The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 479

Chapter 479

“Bring what the dead cannot,” Dominic repeated. “Cannot what?”

“If I knew that, we’d be through already,” Bastian muttered, rubbing his chin. He stepped closer again, pressing his hands against various points in the arch, against the crest, the words. Nothing.

We tried light next, holding the headlamp close to the stone the way the first riddle had taught us to think. Light, opals, reflection. The slab just sat there, unmoving.

“Maybe try saying something?” Dominic suggested. “The dead can’t speak-maybe that’s it.”

I wasn’t convinced, but I tried anyway. “Oh, door,” I said, ignoring Bastian’s snort beside me, “please open for us.”

Nothing.

We tried a few more methods-Bastian pricked my thumb and smeared blood over the crest. Nothing. We tried song, and dance, everything that we could think of that the dead could not do. None of it worked. Eventually, exhaustion began to set in. We had just climbed a mountain, after all, and had hardly even stopped to eat.

“It’s getting late,” Bastian finally said, checking his watch. He dug his notebook back out and settled cross- legged in front of the door..”You two rest. I’ll keep working.”

“You should sleep too,” I said.

“I will. After.” He was already copying the lines, underlining words, drawing little arrows between them, exactly the way he’d sat in the library all those weeks ago. He didn’t look up. “There’s an offshoot behind you. Take it.” A pause. “And try to actually sleep.”

The offshoot turned out to be a pocket of a room barely big enough for two sleeping bags laid side by side, with a ceiling low enough that even I had to duck. We zipped the bags together for warmth, stripped off our boots and coats, and burrowed in while the cold radiated up through the stone beneath us.

Dominic pulled me back against his chest, one arm under my head, the other wrapped around my middle, and for a while we just laid there in the dark, listening. The stone muffled everything, even the sound of Bastian cursing out loud in the other chamber.

“You did well today,” Dominic said through the link.

I shot him a look in the dark. “I almost died.”

His nose brushed my neck. “Yeah, but you didn’t.”

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