and pride.

  “Did you know something was wrong then? That something was happening to you?”

  “Yes.”

  Keko whirled, snatching a vase holding a mostly dead flower from a nearby table. She hurled the vase against the wall, just to the right of the ali’i’s head. It exploded into a million pieces, water shooting across the plaster. The acrid odor of decay plumed around them. Chief didn’t budge, didn’t even flinch.

  “How have you hid this?” Her throat stung with the volume. “How?”

  He swung the matchbook around from where he’d been hiding it behind his body, looked at it for a moment, then tossed it to the couch. “I’m not the only one.”

  Keko blinked. “What?”

  “I mean”—and the harsh, slow tones of the ali’i returned—“that I am not alone. There are other Chimerans like me. Others whose fire has died.”

  She glanced at the matches, thinking that some other Chimeran would have had to have smuggled them into the valley. Someone else had to have known about the ali’i.

  “It’s some sort of disease, Keko. I don’t know why it strikes, or who it will hit, but the numbers are . . . growing.”

  She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. “A disease. And you’ve been able to hide this how?”

  He looked to the candle, and then down at his fingers that had held the flame. “There are some Chimerans, healthy ones, who know and who . . . help us. Give us flame when we need it.”

  “Cover for you.” A subtle, secret passing of fire from one hand to another. And it had worked. “Who else? Who else is afflicted?”
/>   He shook his head. “You can take me down, but I won’t betray the rest.”

  What a fucking deceiver. “So you’ll protect and hide others exactly like you, but throw your general, your own family, into the Common House.”

  “Two completely different things. You made a terrible mistake. And you broke kapu.”

  “I know what I did. But at least I’m admitting it.” She advanced toward him. One step, then another. “Who. Else.”

  Chief just shook his head.

  “I see. So in keeping their secret and by not sending them to the Common House, by not exposing their ultimate weakness, they protect you, too.”

  His silence was answer enough.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She waved a hand. “I don’t want them.”

  I want you. I want to be ali’i.

  “It’s been going on longer than you think,” he said. “Longer than I’d imagined. Maybe going back to the Queen. This thing . . . it’s not new.”

  It was horrifying information.

  It was useful information.

  She started to back toward the door, her bare feet going toe-heel, toe-heel on the tile that now felt like ice.

  “What will you do?” Chief started to follow. When she did not respond he cried out, much louder, “What will you do?”

  She looked to the bank of smudged windows overlooking her aunt’s dead garden. The moon hadn’t risen yet and it was so very dark outside. It was the same within.

  “I came here,” she said, “to actually beg you to give me another chance. That’s not what I want now.”

  “What do you want? Do you want me to accept your challenge? Do you want to be ali’i?”

  Her life’s most precious dream, wrapped up and handed to her.

  Except that Chimerans never wanted anything that couldn’t be fought for and won with sweat and power and magic, and this, to her surprise, was no different.

  Her gaze found the small black lava rock that he wore on a rope around his neck—the very stone that the great Queen had picked up the day she’d grounded her canoe on Hawaii and declared it her people’s new home. Keko had wanted to wear that rock her whole life, to feel its scratch on her skin and its weight against her chest. To know the Queen’s power and hold her blessing.

  Looking at it now, Keko thought something entirely different, and she stood there for a long time, trying to wrap her head around it. Trying to figure out what it meant.

  The great Queen had had a purpose in bringing her Polynesian people to this string of islands over a thousand years ago—a worthy purpose. A heroic purpose. The first Chimerans had loved her for it, and had followed her willingly across the ocean. Keko knew now that she, too, needed a purpose. She wanted her race to look up to her not because it was required, but because it was desired. She would not get that through begging. She would not get that through blackmail or trickery.

  The only way was to earn it.

  Yes, she could challenge Chief right now, and she would win his position, but it would be false. Yes, she could expose his lies, but that would also expose other innocents who would in turn be cast out, and where was the honor in that? She would assume power over a stricken people, carrying with her this terrible secret of their affliction. How would ascending to ali’i now do anything to help them?

  When she was ali’i, she wanted power and glory for all her kinsmen, not less for others through no fault of their own. She wanted strength, not scandal.

  The lava rock moved on Chief’s chest as he breathed. Waiting for her to speak. To decide.

  Every night since Keko’s fall, she had prayed hard to the great Queen for her blessing, for answers, for explanation, for a way out. And tonight, it had finally been given.

  “What will you do?” Chief pleaded.

  Personal revenge was a single sentence away. Except that rash, emotional decisions had destroyed her in the first place. She’d done enough damage. Now she needed to heal.

  The Queen—through the events of this night—had finally given Keko the answer. And Keko embraced the sacrifice that it required.

  She lifted clear eyes to the ali’i, feeling absolutely sure of herself for the first time in months. Maybe years. “Thank you, Uncle.”

  Turning, she went for the door.

  “For what?” he shouted at her back. “For what?”

  He couldn’t come after her, she knew, or he’d risk the clan knowing he’d allowed her audience. Let him wonder. Let him fear. It was powerful fuel.

  She slipped back into the night, the answer she’d wanted and all Chimeran power in her hands.

  TWO

  “I don’t like it, sir.”

  Griffin hated when David called him sir in private, but of course that’s why David did it: to show his ultimate displeasure with his leader and best friend when no one else was around.

  Griffin stared down his head of security. No room for friendship right now. The two men had managed to draw solid lines between personal and professional, and it had served them well in the five years of Griffin’s Ofarian leadership.

  “Don’t have a choice,” Griffin replied. “The Senatus premier invited me back to a gathering after three years. Me. Not an Ofarian contingent. I’m not walking in there with my cabinet behind me and a row of soldiers along the flanks.”

  David made a frustrated face and pinched his lips between his fingers, staring out the windshield of the car in which they sat on a sloped South San Francisco neighborhood street.

  “Not after we just narrowly dodged a war with the Chimerans,” Griffin added, much quieter. “Not after what happened the last time the Senatus invited me to sit around their fire.”

  Thinking of fire made him think of Keko, as always. He shook his head at his lap, still unable to believe how she’d suddenly reappeared in his life two months ago . . . and then had disappeared again, leaving him unexpectedly shredded.

  Three years apart from her, he discovered, hadn’t cut into any of his want.

  Griffin unfolded himself from the car and David followed, pushing out from behind the steering wheel. “Fine. You’ll come with me,” Griffin said over the roof. “Gwen’ll meet us there. That’s it. That’s all I’m bringing.”

  David ran a hand through his curly blond hair and nodded tightly, knowing there would be no further discussion on the matter. “I’ll make sure you’re safe, that all the roads to the gathering are clear.”

  Their eyes met, smudging that line between personal and professional. “I know you will.”

  David jogged around the hood and hopped up onto the sidewalk. The mild winter day was punctuated by music streaming from an open window. A Primary man washed his car in his driveway. A couple walked their mutt, heading for the two Ofarian men. The working class neighborhood was where Griffin had grown up, and it smelled and felt the same. Wonderfully the same.

  He let the couple and the dog pass by before saying to David, “They’re throwing me a peace offering. As they should. The Chimeran chief owes me a massive apology, I owe them a first-person account of Keko’s capture, and then we’ll be back on even footing. I hope.”

  David grinned. “So you’re saying it’s good that your ex-lover has a jealous, angry streak?”

  Griffin laughed ruefully, and it hurt. Thinking of Keko usually did.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what happened three years ago?”

  David had been with Griffin in Colorado two months back when they’d discovered Keko being held captive by one of their own, and the revelation of Griffin’s previous liaison with the Chimeran woman had come to light. But Griffin had never spoken of the awful misunderstanding that final night three years ago around the Senatus bonfire. It would only undermine his already tenuous position among his own cabinet and his Ofarian detractors, who still possessed a powerful voice.

  An image of the mighty Maka
ha, reduced to sagging in the snow and dirt, half his arm black, his mouth open in a scream, assaulted Griffin’s memory. Followed quickly by one of Keko, and her horror and shock and disgust. And then her back as she’d turned away.

  “Maybe someday,” Griffin replied.

  After the incident, he’d appealed to the Senatus many times, but his stance that Makaha had attacked first fell on deaf ears. So he’d given up trying to make contact, but had not given up on his dreams. He still desperately wanted to be part of the Senatus, but he realized now that he’d rushed the process before. He’d barged in waving his opinions like flags, but after witnessing their fractured system and lack of true communication, he knew now that he needed a new approach. He just didn’t know what that was.

  David may have been more right than his joke intended. The chance to move forward with the Senatus had risen from the ashes of any possible future with Keko. Ash. Yeah, that’s what they were now. Griffin tried to see that as a good thing.

  “Will Kekona be there?”

  Griffin shrugged, feigning ignorance by checking his watch, but he remembered all too well what Cat had told him after she’d returned from Hawaii two months ago: Keko’s generalship had been given to Bane. He also knew that that action would’ve destroyed her. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  As he caught David watching him, he knew that no amount of nonchalance would fool his friend, but that David would also never press for information Griffin wasn’t willing to give.

  Griffin peered across the street to the picture window of the second-floor apartment, alive with the flicker from the TV. “You sure you want to sit out here tonight? Call up Hansen to be on watch. This is beneath you.” He said that last sentence with a grin.

  “Nah. I’d rather handle it myself. Kelse is working late anyway.”

  Griffin understood. Back when his main job had been the safety of Gwen Carroway, the woman everyone had thought would be the next Ofarian leader, her protection had been his life. He’d hated handing over the responsibility to anyone else.