Drowning in Fire (6 page)

Griffin aimed his spear of water for that hand holding the fireball. Aimed and struck. Makaha bellowed in surprise as Griffin extinguished the fire burning in the other man’s palm. Griffin instantly merged his water with the moisture on the Chimeran’s skin, taking it all under his control, binding it all together.

Then he twisted his magic.

With a roar of Ofarian words he switched the water to ice, encasing Makaha’s entire hand and making it splinter and freeze, all the way up to his elbow.

The Chimeran made burbling, sputtering, enraged sounds, his eyes bulging. More fire shot from his lips toward the sky, an anguished beacon. He screamed and stared down at his hand in terrified wonder, his whole arm shaking. He was trying to heat himself from the inside out, but Griffin’s hold was too strong.

At last, when Griffin felt like he’d made his point, when he’d killed the fire meant for him, he released his water.

Makaha’s face contorted as he inhaled again, tapping into his magic. Heat made a steaming glow of his body. The ice on his lower arm melted, splashing to the already muddy ground.

Underneath, Makaha’s hand had gone black.

A woman screamed, and Griffin thought that it might have been Keko, as she rushed to her friend’s side, her body a blur in the night. But then Bane dove through the bonfire, charging right through the flames, and took Griffin down to the dirt and wet, knocking out his wind. Pinned underneath the massive Chimeran, Griffin spit out rotted leaves and mud, and finally managed to get control of his breath.

The woman screamed again. Griffin swiveled his head and saw, with surprise, that the awful wail streamed from Aya. And that she was focused not on Makaha, but on Griffin.

The premier and Aaron came over, telling Bane he could ease off, that they could contain Griffin with the force of air. Bane refused, digging elbows and knees even harder into Griffin’s body.

Griffin’s head spun as he struggled, little stars dancing at the edges of his vision. But even in the chaos, he still found Makaha.

Keko knelt in front of him and the chief loomed behind his warrior. Both of her hands gripped Makaha’s black one, her whole body becoming an amber glow. But Griffin knew that not even Chimeran fire could bring back to life the flesh and muscle and half an arm he had destroyed.

 • • • 

Griffin didn’t run as he headed away from the Senatus circle a short time thereafter, so when the premier’s graveled shouts gave chase, they easily caught up to him.

“You are banned from the Senatus! You hear me? You and every Ofarian in existence!”

The trees shook their bare branches at Griffin as he passed. The winter wind howled in his ears and made a mockery of the warmth of his coat.

“You will never get support from us!” the premier continued to scream. “We will never listen to you! You are on your own!”

That was the sound of failure, that heavy pounding of his boots on the uneven ground, that jackhammer of his heart, that whiz and clatter of his brain as he tried to piece together all that had just happened and attempted to figure out how he’d been blamed as the party at fault.

He was almost to the edge of the forest, where Keko had parked the car she’d ferried him around in all week. It was unlocked and he wrenched open the door, removing his bag from the backseat. He’d hike out to the main road and hopefully thumb a ride back to the airport.

Someone was running through the trees at a steady, breakneck pace as though the cold and obstacles and dark meant nothing. As though she weren’t human.

Keko burst out of the tree line and charged right for Griffin. He was ready for her, ready for another attack, though he did not wish for one. She pulled up feet away, her breathing barely labored. “Makaha will lose his hand. Probably half his arm.”

Griffin could have sworn that tears glistened in her obsidian eyes, but then they were gone, leaving him to wonder what emotion was real and what was not, when it came to her.

“Yes. He probably will.” He had to swallow hard to get the words down.

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 joke 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.”