The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 502

Chapter 502

One second there was stone under my boot. The next, the slab simply dropped away beneath me, swinging downward, and I went down with it into the shadows.

The fall wasn’t bottomless like the others. I found that out when I hit the bottom.

I landed hard on my left side. My ankle snapped. The scream that came out of me didn’t sound like mine, more animal than woman. I grabbed my leg and rocked back and forth, cheep hitting cold stone, the walls breathing and warping around me as laughter spiraled through the chamber.

When I finally made myself look, my stomach roiled so hard I retched. My ankle was broken, and badly. I could see the bone protruding from skin that was already turning purple and mottled.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. Assess. Splint. You’ve done it a hundred times.”

But I had nothing to splint it with, and the first touch of my own fingers nearly made me pass out.

I looked up instead. The pit was at least three times my height, the walls made of smooth stone. Made for exactly this. Trapping someone. Even healthy, I doubted I could have climbed it. With a broken hand, a broken ankle, and cracked ribs, there was no way I’d get out on my own.

“HELP!” I screamed anyway. “DOMINIC! ANYONE!”

No answer. Even the voices went quiet.

I had to do something. If I didn’t, then I would die down here-and if anyone came back for me, they would find exactly what Stephanie said they’d find. Flesh rotting off bone.

Except…

My hand slid into my pocket, fingers curling around several mushrooms. I pulled them out and stared at them in my palm, faintly illuminated by the fruit still strung around my neck.

If I ate them all, they’d heal me. But I’d continue to hallucinate like this-potentially for hours.

“Fuck it,” I whispered.

I shoved the whole handful into my mouth, chewed, and forced it down before I could throw it back up.

The cold crept in fast after that. My clothes had never fully dried, and the shivering came back, and somewhere in the middle of it the walls of the pit began to breathe again, in and out. The whispers came back with them. I stopped answering and repeated a mantra in my head.

It’s not real. It’s just the mushrooms. It’s not real. It’s not real…

I kept repeating those words until they barely made sense anymore. I repeated them until the walls closed in and the laughter started. I repeated them even when I started rocking back and forth, not from pain but from insanity.

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