Now she did want to be Queen. Fuck what she’d told Griffin just that morning. She wanted to rise above everything . . . but most especially heartbreak.

She slipped from a wide swatch of private land into an area heavily forested with tall, skinny trees that permanently swept back and away from the coast like a woman’s hair in the wind. The natural area climbed higher and higher, and at the very top the bluffs dove sharply downward. At the bottom and about a half mile to the northwest was a small community with a marina.

The air whistled as it tried to negotiate its way through the thick trees, and Keko had to slow down even more to get up and through the rocky, shaded area. She refused to listen to the moans and complaints of her body. It was how she’d been trained, and she was still Chimeran, above everything. She pushed and climbed until the sun went down, splashing into the ocean.

She wanted food. She craved water.

When Griffin’s stars popped out, she knew she had to stop. She could give herself fire to see by, yes, but it would also announce her presence to anyone peering out into the dark.

She found an outcrop of rock, a huge tree erupting from the top, its roots coiling down from the sides to form a black, moist, hidden cave, and she climbed into it. Thirty feet in front of her the bluff dropped off a scary distance into the roaring ocean. From her little hiding place she had a good vantage point to the left and right—high enough to see anyone approaching before they noticed her.

A distinct scent filled her nose, bringing with it an avalanche of unwanted emotion. It confused her until she remembered she was wearing Griffin’s T-shirt. Grinding the back of her skull into the rock, she turned her face to the treetops, trying to get away from the smell she loved but didn’t want to. If she could burn the black cotton like she’d burned his coat, she would. But she couldn’t.

She choked back any and all sorrow. Choked it back hard enough the tightness in her jaw turned to pain. Bitterness and disappointment and heartbreak and determination clenched every muscle into a wiry, uncomfortable, shaking mass. Though her eyelids dragged down, the extreme physical discomfort did not allow her to sleep.

She would stay awake until daybreak, then, and meet her fate under the sun.

So when she actually did wake up, blinking into pockets of sunlight breaking through the shadowed morning trees, it was with great disbelief. She was lying on her side, knees tucked into her chest.

Not ten feet away, Griffin leaned against a tree, watching her.

Keko rolled to her feet before the sleep had been fully shoved from her head. There was no weakness in her muscles, no lingering rest or stiffness from unexpected sleep. Just power. Only alertness. And a fierce, focused glare, sharp as a blade, on the Ofarian man who watched her with infuriating calmness.

She’d been right. For once in her life she didn’t want to be, but Griffin’s appearance here—following her after he’d admitted to colluding with the Senatus to bring her in—proved he was driven only by his political motives. He was a liar. Nothing more. And nothing he could say would ever prove otherwise.

With a great leap she pushed out of the little cave and jumped down to the flat space among the trees below. The ground was squishy, cushioning her landing. Lowering her center of gravity, she circled around Griffin, arms pulled in and ready to do her fire’s bidding. Her chest filled with magic, her tongue and lips ready to unleash it.

A battle was coming, and this time she wasn’t sure if the loser would survive.

Griffin came away from the tree far too slowly, far too easily. His crossed arms dropped to his sides. A hunter’s gleam brightened his eyes. She knew that look well. He wore deadliness like invisible clothing.

Mist clung to the edges of his skin, blurring them against the early morning sky and the waving tree branches. It made him seem godlike, sprung from the atmosphere. She knew he’d dissolved his body and thrown himself to the wind, tracked her from the air. He carried nothing with him, wore nothing other than those black shorts with the side pockets. His chest and arms and face gleamed with moisture and she didn’t know if it was sweat or his magic. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

He was real now. Corporeal. Threatening. And he was coming for her. His legs made long strides across the dirt and mat of fallen foliage. The space between them halved.

Keko inhaled and showed the flame dancing at the back of her throat. “I’ll fucking burn you.”

“You would’ve done that back at the B and B. You wouldn’t have just left me.”

A pang of guilt hit her hard. It seemed he didn’t know what had happened after he’d left, how her residual magic had caused damage. She chose to say nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, for the eighty millionth time. “You don’t have to fight me.”

She could feel her body heating up with frustration, could see the grass and bushes around her start to shimmer from the terrible temperature she was throwing off. Just let Griffin try to touch her. She’d singe him.

“My only other choice is to stop, to go back with you. That isn’t happening.”

He took another step closer, his shoulders bunching up, fists forming. “It’s not your only choice. If you’d only—”

“I’m not perfect,” she said, thinking about the fire in the B and B. “Neither are you.”

“Never said I was.”

He started to circle around sideways, taking his back away from the edge of the cliff . . . and trying to push her toward it. Wouldn’t work. Not on her island.

His fists released as he raised his palms to her. “Will you please just listen to me?”

She blew a sheet of flame down her arm. “I already did and I’ve heard enough. Now you listen to me.”

After a great pause, in which he rolled and licked his lips several times, swallowing whatever lying words he wanted to spew out, he finally crossed his arms over his bare chest and said, “Fine. I’m listening.”

She pointed the flaming arm, a short spear of sparking fire extending out to him in warning. “You won’t take me back to the Senatus. You will not deny me this chance to do one great thing for my people. I believe that if the Source is what feeds my people our magic, it will grant me access to it. It will give me what I need without the destruction Aya tried to scare you with. You can chase me all you like, Griffin, but I won’t be your trophy on your wall as you sit back and think about how you duped me. About how you used me to get what you want.” She drew herself up. “I’m not yours. I won’t ever be yours.”

“But I,” Griffin said, “am yours.”

“Don’t you dare say that again.”

She released the fire, a great scarlet and gold bomb that barreled toward Griffin. She lost his face in it, her magic consuming her vision. Her will commanded her mind—her will and her anger, her determination and her love. And as the fireball swung toward him, the flames stretching tall, a tiny sliver of her wanted to pull it back. The rest of her, submerged in his lies and his so-called love, pushed the bomb toward him with renewed force.

The fireball imploded. It died midair, sucking into itself, before it could take down Griffin in a blaze of skin and hair and death.

As the fireball shrank and shrank, it changed. Shifted. The air around it blurred in a way she recognized as Ofarian power drawing moisture from the atmosphere, then the whole thing started to harden. Shards of silver and white formed in its center, spiking out. Blades of shimmering ice burst out from what had once been fire, her greatest weapon. Now rendered inert. Inconsequential.

Griffin stood behind the rotating ball of magically forming ice, his expression angry but not malicious. She didn’t understand that. She’d just called his bluff, had just tried to destroy him. Where was his hate? His sense of justice?