The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 469

Chapter 469

Ellie’s POV

The party had still been in full swing when we left it, and the music died away behind us within minutes, swallowed up by the wind coming down off the peaks. Snow had started somewhere around the second turn, and it was the stinging kind, blowing in sideways, getting into my eyes no matter which way I turned my head.

“ELI!” Nico cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted the name into the wind. He’d been calling every ten steps since the village gates.

Yet again, only the wind answered.

Bastian led the way up the path at a breakneck pace like the steep incline didn’t exist. He hadn’t spoken a single word since the square, but he didn’t need to. His jacket was open, his hands were bare. The cold didn’t seem to affect him.

Dominic stayed beside me, one hand finding the small of my back every time my boots slid on the ice.

“He’s fine,” he said, low enough that only I could hear. “Kids wander. We’ll find him sitting on a rock somewhere, completely unbothered.”

“It’s below freezing,” I said. And he’s only seven.”

Dominic didn’t answer that.

I kept scanning the darkness on either side of the path, wishing for the hundredth time that my Seeker ability worked on people. I could close my eyes and find a plant I’d never laid eyes on from a mile away, but now, when I needed a thread to pull me toward my baby brother, there was nothing. Just wind and darkness and the sick churn in my stomach.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we hit the top of the switchbacks. The ruins spread out ahead of us, the pillars nothing more than dark shapes against the night. Bastian stopped so suddenly that Nico nearly plowed into his back.

“What-” Nico started.

Bastian pointed.

The lantern was lying on its side at the edge of the path, half-buried in fresh snow. Still lit. The little flame guttered behind the cracked glass, throwing a weak circle of light across the snow.

My heart stopped dead in my chest.

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