Aya spoke English from her human mouth, because the Father understood all forms of Earth’s communications. “I debated whether to order Kekona Kalani hunted right then and there, the moment I discovered what she was doing, and the threat to the planet and to its people, but in the end I felt diplomacy was most important.”

Why?

“We’ve spent over a thousand years monitoring Secondary actions, keeping them in our eye and under our thumb. They still need to think we are on their side, and if I ordered a Chimeran put to death we’d end up separated from them, maybe even at war. We wouldn’t be able to track how they interacted with humans. We wouldn’t ever know if humanity would be threatened before it was too late. I had to make sure they still trusted me and the Children. I had to make them believe I was holding their interests and concerns to heart. That’s why I gave them a chance to go after Keko first.”

The Father did not respond. He usually didn’t, unless he had something specific to say.

“I’ll warn Nem,” Aya said. “If Keko finds the Source, he has permission to destroy her. If that happens—and I don’t think it will—the Senatus will at least understand we made appropriate compromises.”

It hurt to say. She used that pain to relay the story in a way that would appease the Father. She used those feelings to lie, lie, lie. All for the benefit of humanity, she told herself.

In truth, Aya had been struggling to find a way to get Griffin accepted into the Senatus, since the air elementals and the Chimerans stood so firmly against him. Griffin believed as she did, that the Secondaries had to find ways to work themselves into the human world—an opinion the Senatus hated. A viewpoint the Father opposed. After all, the Children were tasked with watching over humanity, their sister race. Once Secondaries started arriving on Earth millennia ago, that watchfulness had included keeping magic separate from human life.

Before she chose evolution, before she’d been assigned to the Senatus, Aya had believed as the Father and as all other Children do. Then she’d tasted life Aboveground and felt in her heart there had to be more. Her opinions had changed, but she had to pretend they hadn’t.

And now Keko’s crazy and reckless act had presented Aya with a previously unseen opportunity.

Griffin would bring Keko back alive. He would keep the Source from causing massive global destruction and he would earn an equal seat among the other elementals. Aya would gain her needed ally on the subject of integration. Griffin would be able to work ideas on her behalf and she would not risk punishment Within.

It was precarious. But it was worth the chance.

 • • •

Aya spun through the earth, a drill made of magic and life, churning her way through the plates below the Atlantic Ocean. If she were Ofarian she could travel by water, but the Children were only tied to solid earth and what grew out of it, no more. It was the reason they were charged with guarding the Fire Source but could not touch or manipulate it.

Still Within, she located her island and arrowed northeast toward it. Her island. Her secret, special place in the human world.

As she breached the surface and burst out from the rock and dirt, even the weakest rays of the sun sent a welcome warmth cascading over her body. She unfolded from the ground as a mound of limestone. Her limbs rolled out and away in miniature avalanches, her fingers extending from stacks of pebbles. Lumbering to her stony feet, she pushed humanity into her extremities, lifting her head, feeling the first brush of hair over her shoulders.

For the first time ever, the transformation was painful.

Here on the edge of the world, standing on a windswept cliff on the northwest coastline of Ireland’s Aran Islands, Aya felt the sting of the cold, the slice of hard, sporadic rain. She ripped a thin sheet of limestone from the cliff face and whipped it around her naked body, the rock moving according to how she commanded—like fine, beaded fabric—its protection from the elements stemming from her power.

The ocean below was a churning mass of hard gray and bitter anger, the air salty. She drew in breath after breath and waited.

Soon, after her evolution was complete, she wouldn’t be able to just appear here, where she valued the pristine natural beauty and the utter solitude. She would have to take an airplane, and then a train, and then a ferry. She’d have to drive a car to find this general area, and then hike on her two feet to this very specific place.

She wondered if she would actually ever do that, or if this spot would become nothing more than a wish and a memory. For now, however, she would keep these moments of freedom and sparse sun and clean air.

The ground suddenly rumbled and she lost her balance. One arm shot out to grab at the limestone, and her fingers shifted form to meld with the stone and keep her from pitching over the edge into the water below. She held fast, her head swiveling to her left, toward the source of the rumbling.

Six feet away, the cliff face bulged outward. A gray, blocky leg kicked free, a heavy limestone foot coming down. A second leg followed. Then a torso peeled away, making the new arrival at least a foot taller than she was. The arms were the last to form, thicker than hers, decidedly masculine.

Nem’s human body came to him extremely quickly, and when his facial features smoothed out they retained none of the strain Aya now carried after her transformation. His skin didn’t have a more natural hue yet, still desperately clinging to the burnished silver-gray from which he’d just emerged. His hair made high, faint tinkling sounds as the shining white strands brushed together in the wind. It would be a year or so before he appeared human enough to walk among them. He had, after all, only recently chosen to evolve.

Nem looked down at himself, watching his human body fill out its shape with an equal mix of curiosity, awe, and disapproval. The last thing to fully transform was his right arm. It shifted from stone to plant, the length of it a thick green stem, his palm the great black circle forming the center of a sunflower. Long, delicate yellow petals shot out from his palm. Then the wind grabbed and ripped free those petals, leaving only five, which became his fingers.

A sunflower petal tore off and slapped against the cliff face, becoming lodged in a crevice. The others whipped away to Aran Island places unknown or to bob on the undulating waves below.

Nem flexed his new fingers, making a concerned face at the stiff movements.

“You still do that?” she asked, releasing her rock hand from the limestone. “With the sunflower?”

“It helps the transition,” he replied, flipping gold and silver eyes up to hers. “It keeps me calm. It releases some doubt.”

She sighed, her eyes briefly closing. “I didn’t ask you to choose evolution.”

He looked bewildered, but since he’d only just started to experience basic human emotions, he wouldn’t even understand what he was feeling while in this body. Not for a while yet. “But we’re to be mated.”

“We were to be mated. That was before I made my choice.”

He frowned at the arm that had been the sunflower. One finger pressed to the bare skin on his chest, then slid down over his belly. She’d done that, too, back in the beginning. Back when her body was new and strange.

Not having control over his emotions yet made them all readily available and apparent, playing in vibrant color across his face. “I evolved to have you. I did this so that our Son or Daughter would have our combined strength and guard the Source after I am human.”

“I can’t give you an heir anymore. I’m too far along for that. My body can no longer carry a Child of Earth.” And until their bodies were fully compatible again—human to human, not human to Child—mating was out of the question. She was secretly glad for the time and space that disconnect would put between them, because now that she was more human than Child, she was beginning to understand what it meant to want someone else for something other than mating.