The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 521

Chapter 521

More silence. For a long moment, I worried my father might not like the idea. It was still risky, and expensive, and there would be a lot of work to do between now and spring if it was going to work.

But then he smiled and raised his glass.

And that was that.

It was late when dessert was finally cleared, Eli dead asleep in Nico’s arms, Amelia’s eyelids drooping beside him. Bastian and Dominic were bent over the table, going over the logistics one more time. My father found me by the window, where I was watching the snow pile up on the railing.

“Ellie.” He put a hand on my arm. “Before you leave Goldenveil, I thought you might want to know… Vivian is still in the morgue. Decisions will have to be made soon, about her rites.” He hesitated. “Would you like to see her? One last time?”

I looked at the snow for a moment.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I would.”

We walked down through the sleeping village together, my father leaning on my arm, past the shuttered windows and the doused remains of the pyre and the lanterns guttering in their strings, the snow settling over all of it, soft and quiet and pure white.

The morgue was colder than the night outside. My father pulled the chain on the single bulb, led me to the shelf along the far wall, and drew the sheet back without a word.

Vivian looked smaller than I remembered. Younger, too, with the sneer gone and her dark hair combed back from her face by some kind soul who hadn’t known her at all. I waited to feel the old anger. It didn’t come. All those years, two lifetimes of scheming and jealousy and poison, and this was where all of it ended up. On a shelf in a morgue in a village she’d never even heard of until a few months ago.

Despite everything she’d done to me, in this life and the last one, I was still a little sad looking down at her. Maybe that was foolish. Maybe it was just what was left over now that the fear had nothing to cling onto, but… I couldn’t help it.

“You were my sister once,” I murmured. “Before everything else. I hope the next life is kinder to you than you were to this one.”

I pulled the sheet back up over her face myself.

My father didn’t say anything the whole way up the stairs, but his hand stayed on my arm, and that was enough.

Dominic was waiting outside the clinic when we got there, snow dusting the shoulders of his jacket. He hugged my father goodnight and waited until he’d limped safely out of sight down the lane before he opened the door for me.

“Go on up,” I told him, nodding at the stairs to the apartment. “I’ll be right behind you. I have to handle something in the clinic first.”

He studied me for a second, in that way of his.

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