The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 408

Ellie’s POV

I folded the spare sheets and tucked them back in the cupboard before the sun was even up, like putting them out of sight might put Dominic out of my head.

The apartment felt bigger without him in it, like the one small room had turned into a mansion. I tried not to think about it too hard, but it was impossible. No matter how I busied myself with making tea and opening the clinic and tending to the morning’s wave of patients and visitors, I kept seeing his face, filled with a conviction had never expected from him.

Around nine, Amelia walked into the clinic with a bag that smelled like sugar and two cups of coffee in her hands. They had the logo of the local cafe on the cups.

“Morning,” she said. “I know it’s early. I brought breakfast.”

“Thank you.” I yawned and gratefully accepted the coffee. “I needed this.”

“Didn’t sleep?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“What happened?”

I thought about how to answer that. I’d told Dominic everything and the world hadn’t ended, but I wasn’t about to lay all of it on a woman I’d known for two days. So I gave her the short version instead.

“Dominic left last night,” I said. “Drove home. He’s got things to deal with.”

“Oh.” She didn’t ask anything else, which I appreciated more than I could say. Instead she pulled out a chair and sat, nudging a pastry toward me. “Eat. You’ll feel like less of a ghost.”

The pastry was warm and ridiculous and exactly what I needed, and I felt marginally better by the time I finished

“So,” Amelia said, brushing crumbs off her lap. “The banquet’s tonight.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Do you have anything to wear?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had the pantsuit from the meeting, a couple of dresses that were too thin for this weather, and the coat. That was it.

“Define ‘anything,”” I said.

Amelia grinned and stood, already reaching for my coat on the hook by the door. “Come on. We’re going to see Marta.”

“That’s a common formal outfit around here,” Marta said, already pulling a measuring tape off a hook. “We wear it for banquets, weddings, the like. Arms up.”

I lifted my arms and let her work. All the while, Amelia perched on a stool by the window.

“The patterns all mean something,” she said, nodding at the panels on the wall. “See the wolves there? And the mountains, and the stars above them? It’s the old way of telling stories. Before we wrote much down, we stitched it instead.” She pointed from one panel to the next. “Some families have patterns that only belong to them. Passed down, mother to daughter, for generations.”

I thought about the tablet my mother had and explained the design to Marta. She nodded and took down some notes to make me a jacket with the same design. We kept it simple, just linework, so it would be ready by the banquet.

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