The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 497

Chapter 497

Ellie’s POV

I was alone in this cave.

On a logical level, which still existed somewere beyond the breathing walls and the way the mushrooms were clouding my mind, I knew that.

And yet, the woman standing in front of me certainly looked real. Her cloak was shimmering gold, just like her hair, like it was spun from strands of the very metal itself. Her eyes were opal like mine, smiling, her face serene and warm. My ancestor was standing in front of me, and, Goddess, she looked so real.

But she wasn’t. I knew that. Those mushrooms I’d eaten; they healed me, but the side effect was whatever this was. Hallucinations that would likely fade in a few hours. Hopefully.

“Am I dying?” I choked out.

The woman laughed, and it was like a thousand tiny bells. “No, child. You’ve already done that once. Like me.”

My mouth went dry.

“You’re her,” I said. “The princess.”

Her face turned a little sad. “I was. But that was a long time ago.”

“The woman in the water. You pulled me up.”

“I told you then. I won’t let you die in my domain.” She tilted her head, and the light rippled around her. “But I didn’t wait all these years just to keep you breathing. You need to hear the truth, Ellie. Before the mushrooms wear off and you stop listening to me.”

I didn’t say anything. She took that as permission to keep going, even though I was really just too stunned and high to speak.

“You saw my life on the rim. My birth. My gift.” She turned one hand over, palm up, and for a second I would have sworn ivy moved beneath the gold. “And my death. A knife in the dark, held by someone I loved.”

“Your sister.”

“My twin.” Her voice softened. “We were supposed to be by each other’s side forever. I loved her dearly, but she … she resented me because I was born three minutes ahead, and thus I wore the crown she always coveted.”

I thought of the relief. The woman in the shadows behind the throne.

“Three days after they laid me on the slab, I woke up on it,” she said. “Our blood doesn’t always stay dead. You know that better than anyone.”

A chill scuttled up my spine.

“I walked her to the edge myself, with no witnesses except for the gods,” she went on. “I wanted it to be private. That was my mistake.” She sighed softly, and it was warm across my face, comforting, smelling faintly of pond water and minerals. “She pushed me. She was always stronger than me-a warrior in ways I could never be.”

I pressed my good hand over my mouth. The water. Those unfathomable black depths I’d sunk through, the cold, the darkness. She’d drowned in that, and her sister took her crown and her name, and no one ever knew.

My stomach turned. I knew this story. I’d died inside a version of it.

“For centuries I have been in this mountain,” she said. “Waiting for a child of our blood who died and came back. Waiting for the one person who could hear me. The truth has to leave this place with someone, Ellie. I’ve waited a very long time for you.”

“Why me?” My words were starting to slur. “Because I was reborn?”

“Because of the promise.” The gold halo around her brightened. “Long before I was born, it was spoken: a child of Lycan blood will come after the fall, after our people scatter, carrying the old gifts into the new world. A healer. She will mend what broke between our kind and the wolves, heal both without favor, until our history is spoken out loud instead of buried under mountains. And from her line will come something new. Wolf and Lycan in one body, the gifts passing from parent to child, generation after generation, so we never truly end.”

The walls fell away while she talked. I saw a valley full of people, wolves and Lycans shoulder to shoulder, nobody hiding. I saw my own hands wrapping a bandage around an arm that didn’t belong fully to either kind. I saw children running through the ruins with the pillars rebuilt, and one of them turned to look at me, and her eyes-

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