The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 535

Chapter 535

Ellie’s POV

“Okay, hear me out,” Sarah said around the bobby pins clamped between her teeth. “Clementine.”

“You want me to name my daughter after a fruit.”

“A cute fruit.”

“It is cute,” I admitted, smiling. “But unfortunately, it’s vetoed.”

“But you’ve vetoed forty-one names already,” Sarah whined as sje pinned another curl into place. “At this rate the poor pup’s going to be six before she’s anything but ‘the baby.””

“Ooh, what about Meadow?” Abigail chimed in from the other side of the room, where she was holding my dress up to herself in front of the mirror. “Meadow’s pretty!”

“She’s a pup, not a landscaping project,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.

I laughed, and Sarah pressed her hand flat on top of my head to keep me still. My bedroom looked like a tornado had come through. Shoes on the bed, curling iron heating on the vanity, Abigail’s makeup bag spilling blushes and brushes across every surface. The window was cracked open, and the smell of roast chicken kept drifting up from the field below, along with the sounds of the first guests arriving. Car doors. Laughter. Somebody tuning a violin.

My stomach fluttered. Or maybe that was the baby. These days, it was getting a little hard to tell.

The dress went on with all three of us working together, Abigail doing up the buttons while Sarah held my hair out of the way. It was deep green, gathered under the bust so it showed off the bump, with little sleeves that sat just off my shoulders.

Sarah had picked it out weeks ago, insisting that green was my color. Looking in the mirror now, hair curled and pinned, my belly round and unmistakable under the fabric, I supposed she’d been right.

“Oh no,” Abigail whispered behind me. Her eyes were already welling up with tears that shimmered in the light.

“Don’t you dare,” Sarah warned her. “If you start, she starts, and I am not redoing anyone’s makeup.”

There was a knock at the door before Abigail could answer.

“Decent?” Bastian’s voice called.

“Depends who’s asking,” Sarah called back, and opened it anyway.

My brother was in the hallway in a suit, hair combed back, a folder tucked under one arm. He looked me over once, expression softening for just a moment before he quickly schooled it back into his usual practiced one.

“May I borrow my sister for a minute?” he asked, looking between my friends.

Sarah looked at me. I nodded, and she herded Abigail out with promises of finding champagne to make the tears stop, the door clicking shut behind them.

“If you’re here to practice your speech again,” I said, fiddling with my necklace in the mirror, “the answer is no.

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It’s perfect already.

“It’s not that.” Bastian moved over to the window, glanced down at the field, then turned to me. “I need to ask you something,” he said. “And I need it to stay between us for now.”

“Okay.”

“When my mother went to prison…” He paused, wincing, the memory no doubt paining him. “We went through the vaults. Just to check, since she’d been paying Monroe. And one thing is unaccounted for. A raw opal. A large one. It’s worth a lot of money.”

I blinked at him.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?” he asked. “Anything Dad might have mentioned. Anything you saw over the winter.”

“Bastian, I didn’t even know you had a vault until just now.” I spread my hands. “I’m the last person who’d know what’s supposed to be in it.”

He nodded slowly, like he’d expected that but had to ask anyway. His thumb ran along the edge of the folder.

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