It was going to be all right, she told herself. Griffin was going after Keko. Griffin would find her and bring her back safely. Griffin would keep the Source intact.

And Griffin would win a seat among the Senatus, laying grounds for Aya’s supreme plan—a plan with which the Father would never agree.

She’d been sly, just now before the premier, to make him think she was on his side. Just like how sneaky she had to be to make the Father think she still agreed with him and the ways of the Children.

So much duplicity. If she were caught before her evolution into human was complete, she would face the ultimate punishment. Something worse than death.

Please, Griffin, she silently begged. Find Keko and bring her back. Appeal to her heart, because I know that deep down, hers belongs to you.

A crack splintered open the cave wall. Aya rolled unsteadily to her feet, kicking dirt and clay over the diamond tears to disguise them. A tiny glowing root pushed its way through the short crack, pulsing with an energy she knew intimately and had once loved more than her own life.

Daughter. The Father’s wordless voice emanated from the root. Come to me and report.

 • • •

Brave Queen. Good Queen. Mighty Queen. Show me your secrets. Grant me redemption. Make me worthy. Help me earn back my name. Guide me to help our people. Above all, award me mana, your spiritual power.

Each word matched the beats of Keko’s heels as they struck the moist earth. Each syllable made a prayer. Each footstep moved her closer to her fate. Her faith guided her.

At the end of this road, even death would be a prize worth winning, because the people who had shunned her would know what she’d tried to do, how she’d attempted something as significant as becoming the Queen herself. If death came, Keko’s name would be spoken with breathless wonder and respect.

If she lived, she would lead. If she lived, she would hear words of admiration with her own ears and see awe with her own eyes, and she would know that she’d earned it.

Keko had been walking northwest through the coastal rainforests near Hilo, Hawaii for nearly two days. She slept through the cool, rainy nights curled up against trees, protected by the arch of massive leaves. She drank from streams and pools, and nibbled on the food she’d stolen from the stronghold before sneaking away under the cover of night. She avoided lights and Primary homes and civilization, sticking to the remote natural areas.

She wanted her actions to match the Queen’s as closely as possible. No Primaries. No modern conveniences or roads. No assistance. Only heart and determination. Only love for Chimeran magic, Chimeran ancestry. When Keko came into the Queen’s legacy, she would touch the Source clean. Absolved.

And then she would succeed where the Queen had not. She wouldn’t be Chimeran if that kind of stature didn’t make her fire flare with anticipation and longing.

Keko hunted for something very specific: a signpost left behind, a marker from the ancients. Over the course of her life, the Queen had carved thousands upon thousands of prayers into lava rock all over the Big Island. These prayers called out to the Source, asking for guidance. Almost all of these prayer carvings had gone unanswered, left to bake beneath the sun for future generations to question, but one had actually worked. It was that rock that Keko sought.

Travel was slowgoing, traversing the hilly landscape somewhat inland from the water, weaving in and out of tall, straight trees that bent in one direction under the constant force of the ocean wind. Keko took her time, analyzing the Queen’s legends, making sure she headed in the right direction. She didn’t fear pursuit.

Chief wouldn’t try to stop her because even if she succeeded and earned the Queen’s name, he would be healed. Bane, out of duty and because of Chimeran rules, would be forbidden to search for her. She wondered if Chief would tell Bane about the disease, then decided no. He would want to protect himself. Chief would let her brother think Keko weak and stupid and desperate.

She put the two Chimeran men out of her mind, because there simply was no point in thinking of them. No going backward, only forward.

But the problem with not thinking about her brother and uncle meant there was more space and time for Griffin to slink in. It happened in the most unlikely of places, following random, unrelated thoughts. Memories and images of Griffin, sliding into the blank minutes of her life.

Griffin, kitted out in soldier gear, stalking into that Colorado garage where she’d been held prisoner. His pale-faced shock when he realized she was the captive. The desire that still floated behind his frustration and anger.

The open set of his mouth as she pressed her hands hard into his shoulders, pinning him down. Riding him until they both came with their eyes wide open.

The way he’d slowly run his hands and eyes over her body that last night in the Utah hotel. Memorizing her lines and curves. So many parts of him had been lost to time and she wanted all those details back. She should have memorized him, too.

Suddenly she wished she hadn’t burned his jacket, for reasons that had nothing to do with the wet weather.

It was raining again, though it looked like it might pass over quickly. Keko turned her face to the sky and let the new droplets hit her cheeks and closed eyelids. Water, water, everywhere, each strike a little bit of Griffin.

She’d been right to call him. A paralyzing doubt had overtaken her the seconds before she’d dialed, but the moment she heard his voice she knew she’d done the right thing. Only now did she realize she hadn’t actually apologized for the whole war thing. Words like that didn’t come easy for her, but maybe Griffin understood.

Or maybe he didn’t, and she’d succeeded in making everything worse by not spewing out all the things she longed to say. Now she’d never get to, and it was that loss of a chance that hurt the most. He would never know how much she regretted blaming him for her capture, how ashamed she was of her subsequent actions.

She wondered if he would think her quest foolish. The stern Ofarian leader, the Senatus hopeful, might appreciate her desire to take back what had been lost, to lead her people in her own right. But the man who’d murmured to her in bed about new chances and dreams for his race, that man would sympathize with her need to find the Source, no matter the cost—even though she would never be able to tell him the reason why without compromising innocents. It created a heartrending polarity.

Keko realized her feet had stopped walking right in the middle of a macadamia nut tree farm. He was doing it again. Griffin was making her veer off her path, steering her mind in directions it didn’t need to go, and he wasn’t even here.

With a violent shake of her head, she gritted out “Stop it!” and exorcised Griffin for good. She’d said her good-byes, and that was that.

“I already know you don’t like it,” Griffin said, pulling out his old soldier’s vest from the back of the closet and tossing it on the bed, “so don’t even think about calling me ‘sir.’”

David scowled from where he leaned a hip against the blond wood dresser. With a hand scraping through his hair, he turned his head to look out the long bank of windows framing the slope of Hyde Street, Alcatraz hazy in the distance.

“No backup,” David muttered. “No nothing. It sucks and it makes me look like a shitty head of security.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not when I’m ordering you to stand down. Not when, technically, no Ofarian knows where I am or what I’m doing. If anything, I’m the one who looks shitty, but I’m okay with that. Hell, I’m used to it.”

David pushed off the dresser, its legs scraping an inch on the hardwood floor. “At least let me put up some soldiers in Hilo. In case you need them.”