Henry shrugged, dejection making the corners of his mouth turn down. He started to throw some punches at an invisible foe that did indeed need some practice.

Griffin rose to his feet. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Pop says you’re going back to the Senatus tomorrow.”

Griffin’s eyebrows lifted. Pop had told Henry that? Probably with a side of opinion and a whole helping of doubt. He heard the skepticism in Henry’s voice, echoed straight from Pop’s words, and vowed to change that attitude toward the positive. When Henry’s future—and that of all the Ofarian kids in that generation—shone brighter than any Ofarian’s before him, Griffin would finally lean back and exhale in satisfaction. But not until then.

“I am,” Griffin replied.

“Pop says—”

Griffin’s phone rang, and the vibration made him jump. So few people had access to his personal number, and those who did knew he had dinner with his family every Sunday and that it was cherished time. He pulled the phone from his jeans pocket, stared at the unfamiliar number, and warily answered. “Yeah?”

So strange, to recognize someone’s breath, the light, sharp inhalation before speaking. Even the pause was achingly familiar.

“It’s me.”

As though she were standing right there turning on her magic, a wave of heat washed over him. He fell sideways into the wall, realizing he’d been longing to hear from her these past two months and dreading it at the same time.

Behind him, Henry took up the video game again, and Meg cranked up the volume on the same song she’d played a million times already. In the living room, Pop shouted futilely for silence over the TV.

“Just a second,” he murmured into the phone, pushing off the wall and weaving back around the living room furniture toward the front door. Pop threw him a worried, questioning look and Griffin waved him off, miming that it wasn’t anything. When really, it was everything.

Out in the stairwell, Griffin shut the door on the noise. His toes stuck out over the edge of the very top step and his heart was clobbering the hell out of his ribcage. He closed his eyes and just listened to her breathe on the other end, waiting. It sounded like it was raining where she was, raindrops hitting glass.

“Keko,” he finally said, opening his eyes.

“I always liked the way you said my name.” When they’d been wrapped together in wrinkled, damp hotel sheets, talking until daylight, her voice had sounded much the same. Wistful. Gentle. Feminine. He’d liked the way she said his name, too.

Odd that in the timeline he was running through his head right now, he skipped right over the last time they’d seen each other—two months ago when she’d bolted from that house in Colorado, believing that he had been behind her kidnapping. Hating him.

“You destroyed one of my trucks,” he said, referring to her escape, how she’d spewed a fireball at one of his vehicles and then stolen the other.

“I also tried to start a war.” So matter of fact. Still the trademark Keko confidence, but with a layer of sadness underneath. A twinge of regret.

It unsettled Griffin to hear something so unlike her. He lowered himself to the second step. “I know why you did it.”

She laughed, a short, bitter sound. “So sure of yourself, are you? That you were the face that almost launched a thousand ships?”

He plucked at a stray carpet fiber between his shoes. “You were still angry with me for what happened with Makaha. You felt I hadn’t paid for it, that I wasn’t sorry. You wanted to make me sorry.” When she said nothing and let the rain in the background provide the soundtrack, he added, “And you were as angry as I was about the way things between us ended.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Then what? he wanted to ask, but didn’t. A long silence followed, but he would’ve sat there all night, as long as she didn’t hang up.

“Do you still talk to Gwen?” she asked, the question surprising him as much as her abruptness.

“Of course.”

“I’m not . . . jealous . . . of her anymore.”

His heartbeat picked up speed. His head tried to wrap around the fact that Kekona Kalani had used the word jealous.

“Were you ever?” he asked.

She sighed. “Not the first night we were together. Or the second. But when you told me about her, how you two were once supposed to get married and that you were still working together, I felt . . .” Keko trailed off, and Griffin thought that maybe it was because she didn’t actually know any words for those kinds of emotions. It had been obvious to him she was used to going through life with two speeds: on and off. Everything else in between wasn’t worth a glance, let alone a thought.

His head dropped, and even though she couldn’t see him, he shook it. “You never had any reason to be jealous. She and I . . . what we were supposed to be . . . it wasn’t ever . . .”

His turn to scramble for descriptors.

“What?” she said.

“Love.”

The word hung there. Maybe it could have been love once between him and Keko. When they’d parted in that hotel room, when he’d held her hand as she drove him to the Senatus meeting site for the last time, it had seemed like love might have been an exciting, easy road to begin to travel together. But now?

The divide between them was too great. Years and distance and near wars and ugly cultural mishaps, not to mention their separate races, had filled it in with nothing good. The chasm had just gotten deeper and wider the longer they’d been apart.

“I hear you’re getting what you want,” she said, tonelessly.

I don’t have you. The force of the unexpected thought almost pitched him forward down the stairs.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“The Senatus. I’m sure this one will go better than the last. I won’t be there to distract you.”

“Keko—”

“You said that if I hadn’t fucked you, none of this would’ve happened.”

Breath hissed out between his teeth. “There were two people in that hotel room. Two adults. Makaha still came after me. Even if you’d told me about the magic rule, I would’ve defended myself. No use rehashing it.”

“But I think about it a lot.” The way her voice turned distant started to frighten him. She didn’t sound like herself at all. “When I roll over in the Common House and see Makaha sleeping, half an arm thrown out to one side, I think about how I could’ve served him better.”

“Great stars, Keko. The Common House?” He remembered all too well her description of the place, what it meant—or didn’t mean—to Chimeran society. Griffin had called the concept barbaric. “They sent you there?”

“Chief did, yeah. He told the people I was wrong about my reasons for going to war. He didn’t tell them about you.” Keko cleared her throat. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

Now she definitely scared him. Being general had meant everything to her. More, maybe, than the Senatus meant to him. She’d been on track to be the next chief.

Through the line he heard the continuous pelt of rain, then the honk of a car horn and the swoosh of it driving through a puddle on pavement.

Griffin jumped up. “You told me there was only one phone in the Chimeran stronghold.”

And Cat had told Griffin that there were only two or three vehicles in the whole Chimeran valley on the Big Island. No paved roads.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

Still no answer.

“Keko, why are you calling? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I figured out how to serve my people again.” Her voice drifted high and far away. She sounded eerily at peace, strangely at ease for all that she’d been through. “I’m calling to say good-bye to you.”

“Good-bye? What the hell is going—”

“We’ve parted on such shitty terms too many times, Griffin. Just this once, this very last time, I wanted it to be good.”

Panic enveloped him. “Wait—”