“Wow. But not the one we’re headed to.”

“No, not the one I’m going to.” She let that switch of words sink in, then added, “The others are all in huge groups. This one is alone, hidden. Her final prayer. The one that worked.”

“This man, this partner and lover of hers, said that the Queen found the Source, but how did he know that since she was gone when he woke up and he never actually witnessed it? How do you know that? How can you be so sure?”

Keko stopped and turned on him. “Because the Source killed her and made her a goddess. It gave her back to us in the way it wanted her to serve.”

He made a sound of disbelief that she wanted to snatch from his throat. He kept running his big hand between ear and chin, over and over again. It took him a long time to speak, and when he did she wished he hadn’t. “What if she really fell into the water and drowned? What if she tripped down the side of a cliff and snapped her neck at the bottom?”

She narrowed her eyes. “It won’t work, what you’re trying to do. Trying to discredit my beliefs.”

“I’m trying to make you think in another way. I’m not going to stop either, until I know you’ve given this up.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re relying too much on faith.”

“I would say you don’t rely on it enough. I remember that about you. How you know exactly who you’ll be talking to before you enter a room, exactly what you’re going in there for. You draw road maps between every possibility and make planned detours to get your way. You won’t do anything if it’s not planned, not considered a million different ways.”

“Because I have to. It’s my job, my responsibility, to think that way.”

With every moment that passed, the closer he seemed to draw to her. He was like a magnet and she couldn’t pry herself away. She could feel herself losing focus when she could least afford to. If she couldn’t tear herself away from his nearness, she would have to use their proximity. Manipulate it. Bring him in closer to throw him off guard so she could find a window and escape through it.

Keko leaned in, tilted back her head. “I also remember what you’re like when you let it all go. I remember, so, so vividly, Griffin, how your walls cracked and you just . . . surrendered.”

For a moment she thought he’d gone Chimeran, because the heat that flashed in his eyes was potent and nearly visible.

“It was the first thing I thought when I saw you,” she went on. “That I wanted to break that cardboard leader into a million pieces. You were my delicious, forbidden challenge, and I knew I was going to love seeing you crumble. I knew I was going to love seeing you strip down and get into what you truly wanted.”

Though the air was moist and Griffin was made of water, his voice sounded scratchy and dry. “And did you love it?”

“You know I did.”

She’d forgotten she was supposed to be using this situation and these words for her benefit. She’d inadvertently neglected her original intent. Her honesty had just slipped out because he—even after all these years and across their great divide—could still make her crumble, too.

Stupid, stupid.

He shifted on his feet. Just a little movement, but enough to break the spell. Enough for her to nudge herself back a step. Once she’d done that, her whole body turned and she walked away.

He followed a few seconds later. This time he trailed in silence.

When she came to a steep decline peppered with rock and tricky soft ground, and flagged by the telltale landmarks, she pointed. “I’m going down there.”

At the bottom trickled a silver line of a stream, twisting its way to the ocean. Follow that, and she’d find the hidden cove sheltering the Queen’s prayer.

Griffin came to her side, peering down. “Where you go, I go.”

 • • •

At midday, she finally scrabbled over the last part of the treacherous, jagged lava rock shelf that paralleled the ocean, and stepped into the Queen’s hidden place. It was little more than a crevice in the island, a narrow fissure carved by water and wind over millennia, bordered with steep green land, carpeted with vegetation, and divided from the sea by a small stretch of black sand.

This was where she’d find her fate. This was where she’d discover how to heal her people and vault her name into the heavens.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Griffin asked.

All morning he’d never trailed more than a few feet from her. Not when lowering themselves down to the stream bed. Not when picking their way over the slippery banks. Not when clinging to the rock ledge along the ocean. Now he jumped down from the rock, landing on the sand right next to her.

“You can’t feel it?” she said.

The shimmering black sand clung to her toes and the soles of her feet. Peering down the length of the little valley, she found another landmark the story mentioned: a promontory of rock sitting halfway up the cliffside that looked like a face. The nose was worn and the chin shallow, but it was a face. Somewhere below that, in a bed of pahoehoe lava rock that rippled like frozen, smooth, black water, the Queen’s prayer would be waiting.

“I do feel . . . something,” Griffin said, and when she looked over at him, he was frowning. He stared off into the tangle of trees and brush between the beach and the prayer.

She smiled. “See? Told you the—”

He lifted a sharp hand, his eyebrows drawing together as he squinted hard into the valley. “Not the Queen,” he whispered, impatient. “A signature. A Secondary signature.”

Keko swept a long look over the small valley, the whole thing easily spread out and visible to her eye. The place was untouched, virtually impossible to get to unless you shimmied along the rock ledge like they had. The surf was white and angry against the beach, admitting no boats.

“No one’s here,” she said.

“That you can see,” he murmured cryptically, his eyes flitting from side to side.

“Then let me get what I came here for and we can get the hell out of here fast.” She was about to correct herself, to backtrack and say “I” instead of “we,” when she realized exactly what he’d revealed, what signatures he was talking about.

Senatus backup. Other Secondaries—more Ofarians? Air elementals?—come to help him keep her away from what she needed to do. Fuck that.

“You asshole.” She spun and took off running, but not before she saw the shock on his face.

“Keko, wait!”

No way was that happening. She sprinted, her toes digging in the sand, her thighs pushing her off the narrow crescent of beach and onto firmer ground. Her arms swung ahead, slapping aside branches and leaves, making way for her bullet of a body.

Behind her Griffin was shouting her name, crashing after her. He’d have to take her down again, and even that wouldn’t stop her. She’d crawl for the prayer with him clinging to her legs, if it came to that.

“Keko, stop!”

Then there was nothing but the wind in her ears, and the sting and scrape of bark and leaves on her skin as she flew. She could see the land just below the face in the rock now, the patch of lava rock tilting toward the ocean that would hold the prayer. She could see the lone, gnarled Acacia koa tree pushing up through a crack in the rock, bending over the prayer, its canopy sheltering what had been carved by the Queen’s hand.

Almost there. Push. Run. Charge.

The valley rumbled. The ground shook, branches and flowers and hanging fruits vibrating against the wind. She momentarily lost her footing, stumbling to one side before correcting herself. All she could think was: What sort of magic was Griffin loosing at her back? What were his minions doing to try to stop her?

And finally—how would she humiliate them all when she succeeded?

A cloud of birds dislodged itself from a stand of red flowering ohia trees off to her right and took to the sky.