The fireball hit.

Griffin fell. His body struck the ground, crumpling at the feet of the treeman. The stink of burned hair filled the air.

One of the treeman’s boughs shaped into a human hand as it plucked out the knife from its thigh. A piercing wail—a shriek not born in this world but delivered through the mouth of one of its strange, awful creatures—drowned out all other sound.

The treeman was shuddering, stiffening. Its movements turned jerky and rigid as the human parts of him surrendered to the tree. It bent forward, cracking branches pressed to the leg that bled a mixture of red human blood and a clear, viscous substance. Its screams faded, trickling out through the tips of each leaf.

Keko could see the human part of him leaving the tree, moving down from the top of the canopy as though the man were being sucked into the ground through the trunk. The legs jammed back together, the trunk bulging outward as the tree expelled the inhabiting humanity into the dirt. The roots shivered, clamping to the ground, burrowing down.

With a final sigh, the treeman went perfectly still. It was no longer any sort of a man, but just a tree. A gnarled, twisted Acacia koa tree half bent into itself, with a pale, bulbous, jagged scar running down the right side of its trunk.

Griffin lay sprawled at its base.

Worry and panic overtook Keko. But it was the anger and confusion that set her feet to the earth, sprinting over to him.

He lay on his back, heels kicking into the ground, hands covering one half of his face. The one visible eye was squeezed tightly shut. He bared his teeth, sounds of pain leaking out from his throat.

In a terrible flash she was reminded of the story of the Ofarian man who’d wandered into the Chimeran valley a quarter century earlier. How her people had set him aflame and sent him back to the mainland permanently scarred to serve as a warning. A living, breathing KEEP OUT sign.

Brave Queen, what had she done?

She hated this concern, this fear over having injured someone. It was such a foreign feeling and it completely threw her off guard. Chimerans weren’t supposed to question their victories. They were just supposed to have them.

Then she finally noticed the thin but constant stream of water that poured out from under Griffin’s hands. It trickled over his temple and ear and right cheek. The sounds of his pain lessened, his lips closing over his grimace, the tension in his body slackening. Finally his visible eye opened, blinking up at her. He peeled away his hands.

The water had washed away the dirt on one half of his face. He had been struck, but not full-on as she’d pictured or feared. The flames had grazed a bit of his temple, taking a small section of hair near his ear. There was some blood and bubbling of skin, too. He’d scar, but the quick application of water had helped, and the whole thing was much, much smaller than his entire face melting off, as she’d imagined.

“Griffin . . .” She had absolutely no idea how to react. How to deal with or show the relief and shock and turmoil that raced through her. She fell to her knees a safe distance away—because her legs simply gave out and because she didn’t want to be close enough to touch him. “What the hell . . .”

He struggled to his elbows first, then pushed up to sitting, his long legs bowed out in front of him. He tested the tender, oozing spot on his head and looked up at her from under his lashes. “Good thing I wasn’t expecting a thank you.”

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She was just so . . . confused.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

The hands came away. “Huh?” Dimly, she thought that maybe she had been injured in the fight, but nothing could get past the image of Griffin attacking the treeman in her head.

He eyed her questioningly, and she ignored him, turning instead to look at the bent and inert Acacia.

“What was that thing?”

“My best guess?” he said haltingly. “A Child of Earth.”

Her head whipped back around, and she could feel her stupid hands trembling from one shock after another, coming like blows to her body. “You think . . . you mean . . . that was Aya?”

No. No way. She’d spent many hours talking with the small woman with the golden skin and wispy white hair, and those sparkling green eyes that owned both unimaginable depth and attractive innocence. Keko had actually enjoyed those moments, speaking with someone on a level that did not involve Chimeran politics or sexual desire. She had felt the kindle of friendship, of caring and interest on an entirely new level, and she would have sworn that Aya had felt the same.

“No.” Griffin, too, frowned at the tree. “I don’t think that was her.”

Keko pressed fingers to her throbbing forehead. “You must be right. I hope you’re right. It felt male to me.”

“It did to me, too.” A dark look swept over him that spoke of anger, which didn’t make much sense. None of this did.

A distinct, thudding pain began in Keko’s shoulder and started to shoot down and across her back, but she had no time for it. No brain space left to address it. “I didn’t know they could do that, change themselves. In all my years at the Senatus, I’ve never seen that. And I’ve only ever seen Aya.”

Griffin’s face was blank. Too blank.

“Have you?” she asked.

“I saw . . . something similar.”

“From Aya?” Keko rocked to her feet and the world gave a little lurch. “Is that how this happened? You were at the Senatus and saw her do something similar? And then you two banded together to come after me? Was that treeman part of—”

Her body and head felt strange. Pockets of numbness and pain traded places, sending her mind reeling and making her tongue feel thick.

“That’s not what happened—Keko?” A familiar face appeared before her. Concerned dark eyes capped by straight, dominant eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

Why couldn’t she see Griffin clearly? Why did he sound so far away?

“Keko?”

The sky tilted, turning on its side. Weird. And then she was flying. No, not flying. Falling. Falling from where she’d just shot up into the clouds. She toppled sideways, knowing she was about to hit the ground but unable to stop herself.

Something caught her, and it wasn’t lava rock or wet Hawaiian sand. She was cradled on her side, the embrace around her both firm and kind, dusty and sticky. Grit scraped against her legs and side, and she was surrounded by a scent that was decadently familiar.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” A voice in her ear. A voice she’d heard in her dreams many, many times.

He was touching the skin on her shoulder and back in places just outside the borders of her pain. Those hands she knew, too.

“Keko, stay with me. Can I get you to sit up?”

He jostled her body, pulling her up as she tried to find her core muscles to help him. She couldn’t do it on her own, couldn’t remain upright no matter how hard she gave herself a warrior’s order. Griffin propped her uninjured shoulder against his chest. More swearing, but she didn’t mind because it gave her something to focus on.

The sound of a zipper, and then a rustle of fabric. A distinctive gloop of packaged liquid, and then a rip of plastic.

An icy, breathtaking, unbelievable sensation hit the wound on her back. It spread out, dug in. It was water, she realized, but also something more. Water and sparkling magic, making its way into her body.

His voice again, murmuring words in that language she loved.

She started to feel stronger in slow increments, and with that strength came recognition and memory. This man had come here to stop her from saving her people. She twitched, tried to pull away, but she was still weak and he held her fast.

Then his face appeared in front of hers. That beautiful, beautiful face of a man concerned. Frightened and determined. That was the face she knew.