The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 490

Chapter 490

“Still there?” Dominic called behind me.

“Still here.”

The kink was worse. I had to empty my lungs the way Dominic had taught me and worm around the bend one inch at a time, my sweater snagging, my ribs lighting up with every drag. For a horrible moment I was too wedged in to breathe, and the panic began to set in. But I forced myself to exhale again. Another inch. Then another.

“Ellie?” The voice was fainter now, half-buried under the growing roar.

“Still here!” I called back. I wasn’t sure it reached them.

One inch. Two. Three. The cool draft turned to mist against my face, the stone under my hands went damp, and then, finally, the walls simply fell away.

I dragged myself out onto open rock, gasping, and looked up.

“Well?” Dominic’s voice was faint from the thick rocks between us but there. “How’s it going?”

My breath caught. I couldn’t answer. Not yet.

“Oh… Wow.”

The cavern was enormous. My headlamp couldn’t find the ceiling. It couldn’t find the far walls, either. The beam just faded off into darkness and drifting mist, and out of that darkness, from somewhere impossibly high above, fell the water.

A waterfall. Mist rolled off of it in slow clouds. The sound was deafening and beautiful, an enormous column of silver liquid cascading down from an unseen place above, as if poured by the Moon Goddess’s hand herself.

I pushed myself to my knees, still breathless, and crawled to the edge of the rocky outcrop. I was on a ledge high above the bottom of the cavern, so high up that it made my stomach lurch, but I could just barely see the bottom.

A pool.

Man-made, with a rim carved from opal that shone in the light like a thousand fireworks.

The fountain of youth.

The waterfall poured into it. And poured. And the water never rose. It never spilled over the rim. The pool just took it, all of it, endlessly, like it had been taking it for a thousand years and had room for a thousand more.

The folklore hadn’t been folklore at all.

It was here. Goddess, it was right here.

No answer.

Pulse spiking now, I moved back toward the tunnel, planning to squeeze back through and tell them everything. But just as I began walking that way, the outcrop began to shudder.

I froze, gasping, arms going out to the sides.

The shudder started at the edge of the rocks, right under my feet. I watched in horror as a line cracked down the surface and toward the wall, right next to the tunnel, spreading and spreading until-

BOOM.

The tunnel collapsed in a rush of stones and dust, blinding me, blotting out the light of the headlamp until all I saw was a white cloud of blinding dust and light.

Then, I was falling.

The surface of the pool rushed closer and closer until it swallowed me, cold and total. Pain shot through me as my back hit the surface, and then the headlamp guttered and went out at the same moment the cold rushed in.

The world went dark. I couldn’t tell if it was from the headlamp or death.

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