Drowning in Fire (22 page)

“But . . . what does it
mean
? How am I supposed to figure this out?”

Griffin’s knitted brow smoothed and he slowly rose to standing. “I think I know.”

She grabbed his arm above the elbow. “You do? Tell me.”

He tore his gaze away from the lights and looked at her with frightening calm.

“It’s a star map,” he said.

Her grip on him fell away and she whirled back to the prayer, trying to see what he did. “A star map? How do you know?”

He just looked at her. And looked. “Because I know the stars. Every single one of them.”

Their conversation from last night came roaring back.

“It seems to me,” he said, coming to her side, his hand waving just above the floating pinpricks of light, “that if the Chimerans came from the stars, too, in a way, that the stars would be the ones to guide you in the end. Maybe they have something to offer your people as well, not just the Ofarians.”

His words were drifting around in her head, bouncing off her desperation and adding to her confusion. “But what am I
looking
at?”

He pointed to the glowing blue-white spot on the figure’s chest. “That’s the Source. Positioned under certain stars, at certain angles right now. It would have been a different configuration for the Queen, all those years ago. Maybe back then, since she used the stars to guide her people across the ocean, she knew how to read them.”

“I . . .” It was too conceptual for her, too outside of any way of thinking she’d ever been exposed to, and it wasn’t clicking in her head. She turned her face to the sky and all she saw was a maze of light. She was so close. So close. And now this?

She looked back at Griffin, whose expression was watchful and utterly frustrating.

“Can
you
read it?” she asked.

He nodded.

Excitement spiked in her heart and made her fire flare in anticipation. “Well? And?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “How about a trade? I decipher the star map and you tell me why you are really doing this.”

She went cold. “What?”

He nodded to the place where she’d sat to do her carving. “What you said earlier, about how this whole thing wasn’t really about you. I can help you, but I need to know what I’m contributing to. You can understand that, can’t you?”

With a snarl of aggravation she swiveled away to stare into the darkest point of the canyon. The star map glowed at her back, sending diffused blue-white light into the reaches.

Of course she understood what he was asking. She’d want the same thing. You never got something for nothing. Only she didn’t think she could give him what he was asking.

“The star map is fading,” Griffin said behind her. Not taunting, not demanding. “If you want to go it alone, you could memorize as much detail as possible now, and then probably plug the points into a computer program to find the general location.”

At that she turned back around, pushing aside all her insecurities, all her self-doubt. She couldn’t afford to let him see that. “I don’t know how to use a computer.”

The subtle parting of his lips was the only thing that told of his surprise. He cleared his throat. “So you need me.”

Coming closer to the star map, looking down into the mess of floating lights and the brilliant, tempting
X
that marked the treasure, she knew she’d never be able to memorize all that detail.

“I want something more,” she said.

“Name it.”

The space between them screamed with tension.

“
If
I tell you,” she began slowly, “I want your word that you will never repeat a word of it. Not to Gwen, not to your dog, and absolutely never to the Senatus.”

“My god,” he whispered, “what is this about?”

“Your word, Griffin. What I could tell you would never hurt me—I’m far beyond that and I wouldn’t care if it did—but it would destroy others. It would compromise all Chimerans in the eye of the Secondary world. It would create huge rifts among my people and the island clans, and that scares me more than anything.”

As he stared at her she knew immediately that he would never agree to such an oath. All that she’d just said would steer him away from agreeing to her terms. In fact, it had probably churned up even greater determination in him to discover it on his own, without her stipulations. It had
always
been about the Senatus and the Ofarians to him. It had never been about her or her people. What she’d wanted or believed in had never factored into his role or objectives—

“Done,” he said. “I swear.”

All breath punched out of her lungs. “What?”

“I told you”—he inched closer, making the space between them even more pressurized—“I’m not here for them. I’m here for you.”

How on earth had she pegged him so wrong?

“The stars,” she blurted, because she knew how much they meant to him. As much as her Queen. “Swear on your stars.”

He drew a breath. By the twitch of his hands at his sides, she thought he might touch her, but he didn’t.

“I swear on the light of the stars, the power that brought the Ofarians to Earth and that which I hold dear, that your secret is safe with me, Keko. I will never use it against you or for my own gain. I will never tell another soul.”

Brave Queen . . .

And then he repeated it in Ofarian. She couldn’t understand the words but she knew what he was saying, could almost see the oath that his strange syllables and beautiful phrases wove around them both.

She covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t help it. It was all so overwhelming. So unexpected. Every motivation and emotion she’d assigned to him now felt false.

“Do you believe me now?” he asked quietly, and she knew he wasn’t asking about the oath.

Behind her hands, she nodded. If he were here for the Senatus—at their order or to wedge himself into their ranks by using her—he never would’ve agreed to this. He could be lying, but the stars . . . they were his religion, whether he recognized that or not.

She looked at the star map, whose brilliance had faded somewhat. Soon it would be gone, but Griffin had it all stored away in his head. Exactly what she needed. But could she actually give him what he wanted in exchange? Could she tell this ambitious man about the disease that was weakening her people? Her
leader
?

“I need time,” she said. “I need to think.”

He reached out to take her hand. Looking down at where her fingers were clasped lightly in his, she added, “I can’t think straight when you touch me.”

He let her go.

 • • • 

The most startling thing about waking up was not realizing she’d fallen asleep in the first place. Dawn smacked Keko’s eyelids open and she came awake with a gasp. Sitting up, she felt the tug on her shoulder wound and the gouges in her skin from where rocks and branches had bedded down for the night.

Immediately she looked over at her carved prayer, sitting there sort of ugly and harsh next to the time-weathered one made by her Queen. The starlight magic was gone. So was the glow in the figure’s heart. All that was left was the map and knowledge in Griffin’s head.

He appeared before her then, as though she’d called out for him. The faint light coming over the ocean cast his body in silhouette.

“Morning.” His voice sounded like he’d had lava rocks for breakfast. “We need to get going. Light’s coming up.”

He zipped up his vest—over a black T-shirt this time; it must have gotten chilly overnight—threw his pack over his shoulder, and turned his face to the relentless ocean. That’s when she saw the dark smudges underneath his eyes, the drawn line of his mouth, and she knew he hadn’t slept at all. Had probably paced the whole night, scanning for the return of the earth elemental, standing guard.

Keko pushed to her feet and dug into her pack for something to eat but came up empty. A little plastic cup filled with hard pebbles of who-knows-what was shoved into her hand. She looked up at Griffin.

It was different now, in the growing daylight, knowing that they each had something the other wanted. Knowing there were secrets. Knowing they were connected in even more ways.

She saw his conviction, his oath, in his tired, red rimmed eyes, and felt the anguish of an unmade decision wrestle in her gut.

“Freeze-dried soup,” he said. “Not good for much but energy. I’ll add water if you’ll heat it up.” He ripped off the top seal of his own cup, spoke Ofarian to drag water from the air, and poured it into the little containers.

She dipped fingers into the muddy-looking soup and added heat. Steam curled up from the water that plumped the powdered pebbles into things resembling vegetables and meat.

“Careful,” she said, handing him his cup. “It’ll be hot.”

“I like hot,” he said. “Remember?”

Too much. She started off toward the black sand. “I can walk and drink at the same time.” She downed the hot liquid in a few quick gulps.

“You okay today? How’s the shoulder?”

She waved nonchalantly, pulling out a dull twinge of pain. “Fine.”

They made it up and around the ledge, their backs sliding along the uneven bluffs, their feet shuffling precariously over the sea-sprayed rocks. Finally they stepped down into the stream bed that shot back up into the island.

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” Griffin blocked her path upstream. “There’s this thing the Ofarians use in all our businesses, the ones we don’t want Primaries to know about. It’s called waterglass, and we combine a consistent flow of shielding magic with water and run it between two panes of glass in the windows. I want to cast something similar over us, use it to disguise our movements.”

“You’re worried about the earth elemental.”

“Yeah. Neither one of us knows anything about them. Who that one was, how Aya is involved, how he found you . . .”

The mention of Aya made her feel uneasy.

“The way he appeared,” Keko said, “it was like he came from the ground and pushed himself up into the tree. Took it over. And when you stabbed it—”

“He left the tree. Went back into the earth. I noticed that, too.”

“You think he could find us again?”

Griffin nodded, hands on hips. “I can use mist to cloak us as we move up the stream bed, until we climb out of this ravine and get out of the natural areas. The mist will throw him off, if he’s looking or following. I would’ve used it last night except he already knew where we were and it just would’ve drained my energy.”

“So we get out of the stream bed, and then what?” She raised an eyebrow. Before, she’d expected to have a travel course and a plan of action when she left the stone prayer, but now her travel was entirely dependent on the knowledge and route in Griffin’s head. Maybe she could get him to reveal something more. “Which direction?”

His eyes narrowed, fully aware she was trying to needle information from him without actually giving up any of her own.

“Toward civilization. Back into the modern world,” Griffin said.

That made sense. “He can’t get to us in the cities, not without walking in as a human, like Aya did. There’s too much man-made stuff all around. Too much below the surface. That would be my guess.”

Griffin scratched at his face, dark growth shadowing his cheeks and jaw and neck. “Exactly. I’m wondering, though, why he came after you in the canyon. Why not attack when you started out? Why even let you get that far?”

She looked at him quizzically. “How would he have known what I was doing?”

The pause before his reply was long. “I have no idea.” He frowned. “You’ll have to stay fairly close to me when we’re inside the mist. It’s harder to maintain at a distance, less effective.”

Exactly how close? Because being this close to him already was rather unnerving. “But if the earth elemental comes back, wouldn’t you be able to feel him coming?”

“Not until he was practically on top of us. Or below us, as it seems. Now come closer.”

She moved to within six feet and he threw up a veil of nearly invisible mist, wrapping it around them like a blanket. Its surface caught the light at certain angles, making tiny rainbows.

Concentrating, he shook his bent head and waved her in. “I need you closer.”

Three feet.

He visibly relaxed, the strain of the magic lessening and the faint shimmer of mist tightening around them. He lifted his chin, met her eyes. “Perfect. That’s good.”

Try as she might, she couldn’t look away. “He can’t see or hear us?”

“Shouldn’t be able to. I’ve never done this before.”

“A virgin, eh?”

Griffin cleared his throat and swiveled, facing upstream. “Just keep near me.”

Keko wanted to resist the order out of habit and pride, but as he started to negotiate the stony, irregular bank of the stream, she couldn’t help but notice how his ass and legs looked in those shorts, and thought,
No problem, sir.

As they walked, she could hear him murmur in his language every now and then, altering the mist, testing it. His voice sounded as tired as the droop of his eyes and the downward slant of his shoulders made him look, but he never said anything about fatigue, never complained.

Midday they came to a small waterfall, tucked into where the land shot upward and sloped far back, stretching all the way to the majesty of Mauna Kea. Here they’d have to climb out of the ravine in order to hike to the road and thumb a lift into the nearest town, but just the thought of scaling the rocks at that moment pulled on her shoulder wound like a hundred-pound weight. This weakness was abhorrent, but she knew she had to listen to it or else risk more serious injury.

Griffin was also peering up at the climb, his thumbs hooked through loops on his vest. They lowered their heads at the same moment, catching and snagging each other’s gazes. Now would have been the perfect time to lose him. He wavered on his feet. Caught himself. If she pushed herself up those rocks right now, even in his weary state he would follow. He would follow until his legs snapped off.

“A short rest?” she said, shouldering off her pack.

He regarded her, then stretched out a hand to create a narrow divide in the sheltering mist, parting it like it was made of silk. He touched the element like a lover.