The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 417

Chapter 417

Ellie’s POV

I’d been up the ridge since first light, so long that my hands had gone stiff and numb in my gloves an hour ago..

I told myself I had only come up here, climbing the steep switchbacks that stretched up toward the peak, for the work. The clinic had a small storeroom of medicinal herbs, but it wasn’t enough. The cold weather here meant coughs and fevers and cracked skin, and a healer with empty shelves was no use to anybody.

But the truth under it was that I couldn’t sit still in that lonely little apartment another minute, not with everything from the banquet still swirling around in my head, so I had grabbed my basket and a trowel and gone looking for something to do with my hands.

It helped. The work was simple and the cold kept my head clear. I carefully picked my way along the path, taking only what would grow back and leaving the roots where the plant was worth keeping. Yarrow, mostly. A little willow bark. A patch of mint that would be good for tea.

And the whole time, the same questions went around and around and around in my head until I was certain I would go mad with them.

I had originally come to Goldenveil to do a job, and maybe, finally, to learn where I came from. I hadn’t planned on finding a father who looked at me like a ghost come back to life and then, the second he thought I wasn’t listening, he called me a gesture.

Even more than that, I hadn’t planned on finding Vivian here.

I had lain awake all night thinking about what to do about her. Eventually, I decided that I had to tell Terence. It was the safest and most logical thing to do. I’d been handed a second chance to keep all of this from going the way it went the first time, so I would be a fool not to handle it swiftly. No more running around, scheming and plotting and dancing around her own plots and schemes. This time, I was going to tell the Alpha exactly what had happened. My rebirth, her involvement, all of it. We already had a person in our bloodline who had been reborn; he would believe me. She would be in custody by nightfall.

Hopefully.

I was just about to turn back to head down the mountain when I felt a sudden tug in my chest that I knew all too well.

I turned, looking back up the slope. It was the same pull I’d felt with plants before. The Seeker trait, as Terence called it.

Now that I knew what it was, I followed it without question. The thread pulled me up another two switchbacks, leaving me a little breathless, but finally, I spotted it.

The plant sat in the crack of a boulder. It was low and dark, broad leaves the color of a bruise, with a single closed bud on a stem. I crouched in front of it and studied it more closely, trying to think if I had seen this plant before.

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