The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 431

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Chapter 431

Ellie’s POV

The library was smaller than I expected, really just one long room at the back of the meeting house. But it was packed full, the shelves stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling. Small, but mighty; exactly what I needed.

The section on local plant life was tucked between a section on historical accounts and fiction novels, which was’ an interesting method of organization, to say the least. To my dismay, there were only three books in the entire section. Not so mighty, I supposed.

I pulled them all off the shelf and carried them to the nearest table. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular; just trying to acquaint myself with the local plantlife during my spare time. Besides, I needed something to do. kept thinking about my failed phone call with Dominic and wondering if he had heard anything I’d said. I also kept berating myself during every quiet moment for letting Vivian walk away, and that wasn’t going to help any.

I was halfway through the second one, a dense, handwritten journal that even had local plant samples pressed between the pages, when I noticed I wasn’t alone.

Bastian was sitting at the far table with a book open in front of him and a piece of paper beside it covered in notes. He was muttering to himself, scratching his head as he scribbled on the paper, then muttered something else and scribbled it out.

He looked up, sensing my eyes on him. I offered him a small smile and a wave. He quickly went back to whatever he was doing.

Curious, I glanced over.

The book in front of him was open to a section about the fountain. I could see the heading from where I sat. On his piece of paper he’d written out a few lines of old text and underlined certain words, drawing arrows between them.

A riddle, by the look of it.

He caught me looking and pulled the paper a little closer to his side of the table. I went back to my book.

The underlined words had already registered, though. My brain was turning them over without entirely meaning to, the same way it did when I wasn’t trying to locate a plant and found one anyway.

Stone that drinks but doesn’t swallow.

Light that leads where water follows.

Something like that. I’d only caught a piece of it.

A minute passed.

“The opal deposit,” I said.

Bastian looked up.

“Stone that drinks but doesn’t swallow,” I said. “Opals absorb light. And if the water passed through the deposit on its way up, it would refract the light in the basin-reflect it back in a specific direction.” I looked at his notes. ” Does the next line say anything about direction? A time of day?”

He stared at me for a moment before he looked down at his paper, read something, and turned back a page in the book.

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“Sunrise,” he said slowly.

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“Then the spring is probably wherever that light points at sunrise. Something in the ruins would mark it.”

He went quiet again. Read something else, turned another page, and set the book down. He wrote something on his paper, looked at it, then folded it and tucked it into his coat pocket.

He stood. “Thanks,” he said without looking at me.

“Good luck with it.”

He picked up the book and nodded once-more to the room than to me–and left.

I sat there for a second, then went back to my herbs.

I was reorganizing the back storage shelf that afternoon when I heard the knock..

Stephanie was at the door with a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, a careful smile stretched across her mouth. It looked like it was costing her an arm and a leg to keep that smile in place.

“I wanted to bring you this,” she said when I let her in. “By way of apology. For the other night.”

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