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“At some point they got close to Dio, and he hid his essence away to keep it from falling into their hands. He made himself some sort of weird institute to live in with a cornfield around it.”
Baz shuddered, and I again thought of how lucky I’d been to escape the corn.
“So he was safe, but generally incapacitated. Nic was the only one left, and he was doing his best to keep things together. Not-Baz started kidnapping circus performers to try and find me. I still don’t know what he wanted with me, but I guess it was to hand me over to Effie. She’s the one behind all this. She’s the dreambound who wants to go home.”
Baz nodded. “I think I remember her. She found me one day and started up a conversation. I had no reason not to talk to her, nor to expect any sort of attack. I guess she captured me, tortured some information out of me. That’s probably where she found out about you, though I don’t really remember. Then she tore out my essence. How did she get this pretender to be able to take my place?”
“She dropped most of your essence in a corn field, but a small part of it she gave to the pretender.”
“If it was in a cornfield, how’d you get it?”
It was my turn to shudder. Briefly, I told him about the rest of our adventures. “So now we need to figure out how to defeat her, and fix everything.”
“It may not be possible with Dio and Nic missing in the nothingness.”
“I got out before.” I didn’t relish the idea of going back.
Baz nodded, accepting everything I didn’t say with that one look.
“So, tell me about your knight. You seem very fond of him.”
“Uh, yeah, about that.”
“We were gone for far too long. He shouldn’t—”
I held up my hand. “Geraint didn’t do anything wrong. He only gave in to my desire for a relationship after I started looking elsewhere.”
“So he did us a favor?”
“I’m not married with two point five kids and a picket fence, if that’s what you mean.”
Baz took a deep breath. “How did the others take it?”
“Nic got over it pretty quickly, and they both get along rather well now. Dio tried to kill Geraint. I got all up in his face about it, so then he pouted for a while. Then Geraint saved his life a couple of times, and now they’re friends.”
“And you maintain this relationship with your knight?”
“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love him,” I lifted my chin in defiance.
For a half second warmth softened the exhaustion on Baz’s face. “I may have an idea of what that’s like.”
“So we’re good?”
“We are currently nothing,” he said. “We don’t even know each other any longer.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong. The words stung, but I couldn’t argue. I didn’t even know why they stung. I was still having a hard time with the thought of being with Baz. We’d been close as children, but so much separated us now.
I supposed if there was anything left to save of Dream, we’d have to. But what if we were already too late?
Ember
Memories
The hot sun and humid air contrasted with the cooler water and the slight breeze as I stared up at the cliff I’d just jumped off. No matter how many times I did it, my heart always tried to climb into my throat. After all these years, I should enjoy it. While I didn’t hate the experience, something about the freefall still freaked me out.
One of the boys swam up behind me and put his arm around my shoulders while we treaded water. Baz. Though I was tan, I still looked pale compared to his dark skin.
“You’re so brave, Ember.”
