Chief released the grip on his shirt and let the wind flap it away to a leaf-strewn corner. With one hand he yanked off the Queen’s lava rock necklace and held it in a tight fist, the black stone dangling over the heads of the angry crowd. “I abdicate!” he screamed.
Bane’s head wrenched around to look at the chief. Griffin jumped down the steps two at a time to take the other side of the general, holding back the crowd who demanded answers by shouting Keko’s name.
“I abdicate!” Chief thundered. “Be calm!”
Even in the melee, the chief’s words carried. They took several minutes to sink in as they were relayed back through the crowd. A few more minutes passed before the Chimerans actually did calm, the waves of people gradually settling down like the sea after a storm. The storm clouds lingered, however, as all eyes again shifted to the terrace where the chief looked down upon them.
All Griffin could see was Keko’s handprint, and he knew he wasn’t alone.
“You’re saying that Kekona Kalani has touched the Source?” a woman somewhere off to the left cried out.
Chief dropped his arm, the lava rock hitting his leg, though he didn’t let it go. “Yes. She has.”
A new murmur traveled through the Chimeran crowd, this one filled with wonder and positivity. So similar to the reaction Keko had received from Bane and Ikaika and every other one of the Chimerans she’d cured—the reaction she’d shut down and refused to acknowledge for the sake of keeping their secret.
“Where is she?” another voice called out. And then another. And another. Because of course no one would have realized before that she—a disgraced untouchable—was not among them.
“She is . . .” Chief gathered himself. “She has left the valley.”
Someone else, someone daring, cried out, “How can we believe you, if she’s not here?”
Griffin’s throat dried up. He wondered what the chief would tell them, if he’d tell the truth about agreeing to give up Keko to the Children.
Chief abandoned looking at his people and instead turned his head to find Griffin. The Chimeran opened his mouth, his chest expanding. Griffin thought he might be reaching for his fire—and by the depth of the breath, perhaps all his fire—but instead only sound came out.
A single name—an intense plea in the deepest bass register—reverberated across the valley: “Aya!”
The Chimerans glanced at each other in confusion, having no context or knowledge of that name.
But Griffin gasped, the pump of his blood stopping completely, then slamming back into motion so fast he went light-headed. Hope and trepidation and disappointment and love filled his being.
Way out in the grass, past the very last line of fire elementals, came a rumble—a distinct rumble he knew came from within the earth. That sound and this feeling inside him had always preceded an attack. Or devastating heartache.
Griffin peeled away from Bane and bounced back up the steps, skidding to a halt next to the chief again. He whirled around to face the sea of Chimerans and stared far into the distance, over their heads, to where a flat patch of field churned as though being dug up from underneath.
One by one, the whole Chimeran clan responded to the strange noise and vibration, turning around to watch. They fanned out, warriors jogging toward the scene, fire flowing to their fingertips in preparation for the unknown.
“Please,” the chief called, but no one seemed to hear him except Griffin.
To the soundtrack of Chimeran exclamations, Aya’s compact human body morphed from the rising mound of rock, dirt, and grass. She made no threatening gestures and did not speak, and when the Chimerans realized that she was one small woman against thousands of fire-wielding warriors, they started to settle. Their sounds of fear switched to those of surprise and awe, for it was clear no one had ever seen an earth elemental.
And then Keko appeared behind Aya.
The black haired beauty slowly unfolded herself from a crouch, standing a foot taller than the Daughter of Earth. A rising chorus of recognition saturated the air. Keko set her body in a position of power—legs apart, shoulders back, arms ending in loose fists. This far away, Griffin could not make out her features. Could not tell what expression she wore, how well she’d been cared for, what she’d experienced Within.
He could, though, see the peaceful white glow of the Source emanating from her chest. And so could every other Chimeran.
Keko stepped out from behind Aya, and the Daughter let her go. Keko no longer wore the shredded jeans and ripped black T-shirt from the moment of her disappearance, but, oddly, a long, sleeveless, charcoal colored dress with an iridescent shimmer. She lifted her gaze above the openmouthed mass of Chimerans and shot a stare straight to the terrace. To where the chief and Griffin stood side by side. With long, purposeful strides, she came forward, gliding right into the crowd of her people without pause. They parted hurriedly, creating a seam for her to pass through. Some reached for her, their hands dropping or pulling back just before their fingers could skim her skin. Others pressed hands to their mouths and watched her go by with glistening obsidian eyes.
Many others touched their own chests, just as Bane had done when he’d first witnessed the visual proof of Keko’s ethereal power.
The crowd opened before Keko and closed behind Aya as the Daughter followed. As the two women advanced toward the house, the name Kekona created a series of waves across the meadow.
When Keko neared the front, one Chimeran actually did dare to touch her, a palm upon her shoulder, a simple, non-threatening contact. But the Source responded, a sizzle of blue-white zapping the man’s hand. He cried out, his face contorted in pain. When he wrenched his hand away, his palm smoked in a way that Chimeran skin should not.
Keko turned to him in concern. Though Griffin could not hear what she said to the injured man, he could see the compassion in her eyes and the clench of her fingers as she wanted to reach out and comfort him, but could not. At last she continued on through the crowd, the people giving her a wider berth.
“Don’t touch her.” “You can’t touch her,” floated the whispers all around.
Griffin could not believe she was here, Aboveground. He could not believe that the woman he looked at was flesh and magic and real. He’d watched the earth snatch her body and could not believe that anyone not a Son or Daughter would be able to survive below the surface. Yet here she was, a glittering image coming toward him. Did she see the way his chest lurched with every beat of his heart? Could she tell how his fingers were very nearly crumbling the stone balustrade in his attempt to remain still and not rush for her?
She could not, he realized, because she was not looking at him. Her black stare was focused solely on the chief.
The people pressed forward, quieting, as Keko neared the steps. When she reached the bottom step, a tight half-circle formed behind her. With astonishment, Griffin saw that her dress was made of thousands of tiny black lava rocks, all strung together in some invisible manner. All magically reflective. It swung about her legs and grazed the tops of her bare feet. The neck dipped low, openly displaying the magic behind her breastbone.
Ikaika and Bane stepped aside to let her pass. At last she turned her attention to Griffin and his breath caught. Time stopped.
In broad daylight, amidst her entire clan—even under the heavy weight of kapu—he saw what she felt for him. The whole of it, the depth of it, the sheer power of it.
And in that moment he stripped away all of his own restrictions, all his own doubt, and finally let her see his emotion in its entirety, as raw as the magic she carried inside her, far more potent than three little words. She responded with the tiniest of nods—such a testament to her strength and confidence—and turned again to the chief.
“Come here,” she told him.
To Griffin’s amazement—and to the verbal shock of everyone else in the meadow—the chief
obeyed. He skirted around Griffin and descended the stairs. When he came off the last step to stand before Keko on the grass—on even ground with her, at her order—the murmurs of speculation and disorder grew.
Aya came forward, her garment of Hawaiian flowers and greenery flowing in the breeze.
The chief lifted his voice to address the crowd again, though he did not remove his eyes from his niece. “Of her own volition, her own strength, Kekona Kalani hunted and found the Source. She took the magic, the Queen’s treasure, and returned to our valley in secret to heal me. She refused to be acknowledged as Queen because she did not want to compromise me, and when the Children of Earth rose up to demand punishment for her causing a volcanic eruption where the Source was located, Keko accepted the sentence. Even though I am the one who should serve it.”
Keko’s lips parted, her eyes widening ever so slightly.
“Aya, Daughter of Earth,” Chief intoned, “because of my deception and selfishness, because of all that Kekona has done for me and all Chimerans, for her bravery and courage, I demand that I take Kekona’s place.”
A roar went up among the crowd, although Griffin couldn’t tell whether it was in protest or agreement because he was already bounding down the steps. At first his target had been Keko. For a moment it seemed like she might faint, but then at the last second he realized that his Keko was about as far from a fainting woman as one could possibly be, and he shifted his target to Bane and Ikaika. Both men looked ready to spark an uprising, to charge at the chief and throw him into the ground themselves.
Griffin pushed a palm into the general’s chest, holding him back. “This is Keko’s. Let her have this.”
Bane blinked down at Griffin and finally settled back, Ikaika following suit.
“Uncle,” Keko said, her voice as clear as a bell. The sound of it heralded silence across the field.
With a firm nod and the tiniest of smiles—a mixture of pride and resignation and sadness—Chief reached out, took Keko’s hand, and coiled the Queen’s necklace into her palm.
“Thank you,” he said. “One final time.”
Griffin looked to Aya who, inexplicably, was looking back at him. Her green eyes were positively shining with unmistakable satisfaction.
Aya ducked behind the chief. The vines and leaves of her dress snapped out to snake around the chief’s body, covering him foot by foot, masking his dusky skin in waxy green. The last part of him to be covered was Keko’s handprint, the black symbol there for every Chimeran to see.
With a spin of white hair and a great yawning of the earth beneath her feet, Aya dragged the former Chimeran ali’i Within.
TWENTY-FOUR
Keko had to shut her eyes when Aya enveloped her uncle with her magic and the earth swallowed them both. She knew all too well how paralyzing a feeling it was—of being smothered and crushed and blinded without actually dying. You had no control over your body or your movements. You could not scream.
Come to think of it, it was similar to being encased in Griffin’s water bubble beneath the ocean, except when Aya’s magic had released Keko, she’d not been on an island beneath the sun with Griffin fighting at her side. With Aya, she’d been spit out into a deep, dank cave lit only by scant glowing rocks and filled with only the thinnest amount of air. Sight without true seeing, breathing without truly living. Down there, the sounds were unnervingly foreign, the comings and goings of the half-formed Children even more so. Sustenance had been a chalky block of tasteless nothing, meant to keep her body functional but nothing more.
What had been almost three days Aboveground had felt like three years Within.
Keko had endured it because she believed she deserved it. She’d endured it because she’d resigned herself to her fate and wanted to spare Griffin the blame.
Until the moment when Aya had finally come to her, after being left so long alone in the dark, and told her that the chief wished to take Keko’s place.
At first Keko had refused, but then Aya had told her something extraordinary and confidential. “I want nothing more than for Griffin to lead the Senatus,” Aya had said, “and he needs you by his side to gain his seat.”
“He doesn’t need me for that,” Keko had replied. “He told me his goals have changed, that he wants to rethink things.” That had been difficult to realize, even harder to say. “And they won’t let him in now anyway.”
“The new Air delegate is progressive and open. I belong to humanity above the Children now, and I support Griffin’s ideas for integration. If your uncle is no longer the chief, if you return Aboveground and take his place, you will send him to serve his own punishment for the way he sabotaged you. You will also be able to help Griffin achieve what he wants by you leading the Chimerans, which you’ve always wanted to do anyway. As Senatus delegate you can vote Griffin in. Can’t you see? He needs what you can do for your people, Keko. He needs you.”
So with Griffin as the carrot, and her uncle’s shocking turnaround, Keko had finally agreed to the exchange.
Coming back to the surface, she didn’t know which was harder: the physical, claustrophobic travel within the Children’s magic; walking through the sea of her kinsmen and sensing their awe and wonder; or witnessing her once-beloved uncle being dragged Within, into hellish imprisonment.
She wondered if she’d ever find the strength to enter an enclosed space again.
When the sounds of the earth magic silenced and the shocked cries of the Chimerans died off, Keko finally opened her eyes. Her uncle was gone. So was Aya.
Griffin stood at the top of the terrace steps, his love in his eyes. He bore many new injuries, and she wondered and feared what had happened. She longed to go to him, but there were greater things she had to address first, and she reluctantly gave him her back.
Every single one of her kinsmen stared at her. Expectant. Unsure. Frightened. Hopeful. Wonderstruck.
When she’d risen from the earth, the Source magic had been returned to her, and again burned lovely and hot and immense in her chest. She’d missed it, and now it seemed to be responding to the gathered presence of her people.
The string attached to the Queen’s rock dug into her fingers, though the thing was not remotely heavy. She’d only ever looked at the rock, had never touched it, instead waiting for the day when she could wrap her hand around it as ali’i and feel its little sharp edges scrape the skin on her chest.
Lifting the necklace now to eye level, she let it dangle, looking into the cause and price and reward of her quest. Her day had finally come.
A Chimeran man, buried somewhere in the crush of the crowd, called out, “Ali’i! My ali’i!”
Someone else picked up the cry, then another, until it was one big long word being volleyed about from one end of the field to the other—a demand from her people to drape the necklace around her head and take what was hers. A unanimous show of support. She had not issued a formal challenge in the Chimeran sense, but in their eyes she’d already earned the position.
The necklace had been granted to her, her uncle had admitted to his wrongdoings, and she was Aboveground again. With Griffin.
Turning, she slowly went up the steps, the gown swaying against her lower legs. She trapped Griffin’s eyes with her own as she ascended toward him. She saw the pure emotion on his face and heard the echo of the three massive words he’d said before the earth and Aya had taken her away.
Stretching out a hand, she touched his face, fire against water. Her power sparked blue-white against his skin, and the crowd gasped. Griffin gave her a beautiful smile and reached out to touch her in return.
His cool palm pressed over the glow on her chest, and the Source inside her hummed from the counterpresence of his magic. She smiled back at him, for all her people to see.
Then she stepped away and went to the balustrade, to the spot in which her uncle had stood so many times over the years to ad
dress the people. The cries of “ali’i” only got stronger. She had expected this. And since she’d been eleven years old, she’d wanted this.
So it was in a sort of dreamlike state that she raised both palms to the crowd and said into the ensuing silence, “I am Kekona Kalani. And I am not your ali’i.”
A rumble of confusion swept through the Chimerans, which quickly shifted to a thunder of near outrage. Griffin stood too far to one side and she couldn’t see his reaction, but she knew without having to witness it how those thick eyebrows she loved so much were drawn together. How he was probably positioning himself closer to protect her from an angry mob.
There would be no need.
Lifting her palms and voice even higher, she added, “I am Kekona Kalani. And I . . . am your Queen!”
This time the response came on a delay. A delay filled with a great gush of air, the collective intake of breath, followed by a rousing, deafening roar. The space above the Chimeran heads became dotted with bursts of jubilant flame, and the earth seemed to vibrate again, this time from the force of thousands of stamping feet.
One person remained still, however, and it was to her brother she turned. Bane wore the same reverent look he’d given her on that rainy coastal road when he’d first seen the Source inside her. Only now it was paired with a smile. When she nodded to him, he gave her a deep bow in response.
“I bear the Queen’s treasure,” she said when the whoops and flames had died down, “and I share it with you. I am Chimeran, made of powerful blood from across the sea and magic gifted from the heavens. I am Chimeran, and I know honor, for I’ve lived under its rules all my life. I know what it means to be worthy, and I know why we fight for such recognition every day.”
A new set of cheers went up.
“I can picture myself standing among you, either in the front line as your former general, and also at the far back, as someone who once misled you and had to pay the price. I have been in every place within Chimeran society. I know what it means to abuse power, to fight for yourself, to accept punishment, and also to learn from it. That is what I bring you. An eye and a mind shaped and formed by each and every one of you, and I promise you that because of this, I will forever be accessible.”
Drowning in Fire Page 35
