Drowning in Fire (7 page)

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 gatherings” 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.

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 . . .”