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Ember sagged, and I put my arm around her waist. “Yeah, maybe a nap?” she said.
“It has been a trying day,” Nic agreed.
I snorted. “Understatement.”
Ash ran a hand through her hair and shot me a bleak look.
“Oh, Ash,” Ember said, voice cracking with her sorrow.
Her cousin turned away, waving her hand in dismissal. “It’s fine.”
Ember shut her eyes and took a deep breath. We’d certainly have to deal with all this later, but for now I held my spark while Robby steered us away from the Nothingness storm.
The winged cat trilled, and we turned to look at him. It pawed at Dio. The fallen prince didn’t respond. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
Nic went to his brother’s side and put his hand on Dio’s shoulder. The other he put on the cat.
“Ember, come here, if you will, and see if you can syphon the cat’s energy back into Dio.”
She pulled away from me and sat next to the unconscious prince. When she held out her hand to the cat, it rubbed against her, purring. My spark put her other hand on Dio’s chest, and she shut her eyes.
The cat didn’t object as she pulled on his energy and funneled it back into the Nightmare prince. The cat faded, not unlike when Nic joined with his shadows, until nothing remained of the winged feline.
Dio’s chest rose and fell a few times before he snapped his eyes open. He stared at Nic before his gaze darted to Ember.
“Princess,” he breathed out, his light Middle Eastern accent making the title sound exotic.
“Dio!” She gasped, hand going to her mouth.
He struggled to sit. Nic tried to restrain him, but he batted his brother’s hand away, so Nic helped him sit instead.
“I thought you were a dream,” he said.
“A really good one, I hope,” she joked, though I sensed uncertainty in her. She glanced at me before allowing Dio to pull her into a hug.
He buried his face against her neck and crushed her to his chest. “You smell just like I remember,” he said.
I shifted, wondering how he would react when he caught my scent all over her. If his essence took on the shape of a cat, I bet he had a better than average sense of smell. Hopefully, we could avoid that confrontation until we’d dealt with some of the other problems facing us. Like Ash and Casey and how we were going to explain to the lyrist that she was trapped in the Dream realm for the rest of her life. Ash already knew, though I doubted she’d really comprehended what that meant.
Dio glanced at his brother before he turned his attention to me, eyes narrowing.
So clearly we were going to deal with this now. Shit.
Ember
Dio’s attention shifted from me and Nic to Geraint. He couldn’t possibly have already figured out Geraint and I were involved, could he?
The low growl that thrummed through his chest made me think that somehow he had.
I scrambled to my feet and put myself between the two men, backing until I leaned against Geraint’s chest. There wasn’t a lot of room on the spaceship, so it didn’t put a ton of space between me and Dio, but it was enough.
“You are my princess, not his,” Dio growled. “He will die for touching you.”
“I’m not your anything,” I bit out. “And if you want me to be your princess, you’ll have to accept Geraint.”
“Dio,” Nic said. “Not now.”
Dio swung around, glaring at Nic.
