He edged closer. “You still want that, Keko. You’ve always wanted it, but now your motives are truly honorable. Before, it was just a name.”

She searched his face for a long moment, and he heard her unspoken question.

“Yes.” He nodded ardently. “Yes. Your purpose, what you just told me, is honorable. It might be the most honorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

It hurt to say, because barely an hour ago he’d reassured the premier he’d still bring Keko in.

So much of what had happened at the Senatus and later in the chief’s house now clicked into place. And so little of it he could actually tell her. With a growl of frustration, he shoved his hands into his hair. “I thought that the chief was acting weird. Like his mouth was telling me one thing—to go after you and stop you—but his eyes were saying just the opposite. I couldn’t figure it out.”

Her laugh was tinged with disgust. “I don’t think he’s figured it out either. He wants desperately to be cured, but he also doesn’t want to be shamed and deposed, which he thinks will happen if I return to the valley with the Source. He knows he can’t have his magic back and still be ali’i. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder, I bet, wondering when and how he’ll be called out.”

Griffin had seen all of that in the chief’s demeanor.

“If I go back with the Source,” Keko continued, “he’s cured but I’ve also proved myself above him. There’s a greater chance I won’t make it, but he knows me too well, knows what kind of Chimeran I am. That I don’t accept failure. He’s more scared of my success, so that’s why he’s having me stopped. Because he also knows I won’t say anything about the disease if it compromises innocents. This is his way of winning, of holding me down and keeping his own lying ass out of the Common House.”

Yeah, all that seemed correct. There was something else, of course, something Griffin couldn’t tell Keko: that the chief had been all but forced to agree with the Senatus. There was no way Chief could’ve gone against Aya when she’d burst from the ground spouting doomsday predictions. There was no way he could’ve gone against the premier either. Revealing his illness and Keko’s true cause would have compromised his position within his clan and also around the bonfire.

Griffin suspected that deep down the chief really did want Keko to succeed because she would cure him and because she wouldn’t ever expose the blameless Chimerans or him. He thought he would win either way.

No longer, though. Not with the Senatus behind her retrieval. That had been the origin of the anguish Griffin had detected.

Fuck, it wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.

Then he remembered a certain detail. “You know, I thought the chief’s signature felt weak, but I just assumed it was because he was standing next to Bane. Your brother and you, I think you both have some serious power.”

She eyed him strangely. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Bane was with this other Chimeran—a shorter guy with a tattoo covering one shoulder?—and Bane’s signature almost knocked me out, but the other guy’s was barely more than a whisper.”

One hand covered her mouth. Her obsidian eyes went wide as she, too, realized what he’d just inadvertently revealed. “Ikaika. Holy shit. Ikaika, too.”

“Yeah, that was his name. He’s one of the sick ones?”

She shoved off the stool and it clattered to the tile behind her. One thumb went into her mouth and she chewed on the nail, her eyes on the floor. “He’s got to be. And Bane must know about it.”

Griffin rubbed his forehead. “But if Bane doesn’t know about the chief—”

Keko waved a frustrated hand. “Bane doesn’t give a shit about Chief. He’s general. He’s Chimeran and he’s like me. He wants to be ali’i so he wants our uncle gone.”

“So that’s why he told me to help you.”

Her head snapped up. “He . . . what?”

Griffin leaned down and righted her stool, patting the seat, though she didn’t take it. “I told you the truth, that he wanted me to come after you, but there’s more. He pulled me aside separately, told me he didn’t care what the chief or the Senatus said, that he wanted me to help you get to the Source and bring back the magic. I get it now. He wanted me to help him throw over your ali’i.”

“No.” She sat slowly, her eyes dancing back and forth in thought. “He’s doing it for Ikaika. He wants me to cure Ikaika.”

“Why—oh.”

The embrace of the two men, the way they’d touched, witnessed through the grimy window of that convenience store, came back to Griffin.

“I think he wanted me to do it for you, too,” Griffin added. “To make sure you’re safe.”

Keko shook her head at the ceiling. “That’s not how the Chimeran world works, Griffin. I’m a threat to him. I always have been.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Look how you’ve changed.”

She recoiled at that, like personal change was evil.

“You have,” he asserted. “And yeah, maybe Bane wants his lover cured and maybe he wants to see the chief go down in the process, but he’s still your brother. I saw his face. He wants you to succeed and he wants you back in the valley alive.”

Hands on her knees, she took a breath and leaned forward. “Now do you understand what I have to do? And why?”

He did. Oh, how he did. Because it was exactly the same thing he would have done for his own people. And she wasn’t even their leader.

A surge of emotion washed over him, took him under. He was helpless against it, flailing, gasping for air. Drowning in her.

He must have been wearing an odd expression, because Keko suddenly flared with rage, a wave of heat exploding out of her. “You gave me your word, Griffin. You use this against me or the Chimerans and this time I will come after you.”

Reaching out, he took her face in his hands. She tried to fight him off at first, but he dug into her hair, finding the back of her skull, and brought her to him for a kiss. A tender, swift meeting of the lips that had less to do with passion and more with promise. She stiffened, understanding.

When he drew back, a profound look of shock transformed her face.

“You are amazing,” he whispered.

Not a day ago, he’d thought her foolish and suicidal and selfish. Beautiful and desirable and . . . his . . . but still all of those things.

She blinked under the shadow of those words, then cleared her throat. “And you have something I need.”

He did, didn’t he? Going to the bar, he asked the bartender for a piece of paper and pen, and a map of Hawaii. The silver-haired, leather-faced man handed him a ratty tourist map marred by brown coffee cup circles.

“Come with me,” he told Keko. “And bring those burgers. I’m starving.”

They walked in silence away from the lights of the bar and the tiny town center, chowing on the cold burgers that tasted like ambrosia, heading down to the edge of the land where a rickety fence half-heartedly kept people from falling over the side. He could hear the ocean far below but could not see it.

The stars threw a billowing blanket over their heads, and he knew each and every one. Kneeling before a bench, he spread out the Hawaiian island map and took up the pen and paper.

Keko crowded him on one side, peering over his shoulder. Her breathing quickened.

An image of Aya came to him, of her emerging from the ground, horror on her humanlike face and words of doom and destruction on her tongue.

Great stars, what had he done, making these bargains with Aya and then with Keko? What the hell was he about to do by giving Keko the key to triggering a potential natural disaster? Why was he about to send her right back into the violent arms of the Children of Earth?

Because of her purpose. That damned honorable purpose that he understood so well.

His mind reeled with doubt and confusion. Then he realized that by deciphering the map tonight she wouldn’t be waltzing into the Source right at that very moment. It was far away and it would take some finagling to reach it. That would give him some time to work shit out. And he would. He would figure everything out—how to let Keko heal her people, how to appease Aya and the Senatus, how to protect the Earth—but right now . . .