Drowning in Fire (21 page)

He jostled her body, pulling her up as she tried to find her core muscles to help him. She couldn’t do it on her own, couldn’t remain upright no matter how hard she gave herself a warrior’s order. Griffin propped her uninjured shoulder against his chest. More swearing, but she didn’t mind because it gave her something to focus on.

The sound of a zipper, and then a rustle of fabric. A distinctive
gloop
of packaged liquid, and then a rip of plastic.

An icy, breathtaking, unbelievable sensation hit the wound on her back. It spread out, dug in. It was water, she realized, but also something more. Water and sparkling magic, making its way into her body.

His voice again, murmuring words in that language she loved.

She started to feel stronger in slow increments, and with that strength came recognition and memory. This man had come here to stop her from saving her people. She twitched, tried to pull away, but she was still weak and he held her fast.

Then his face appeared in front of hers. That beautiful, beautiful face of a man concerned. Frightened and determined.
That
was the face she knew.

He was not her enemy, but a healer. He was healing her fire body with his water.

As power and ability slowly marched its way back into her muscles and bones and blood, she couldn’t break her stare from his face. Couldn’t look away as visible relief softened his features and full awareness bloomed inside her mind.

He exhaled so deeply his chest went concave. “You’re back. You scared me.”

His hand pulled away from her shoulder and when he brought it around to her front she saw what he held in his palm: a foggy bubble of magicked water that wobbled between his fingers. With easy movement, he set the bubble on the earth and released it into the dirt.

“
I
scared
you
?” Keko blinked at the wet spot. “What is that stuff?”

He picked up an unmarked bag made of thick plastic, now empty. “Ofarian water magic blended with Primary medicine. Something our head doctor has been working on for years. Experimental still, but promising.” He shifted, walking on his knees to get a better look at her back and shoulder, and whistled. “Very promising.”

In the Chimeran valley, if you got injured you lugged yourself down to the stream, slapped water over your wound and pretended you didn’t ache. The greater the pretender you were, the more you were respected. Pain had always been part of the process, but now, feeling this incredible care and healing so soon, she questioned the good in holding on to that kind of pain. In pretending.

She questioned the shame she should be feeling in allowing Ofarian water magic on her body—the shame she
should
feel, but didn’t.

“Are you going to tell the Senatus about that stuff?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. “Eventually. Maybe someday the Primaries, too.”

Of course. All part of his big plans. Which she’d thought she’d known so well but now couldn’t stab with a fork.

“It speeds up healing,” Griffin said, deftly switching the subject away from the Senatus, “but doesn’t immediately cure. The Child got you good. A nice, deep laceration that’s still open. Can I bandage it?”

She was aware she was staring, wide-eyed, like a fool. Annoyed with herself, she ripped her gaze away and looked straight ahead.

“It needs it,” he pressed, knowing full well she was debating jumping up and heading over to the prayer as though this whole violent interlude had never happened. “Otherwise it’ll get dirty and infected.”

“Fine. Sure.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his twitch of a smile as he pulled off his vest. Bare-chested, he unzipped another pocket and pulled out sterile packages of large bandages and tape.

“Any more of those water magic doohickey bags?”

“Nope.”

He pushed her hair to one side and the way he touched it, fingers slow and sliding, reminded her of how he’d looked at it back in the hotel room—with marvel. Now it was with purpose, but he still lingered. She grabbed the knotted black mass of it and held it out of his way.

“You got my only one,” he added quietly, then pressed a bandage over a particularly sore spot. She refused to hiss or acknowledge the pain.

His sole bit of healing magic, that he could have used on his own singed head, and he’d used it on her.

“Maybe you should turn back now,” she said, “so you can put one on that burn.”

He ripped off pieces of tape with his teeth and laid them over her skin with care. The second she felt him finish, she popped to her feet, amazed at how stable she felt, how much the pain in her back and shoulder had ebbed. She watched him rise, slowly, still bare chested, his vest hanging loosely from his hand. Though he stood still and patient, there was worry in his eyes and a certain tension to his muscles.

Looking over his head where the ocean surged into the small canyon, she tried to piece together everything that had happened since she’d stepped onto the beach. Turning, she went to the tree and placed her hand on the scar Griffin’s knife had given it.

“The Children want to stop me, too,” she said. She sensed Griffin come up behind her. “Did they learn about me from you?”

“No.”

“Chief, then.”

Griffin didn’t respond to that, but instead said, “I don’t know any more about them than you do. I don’t know why they did this.”

As he came around to place his own hand over the scar, just below her own, she saw the frustration and bewilderment on his face. The kind you couldn’t fake or hide.

Her hand slid from the bark and she stepped back, suddenly feeling drained. Suddenly realizing all that had just happened. “You helped me, Griffin.”

“Yes. I did.” His brow furrowed. He came closer, erasing the space she’d just given herself. “You couldn’t see that’s what I wanted from the moment I sensed him?”

“I . . . no. I thought you were trying to stop me from getting to the prayer. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You need to stop and listen, get out of your own head sometimes. That kind of thinking could have gotten you killed.”

“I could’ve sworn you were coming after me.”

She thought of Makaha, how Griffin had sworn that her friend had attacked, too. Look how wrong Griffin had been. She gulped down bile made of personal disappointment.

“Maybe if you’d listened,” Griffin said, “you would’ve known the truth.”

“I saw you were trying to help me too late. I couldn’t stop the fireball.”

“I know that. I saw it in your face.” Griffin’s gestures were curt. “And I know you were just trying to protect yourself, but you have got to stop thinking that you’re alone. It worries me. It saddens me. This whole thing is not about whether I’m for or against you. It’s not that black and white. I know that’s how you’ve been raised, what you’re used to, but that’s not how it is with almost everyone else in the world. Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that.”

“But I thought—”

“Keko, I know.” His eyes closed briefly on a deep sigh, and when he opened them, they were wet. “I understand you.”

TEN

Keko turned away from Griffin’s dirt-streaked body and that patch of bloody skin between his ear and eye that would always remind her of what he’d just done for her. Very deliberately she walked toward the stone prayer. As she picked her way up and across the broken and upended slabs of lava rock, Griffin’s voice struck her back.

“You’re not still going on with this, are you?”

“What’s it look like?”

He made an exasperated sound. “Like idiocy.”

The prayer was so close.

“You need to rethink things.” He was coming after her again, not running but with quick, purposeful footsteps.

“I came all this way. I’m not turning back now. Please don’t try to stop me.”

“Jesus, Keko.” He caught up to her, grabbed her arm and spun her around. He’d put his vest back on but hadn’t zipped it. She wriggled free from his grasp.

“Can’t you see now why I came to Hawaii? I’m not going to leave you alone because
that
”—he jabbed a finger at the tree—“can’t happen again. And since this attack took both of us by serious surprise, you should be prepared that it might.”

She drew back, insulted. “You think I can’t take care of myself?”

He lifted his palms to her. “I know you can. I know that. Just”—one of those hands shoved into his hair and gave it a good tug—“you don’t really want to throw your existence away to something like that, do you? Life can be so much more than what you’ve made it out to be. So much more than what your culture has allowed you to have.”

If only he knew exactly what she was doing for her culture, he might understand. And for the first time, she actually had the urge to tell him so. Because this argument of his—this belief in her hubris and selfishness—was starting to do far more evil than good.

“I just want you alive, Keko.”

She turned away, because she was starting to believe him.

A few steps more, and at last she gazed down at the carving made by the Queen’s own hand over a thousand years ago. The slab of lava rock tilted sharply to the left now, the treeman’s uprooting creating a pile of disturbed ground right next to it, but the image of the carved person was still clear. A figure made of simple, clean lines, arms bent at the elbow in supplication. Tiny brown leaves and golden seeds and little piles of dirt clung to the shallow grooves. Keko gently blew them away.

“What does it mean?” Griffin’s voice was soft, inquisitive.

Keko frowned at it. “She is asking the Source to reunite her with her element. Her final wish.”

He moved closer to her side. “You said this thing told her where it was located. Can you read it? Do you know where the Source is?”

When she glanced up at him he wasn’t looking at the petroglyph, but scanning the canyon in a measured soldier’s way, wariness painted across his face.

“No. I can’t.” A feeling of unease and hopelessness skated down her spine. “It doesn’t say anything about where the Source is.” She dropped to her knees and frantically scraped away all the vines and dead brush and leaves from the waves of lava rock immediately surrounding the prayer. “There’s nothing more. Nothing more here.”

Griffin waved his hand, gesturing her to come to him. “Then I think you should get up and we should get out of here. We don’t know if that thing will come back. Or if he’ll bring friends.”

“No.” She reached out and placed a hand over the figure’s body, and suddenly realized what she must do. “I have to carve my own prayer.”

“What?”

“The Source answered the Queen’s final prayer in her hour of desperation, when she wanted it the most. I have to do the same, and there is no time more desperate than now. This was
her
prayer. I have to carve my own.”

“We should really get out of here.”

“We?” She met his eyes. “I’m not asking you to stay, but I’m not leaving either.”

Keko searched around and found two rocks, one that had been broken into a point that she aimed against a new lava slab. She used the wide edge of the other rock to make the first chip. It fell away and she breathed with satisfaction and growing excitement.

She carved for a long time, echoing what the Queen had drawn and whispering prayers and pleas to both the Queen and the Source. Griffin paced at her back but did not otherwise try to dissuade her.

As the day’s light began to leave the canyon and her work was thrown into shadow, Griffin’s silent worry had reached fever pitch. She didn’t allow herself to feel the same, because if the treeman had wanted to come back and attack, he would have done it by now.

“It’s dark,” Griffin said, as if she couldn’t read the sky. “We’re stuck here until morning. I don’t trust even you to negotiate that ledge at night.”

Keko unfolded her legs and gave her back a good stretch, the tightness in her wound making her feel alive, not halfway dead as before. The two rocks she’d used to carve her prayer were well worn down, as was she, but the prayer was complete.

“I’m staying here tonight.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I hope glory is worth it.”

She tilted her head to one side, and then the other, stretching her neck. “You keep assuming I’m doing this for me.”

His pacing stopped. “You’re not?”

She met his shocked stare with her even one. “No.”

She could sense his question before he asked it.

“What are you talking about?” When she didn’t answer, he dropped his voice. “What the hell do you mean?”

But Keko just shook her head and looked to the indigo sky. “And now we wait.”

The answer had come to her as she’d chipped rock into rock. The legend said that the Queen had carved her prayer in daylight and the location of the Source had been revealed under the moon. Keko would sit here and watch the rock until the same happened to her. And she had every bit of faith that it would.

“Keko—”

“I didn’t ask you to stay, Griffin.”

He regarded her for a long time before lowering himself to the lava rock on the opposite side of the prayer, making himself comfortable by sitting on a balled up T-shirt he pulled from his pack.

They sat in silence, until the moon came out and the prayer came alive.

At first she thought it a trick of her eye—an aftereffect of the wound and the pain, coming on the heels of days of being chased. Fatigue, hunger, desperation, all pounding into her brain.

But no. The air above the prayer—her prayer, not the Queen’s—sparkled. Tiny winks of blue light hovered in space a couple of feet above the rock, growing in number and density with every passing second. Keko scrambled to her feet, heart hammering.

The chest of the basic figure she’d carved glowed blue-white. The figure was her, Keko, bearing the Queen’s treasure. Crowning her effigy, twinkling in stasis above the rock, were hundreds of little lights, like stationary fireflies.

The answer—the location—was in there. Somewhere.

The euphoria of the magic, of the Source actually acknowledging her and answering her prayer, died. Keko began to panic and scratch at her arms.