The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 504

Chapter 504

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He hadn’t washed or even changed. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark, still in his climbing gear, with his rope coiled in his lap, running his thumb along it.

“Not now, Nico.”

I came in anyway and shut the door behind me. He didn’t have the energy to throw me out, and we both knew it. I sat down next to him, and for a while, neither of us said anything.

“What really happened up there?” I finally asked.

“You heard Mom.”

“I heard her.” I looked at the side of his face. “Now I want to hear it from you.’

His jaw worked. “It’s the same story.”

“Then it should be easy to tell, right?”

Silence. His thumb kept moving over the rope. I waited him out. It was the one advantage of being the family insomniac-I could outlast anybody.

“We were digging her out,” he said at last. “The ceiling had come down between us and Ellie, but she was alive on the other side. Dominic could feel her through the bond. That part I remember.” He stopped. “Then nothing. Everything after is a haze.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“I mean I woke up on the chamber floor. Dominic next to me. Neither of us remembered passing out. We figured it was bad air from the collapse.” His thumb stopped on the rope. “But then we found Mom at the bottom of the stairs with her head split open, and we carried her out.”

“And what happened at the summit?”

“Dominic was going to go back to look for Ellie. He insisted she was still alive. I gave him my headlamp at the cave mouth, watched him turn around, and went to pick Mom up.” His brow furrowed deeper. “And then next thing I know I’m lying in the snow, and Mom’s screaming, and Dominic is gone.”

That night, I laid awake as usual, thinking about everything.

Ellie was alive last night. She was injured, or something had happened to her, but I knew one thing: she was alive. I couldn’t speak on Dominic, I didn’t know him well enough to enter his dreams, but… Ellie was alive, which meant that Mom was lying about at least one thing.

And then there was Vivian. Dead in her cell the morning after I saw Mom emerging from the meeting house with an empty basket and no jam in the pantry.

I wanted to tell Dad, but I knew he wouldn’t listen. Not now. Not when he was grieving. He’d just tell me that I was being cruel, that Mom and Bastian had been through too much for this nonsense, and besides… I didn’t have proof. The only complete record of what happened on that mountain was locked inside my mother’s head.

But everyone dreams.

I stared at the ceiling and listened to the house settle around me, to Dad’s low voice down the hall, to Mom moving through the kitchen like this was any other night. My whole life, I’d used my ability to escape-slipping into Amelia’s warm little dreams because my own head wouldn’t let me rest.

I had never once wanted to see inside my mother’s.

But tonight, when the house went quiet, I was going in anyway.