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.