Bane growled, a lick of flame passing from eye to eye. Why wasn’t the chief saying anything? Why was he just standing there, looking like he’d been bound and gagged?

The premier raised his voice. “Kekona will be found and stopped. I’ll immediately appoint a search team to get to Hawaii, and Chief can assign a Chimeran scout as a guide.”

The chief ground fingers into his temple. “Let me think about this—”

“There is no ‘thinking,’” the premier began, and the two men devolved into an argument over how exactly to go about the search. Griffin might have been mistaken, but it seemed as though the chief was actually trying to steer the premier away from going after Keko.

Damn his culture. Damn the rules of status.

Griffin stood there, a cold that had nothing to do with the weather seeping into his bones. They were going about the search in the wrong way. They weren’t properly taking into consideration their quarry. They were forgetting about Keko’s determination, her drive. Her spirit.

“Wait. Stop.” Griffin grabbed the premier’s arm and spun him around. A dangerous move since he still wasn’t part of the Senatus, but he wouldn’t be ignored. Not now.

The premier looked at Griffin’s hand upon his arm, then slowly raised his eyes. “Things sure have gotten more complicated since you showed up, Ofarian.”

Griffin released him but refused to look away, refused to back down. Yeah, maybe a lot of shit that had happened recently could be traced back to him, but if they were going to blame him for starting it, then he should be the one to bring it to an end.

“Keko will not be hunted and trapped like an animal,” he said. “Being chased by strangers who are intent on stopping her will only feed her purpose. Don’t you get it? She will fight and fight and fight until she gets what she wants, and she won’t stop running until she gets to the Source, if only to prove herself. Bane?”

The Chimeran general nodded haltingly. “He’s right.”

“What are you suggesting?” the premier asked.

Griffin licked his lips, stood tall. “Let me go after her. Alone.”

“Why you? Because she was your lover?” The premier sneered at that last word. “How do I know you won’t help her?”

“Because the Senatus means more to me.” He nodded at Aya. “And the protection of the Source, the earth itself. I want Keko brought in as much as you do. Let me prove my loyalty.”

Keko’s life meant most of all, but he couldn’t say that. Not when the premier eyed him so warily. Let the Senatus leader think Griffin wanted revenge for her trying to start a war. Let them all think whatever the hell they wanted, as long as it would allow him to get to her first. As long as it would allow him to save her life.

“I’m telling you, if she knows she’s being hunted, you’ll never find her. I have the best chance. I am water. What better way to fight a fire?”

“I second this.” A most unexpected endorsement from Aya. Griffin looked over at her, and there was that look in her eyes again. Something . . . unsaid. Something meant only for him.

“Chief?” prompted the premier.

In the span of his pause, the chief drew two breaths, neither of which brought forth fire. “I agree with what you think is best.” He bowed his head, and Griffin could not read his face.

The premier came toe to toe with Griffin, his voice low and authoritative. “If you find Kekona Kalani and bring her to me before she finds the Source, before she causes any more trouble for any of our races, I will know you have the Senatus’s interests at heart. If you do this, you will win your seat among us.”

Away from the dispersing Senatus, after retreating deep into the darkness of the old-growth forest, Aya folded herself back into the earth. With an aching sense of loss, she let go of her human body and merged her being with the land, returning to the true form of a Daughter of Earth. The borders between Aboveground and Within blurred and then disappeared.

It was getting harder and harder to do. One day she’d no longer be able to transform back and forth like this. But she’d made her choice, and she gladly lived with it.

Through rock and dirt and clay she rolled. Around and under and through a great maze of roots and aquifers, she sent herself digging. She knew the layout of Within as well as the minute details of her human skin, and she followed the striations in the earth like a road map. She searched for her home, hidden in the earth’s crust by the planet’s oldest magic. There. She found it, burrowing faster and faster to reach it. The feel of the earth around her was beginning to suffocate and press in.

She couldn’t wait to be free. She couldn’t wait to live in a house, with windows that allowed in the breeze, and windows that permitted light, and a door that let her come and go easily and of her own accord.

With a final push, she thrust herself through the walls of her abode. The rock and clay opened, ate her, then spit her into the small, open space beyond. Her body was made of quartz and minerals, sand and magic, and it landed unceremoniously in the center of her doorless cave.

Though she’d just been human, and the transformation into Daughter of Earth had sapped much of her energy, she reached for her human form again. Pushed away the parts of her that belonged solely to the earth. The golden brown skin she loved smoothed out the hard angles of rock. Proud white hair tickled her shoulders. She curled onto her side on the clay floor, her short legs pulled up to her chest.

As her evolving human lungs expanded, she gasped for air. Always this shock, the first time breathing Within. The constant trickle of oxygen was just enough to sustain human life, and also just enough to be torture. It was meant to remind the Children of their original forms. It was meant to remind them that humanity and the Children had once been one being.

All it did was reinforce Aya’s belief that she well and truly belonged Aboveground.

Normally it only took a short time for her to become accustomed to the dense, dark surroundings, but now she couldn’t seem to take a steady breath. She was coughing, choking. Then something scraped down her cheek and landed with a plink in the clay, then another and another, and she realized she was crying.

Her tears solidified as they escaped, turning into tiny, rough diamonds. So many. Until she was surrounded by their glitter and could take no human joy from them.

This must be what betrayal felt like.

It had been only months since she’d last seen Keko, since the two women had last propped their feet up on a rock by a wintry mountain stream and spoke haltingly of things that the Chimeran woman probably found mundane but that Aya thought of as fascinating. Cars and ice cream and games, and those soft things you pulled over your toes when they were cold. Keko always made Aya smile with her frank descriptions and honest opinions. Especially when it came to men.

The last time they met, shortly after Keko’s rescue in Colorado and right before her war against the Ofarians was called off, she’d finally spoken to Aya about Griffin. Even though Keko’s words had been harsh, the expression on her face had been wistful and soft, and it was crystal clear to Aya—even though she was still learning about human emotions—how the Chimeran woman truly felt about that Ofarian man.

Over the years, since their first chance meeting in the forest the night Griffin had maimed that Chimeran warrior, Aya had come to relish their sporadic, solitary talks. Keko must have, too, because she often sought out Aya after Senatus gatherings. Though Keko was not human, she’d managed to teach Aya much about humanity and Aboveground.

And now Aya had sentenced her first true friend to die.

Another great shudder wracked her body. For a moment she doubted her choice to evolve because humanity hurt far too much. Then she forced herself to think of Keko, who loathed self-pity, and pushed herself up to sit.