The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 493

Chapter 493

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Chapter 493

Ellie’s POV

I laid on the stones beside the pool until the coughing finally stopped. Once I could breathe, just shivering now, I took a few moments to run through the damage the way I’d been trained to do for months at the academy.

Soaked to the skin and freezing cold. Ribs aching. Left hand throbbing. The gash above my eyebrow had reopened, the only warmth on my entire body coming from the thin trickle of blood.

Alive, though. Somehow.

I pushed myself up on my good hand and cupped it around my mouth.

“DOMINIC!”

There wasn’t even an echo. The roar of the waterfall made sure of that.

“DOMINIC! BASTIAN!”

Nothing. Just that endless roar of falling water, so loud I could feel its vibrations humming in the stone beneath my knees.

I sat back on my heels, dripping, and refused to cry even though the tunnel I’d crawled through was gone, the ledge I’d fallen from was somewhere high overhead, far too high to climb, and on the other side of all that rock were the two people I needed most in the world, with no way of knowing whether I was alive or floating face- down in their precious fountain.

“Okay,” I whispered, forcing the tears back down. “Think, Ellie. Think.”

The fruit was still in my hand. The first blinding flare had settled into a steady blue glow. It wasn’t much, not as strong as my headlamp, but it would do. I took the bandage from around my hand-the fabric was too soggy to be of any use now, anyway-and tied it around the stem of the fruit with shaking fingers, then tied that around my neck, fashioning it into a glowing necklace.

After, I stood, leaning my palms against the rocks, testing my weight. My legs wobbled, but didn’t give out. My left ankle hurt a little but held my weight.

The first panel showed a woman lying in a bed with her hair spread around her, a swaddled bundle in her arms, a man kneeling at her side with his forehead pressed to her shoulder. A birth. Above the little family, the carver had set a single eight-pointed star, and the opal caught my light and flashed green and orange.

The panels that followed traced the child. A girl riding on her father’s shoulders. The same girl kneeling in a garden, plants rising around her as she lifted her palms toward the sky as if she’d made the plants grow with thought alone. Her first shift, a slender wolf leaping over the moon. A festival. A dance. She grew older panel by panel, clearly loved and revered in every single one, until she was a young woman with a thin circlet resting on her brow.

The princess. This was her life, carved into the fountain’s rim by people who had loved her more than anything. Except for one person. Her sister.

I shifted, and the light caught the next panel. Another woman standing in the shadows behind the princess. A knife in her hands, and then…

The princess laying on a stone slab while her parents wept around her. While the sister wore her circlet on her

head.

I knew the rest of the story, of course. I didn’t need to look at the remaining reliefs. But I did anyway.

In the final panels, I saw the princess sitting up from the slab, hands lifted, ivy wrapping around her arms. I saw the parents rejoice. I saw the princess take back her circlet, then direct what looked like a massive mining effort