The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 475

Chapter 475

Ellie’s POV

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We left before the village was fully awake, the three of us walking through the dark streets with our packs on and our breath clouding out ahead of us. My father saw us off at the gates with Eli perched half-asleep on his arm, one mitten raised in a droopy wave until the switchbacks carried us out of sight.

Bastian set the pace. Past the ruins, past the fallen stones that hid the etching cave, and then off the path entirely, up and up where there was no path at all.

For the first few hours, it was just work. Snow to the knee in places, then wind-scoured rock, then ice. Bastian stopped us at the base of the first real slope and made us rope together-him in the lead, me in the middle, Dominic anchoring the rear-and ran us through the commands one more time even though he’d already drilled us on them twice the night before.

“If I say stop, you stop mid-step. If I say down, you’re on your axe before you finish hearing the word.” His eyes moved between us. “The mountain doesn’t care who’s funding what. Clear?”

“Clear,” Dominic said.

The strange thing was, the higher we went, the louder my bag got-but in a way only I could hear. The fruit was wrapped at the top of my pack, and my Seeker ability had been going off intermittently as if reminding me of its presence since the moment we left the apartment. By midmorning it was starting to drive me insane, and it made me wonder if I had made a mistake bringing it at all.

But if the ability told me to take it, then it must have had a reason. There was always a reason with the plants I found. This one in particular hadn’t shown me yet, and I was certain that nearly killing poor Nico over a leaf wasn’t the original purpose of the plant.

The fruit… it had to be the purpose. But I wouldn’t know what for until the moment came, whenever that may be.

We were traversing a wide slope beneath a band of cliffs when the mountain finally decided to test us. There was no warning that I noticed-Bastian claimed afterward that there had been a whumpf underfoot that I’d been too winded to catch-just a crack from somewhere above, sharp as a gunshot.

“DOWN!”

I dropped down, biting my axe into the ice, and then the world turned white and roaring.

Snow poured over my shoulders and shoved at my pack, my crampons ripping free of the slope, my body swinging downhill on the rope like a pendulum. My axe skittered loose. I slid.

The rope snapped taut, and a hand closed around my harness.

Dominic had me. He’d gotten his axe planted and his body wedged against a rib of rock, and he held both of us there, arm shaking, while the last of the snow hissed past and poured off the edge of the slope below. My feet found purchase. The roar faded. The mountain went quiet again, like nothing had happened at all.

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