Twisting his head to the sky, he scanned the beautiful map of stars, instantly knowing his position below them. Pen in hand, he made a series of dots on the paper as he remembered them from the star map, taking into account the three-dimensional nature of it and adjusting it accordingly. A square marked the location the stone prayer had showed to be the Source, that glowing circle in the center of the carved figure’s chest. Then he turned to the map of the Hawaiian Islands and marked where he and Keko currently stood.

In his head he overlaid the current pattern of stars above with how they would change from the vantage point of the Source. His pen flew over the map, the angles and dimensions automatically shifting in his mind, pen lines mimicking his thought processes. Primaries would use equations and fancy tools and computers, but the stars were part of his Ofarian blood, and he just knew.

“There.” A swish of the pen out in the open blue part of the ocean northwest of Nihau, the last main Hawaiian island past Kauai.

Keko bent close to the circle and the X he’d drawn. “Are you sure? There’s nothing out there.”

He sat back on his heels, ignoring the sick feeling starting in his stomach. “The islands are an archipelago. Thousands of uninhabited little land masses stretching for thousands of miles into the Pacific. Your Source is on one of them. That one. Way out there.” He tapped his circle.

She straightened and gazed off into the dark inland. “I thought it might be a—”

“Volcano? Like Kilauea?”

“Yeah.”

He frowned. “Maybe it is. I don’t know what’s there.”

She faced him in her confident way that turned him on like nothing else. “Are you still going to try to stop me?”

Oh, that answer? He still didn’t know it. Still didn’t know which truth he would speak.

He could tell her now what Aya said, what she’d warned the entire Senatus about, but Keko wouldn’t believe him. She would still see it as manipulation, and he wouldn’t blame her.

Time. He had some time. And neither of them was going anywhere tonight.

Closing the space between them, he slid his hands around her body, loving how her arms came around his neck almost instantly. Brushing his mouth against hers, he murmured, “Not at this moment, no.”

He might have to, though. And he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think what that might mean to the Chimeran people. To her.

Didn’t want to admit that stopping her would annihilate every last thread of connection he and Keko had ever formed. And that hurt most of all.

She tilted her head back, her dark eyes simmering. “But tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, I will think about tomorrow.”

A long, slow blink. “And tonight?”

Like his vision, his very existence at that moment narrowed down to her. He stole a page from her book of honesty and forthrightness and made every word count, let her see everything he felt inside. “Tonight? Be with me.”

 • • •

It would be a long, cold hike across the fields to the natural, protected area by the tree at the edge of air elemental property. If only she could get out of the compound first.

The premier had dismissed Aya from his office, then locked the door in her face. Through the mottled glass she watched his shape righting the toppled bookcase and replacing the objects and books upon the shelves. He got a broom and swept up the broken glass, all but erasing the confrontation with Jason. Who was, chances were, already heading for Reno to destroy a human mind.

Aya went to the door leading out into the false church and knocked. A few minutes later the door swung open and fresher air rushed into the tiny, gray-painted room that was beginning to close in on her like the caves Within.

“You done?” Nancy asked, her forehead wrinkled.

Aya nodded. “Take me to the gate.”

Nancy took her on a completely different path to the outer walls. Aya could never track her way through the maze of alleys and narrow streets and strategically placed dead ends, but of course, that was the whole idea. When they reached the gate, a guard came out of a little hut whose windows glowed blue-green with computer screens. He unlocked the exit door and Aya peered out into the vast, windy fields beyond.

“Wait.”

Aya pivoted at the sound of the familiar voice. Aaron peeled himself away from the interior shadows and approached her. The guard fell back into his little hut and Nancy, with a respectful nod to Aaron, melted back into the city labyrinth.

Though Aya longed to make a run for the field, she folded her hands and looked up at the approaching Air, who wore a different expression—owned a separate demeanor altogether, actually—than that of the premier.

Aaron was older than his leader, somewhere in his fifties, Aya guessed, and his coloring was much paler than the premier’s tanned, worn appearance. He cocked his head as he regarded her.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“How can you look so human,” he murmured, “when you are so clearly not?”

She did not move and kept her features as still as stone. Evolution was the Children’s greatest secret—even greater than their hidden domain and their means of travel across the planet. No Primary or Secondary knew of the choice presented to each Child. None knew that some humans who now walked Aboveground had been born Within.

“What you did with the earth,” he went on, staring at her with bald curiosity, “seems impossible. For you to have been . . . that. And now you are . . . this. I have never seen a Secondary do anything like that.”

She sensed her hair respond to him, the long white tendrils coiling around her wrists like vines. His eyes dropped to the motion, then widened with wonder. Not with fear or mistrust or doubt.

Perhaps in this man she might find an ally. Perhaps someone more sympathetic and less leery than the premier.

“We are not Secondary,” she replied. It had never been declared a secret, that statement about her people’s history.

Aaron crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”

Aya laced her fingers. “Children are actually Primaries. We are sisters and brothers to humanity, born as one being at the dawn of time, and then separated as life changed with the earth.”

A heavy pause followed. “How come no scientists or archaeologists ever found skeletons or evidence of you, like they did early humans?”

“Because we die Within.” Or, if a Child had already evolved, they died Aboveground and no one was the wiser.

“Fascinating,” Aaron breathed.

She lifted her shoulders in a movement she’d copied from Keko. “So you see, we are not truly Secondary. We’ve always been here. And we will always be—”

A klaxon roared throughout the compound, the small device sitting on top of the guard hut throwing out the terrible, shrieking, repetitive alarm. She doubled forward, hands over her ringing ears. When she straightened, she watched with dread as the guard yanked shut the iron exit doors to the compound, locking her inside the walls.

After screaming something to her she could not hear over the cacophony, Aaron took off running back through the tangle of buildings. That guard had a phone pressed to his ear, his hands flying over various keyboards. She could stand here and wait to see when they’d actually let her go . . . or she could follow Aaron and find out the reason behind the horror in his eyes.

His feet disappeared around the first left corner and she sprinted after him before he could take another turn and be lost to the labyrinth.

They ran and ran, this path far more linear and shorter than the other two she’d been pulled along. Very soon she and Aaron burst into the tiny square in front of the church she’d just left. Air elementals spilled from the bland, narrow buildings, streaming toward the church, their hands to their mouths and eyes turned up to another alarm blaring on top of the steeple.