His lips parted. His chest deflated. The magic escaped his body.

And no flame came out.

Not a single spark. Not even a curl of smoke. Nothing.

The mighty Chimeran ali’i stumbled backward as though struck. His calves hit the couch and he collapsed onto it, his normally erect and powerful body a boneless mass. His chest, empty of magic and fire, heaved. He lifted the candle to eye level and stared at the wick as though willing it to light with his mind. Then he bent at the waist and shoved a hand underneath the couch cushions, removing something hidden. Keko couldn’t tell what it was until a tiny burst of hot, gold light briefly illuminated the room.

A match. There were matches in the Chimeran ali’i’s house.

Keko couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. The earth could have opened up behind her and she wouldn’t have known.

Chief touched the match to the candle, and the newly lit wick threw his distressed, hopeless, and fearful expression into terrifying focus.

Still crouching, still in a daze, Keko lost her balance. Her body tilted forward before she realized it, and her hand shot out, catching the door. The latch was faulty and the door creaked open. Only an inch or so, but enough for the sound to slice through the silent house.

Chief’s head snapped up. The matchbook disappeared behind his back. He jumped to his feet.

Keko rose, too. She pushed the door open wide and ventured into the cool interior, lit by the dancing flame of the single candle. Another rare wave of goose bumps rolled across her skin, but this time she couldn’t find the focus to reach for her fire and erase them.

The door clicked shut behind her. Chief was struggling to breathe, the sound ragged and nervous.

“Uncle?”

“Kekona.” His hand shook and the candle flame jumped. He turned to set the taper into a holder on the end table, and the table’s uneven legs rattled on the tile floor. When he faced her again, she barely recognized him. Such terror deepened the creases along his forehead and strained the lines around his mouth. He seemed pale, the silver along his temples pronounced.

She advanced slowly into the room. “You have no fire.”

He took a step back. Never had she seen him retreat. Not when facing a warrior, and certainly never when confronted by one of the disgraced.

“What happened to your fire?” She heard the rise in her voice, the demand, but did not try to rein it in.

His panicked eyes flicked to the door at her back.

“I came alone,” she said. That made him even more apprehensive and it empowered her to move closer. “In the name of the Queen, what’s going on? What happened to your fire?”

He licked his lips, and a single whispered word dropped pitifully from them. “Gone.”

“Gone.” The word reverberated inside her. She would mark his claim as impossible if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

“It’s still inside.” His voice came out stressed and thin, and she barely recognized it. “I can feel it, but I can’t reach it. Can’t call it out. It doesn’t listen to me.” He touched the candle flame and it danced on his fingers like it should, then he blew it out. “But I can still manipulate it.”

A great wave of realization crashed into her. “When? For how long?” When he didn’t answer she lifted her voice to the level she used to use as general. “Was it gone when you denounced me for inciting a false war in front of the whole clan?” Still no answer. “Was it gone when you sent me down to the Common House and made Bane general?”

He held up a hand, but the gesture was weak. “The day . . .” his voice cracked and he cleared his throat to get it back. “The day Cat Heddig came here and exposed your affair with that Ofarian was the last day I used it. The last day . . .”

Two months ago. And all this time he’d been commanding the Chimerans. Pretending that he was still the most powerful one of them, still the most respectable. Playing the hypocrite as he stripped her of title and pride.

“Did you know something was wrong then? That something was happening to you?”

“Yes.”

Keko whirled, snatching a vase holding a mostly dead flower from a nearby table. She hurled the vase against the wall, just to the right of the ali’i’s head. It exploded into a million pieces, water shooting across the plaster. The acrid odor of decay plumed around them. Chief didn’t budge, didn’t even flinch.

“How have you hid this?” Her throat stung with the volume. “How?”

He swung the matchbook around from where he’d been hiding it behind his body, looked at it for a moment, then tossed it to the couch. “I’m not the only one.”

Keko blinked. “What?”

“I mean”—and the harsh, slow tones of the ali’i returned—“that I am not alone. There are other Chimerans like me. Others whose fire has died.”

She glanced at the matches, thinking that some other Chimeran would have had to have smuggled them into the valley. Someone else had to have known about the ali’i.

“It’s some sort of disease, Keko. I don’t know why it strikes, or who it will hit, but the numbers are . . . growing.”

She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. “A disease. And you’ve been able to hide this how?”

He looked to the candle, and then down at his fingers that had held the flame. “There are some Chimerans, healthy ones, who know and who . . . help us. Give us flame when we need it.”

“Cover for you.” A subtle, secret passing of fire from one hand to another. And it had worked. “Who else? Who else is afflicted?”

He shook his head. “You can take me down, but I won’t betray the rest.”

What a fucking deceiver. “So you’ll protect and hide others exactly like you, but throw your general, your own family, into the Common House.”

“Two completely different things. You made a terrible mistake. And you broke kapu.”

“I know what I did. But at least I’m admitting it.” She advanced toward him. One step, then another. “Who. Else.”

Chief just shook his head.

“I see. So in keeping their secret and by not sending them to the Common House, by not exposing their ultimate weakness, they protect you, too.”

His silence was answer enough.

“It doesn’t matter.” She waved a hand. “I don’t want them.”

I want you. I want to be ali’i.

“It’s been going on longer than you think,” he said. “Longer than I’d imagined. Maybe going back to the Queen. This thing . . . it’s not new.”

It was horrifying information.

It was useful information.

She started to back toward the door, her bare feet going toe-heel, toe-heel on the tile that now felt like ice.

“What will you do?” Chief started to follow. When she did not respond he cried out, much louder, “What will you do?”

She looked to the bank of smudged windows overlooking her aunt’s dead garden. The moon hadn’t risen yet and it was so very dark outside. It was the same within.

“I came here,” she said, “to actually beg you to give me another chance. That’s not what I want now.”

“What do you want? Do you want me to accept your challenge? Do you want to be ali’i?”

Her life’s most precious dream, wrapped up and handed to her.

Except that Chimerans never wanted anything that couldn’t be fought for and won with sweat and power and magic, and this, to her surprise, was no different.

Her gaze found the small black lava rock that he wore on a rope around his neck—the very stone that the great Queen had picked up the day she’d grounded her canoe on Hawaii and declared it her people’s new home. Keko had wanted to wear that rock her whole life, to feel its scratch on her skin and its weight against her chest. To know the Queen’s power and hold her blessing.

Looking at it now, Keko thought something entirely different, and she stood there for a long time, trying to wrap her head around it. Trying to figure out what it meant.