Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

But as if he sensed it, he shook his head. “Don’t leave me. I don’t have much time left.”


Swallowing her panic, Calanthe took a moment to collect herself. “Why?”

“How much do you know about me?” he asked, touching his chest.

She shrugged. “Nothing.”

“No.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Not me, Jericho. But me, the Man in the Moon?”

Only that he existed. That the Man in the Moon controlled the shifting tides of the sea, brought the cloaking veil of night to the lands. But Calanthe’s life had always been dominated more by the sunlight than the darkness. Sun made her seeds sprout, fed her flowers so that they’d grow and bloom as they ought.

“Very little,” she ruefully admitted.

His smile was soft. “I’m a man, born of an entirely different place.”

She wrinkled her nose. “In Kingdom?”

“No.”

He laughed, and the sound shivered across her flesh, made her stomach curl in on itself.

“I wasn’t born in Kingdom. I was born far, far away. In a place called Earth.”

“Earth?” Of course she’d heard of Earth, a place filled with humans who read their stories and thought of them merely as myth, as tales to tell around a campfire. A place with no magic, and very little belief in it. “How did you get here?”

“Siria,” he said the name like it should mean something to her. But it didn’t. What she did notice though was that when he’d said the name it was cold and inflectionless.

She shrugged.

“She is the sun.”

Calanthe laughed. “I never knew the two of you had names. How odd that I wouldn’t know that. I see the sun and moon every day and never wondered about it. But how did she bring you here from Earth?”

Leaning back on his hands, he stared out at the night with an unseeing gaze. As if he weren’t looking at the forest, but back into the past.

“The moon and sun can travel across all planes of existence. From Kingdom to Earth and a trillion different realms in between.”

“Wow,” she breathed, not just a little amazed by that fact. “What have you seen?”

His smile was broad and so breathtaking that for a moment she really did forget to inhale.

“Galaxies.” He stared up at the sky. “The birth and death of planets and stars, of entire civilizations. Creatures so strange as to give you nightmares. Civilizations comprised of peoples with purple skin and tusks for mouths.”

“Purple skin and tusks for mouths,” she laughed. “You’re lying.”

“No.” His eyes twinkled. “I have seen things you could not even dream of.”

Excited, blood pumping as she tried to imagine it, she sat to her knees. “How old are you, Jericho?”

Blinking, as if coming back to himself, he turned toward her. “I’m not really sure actually. Time moves so differently here than it did on Earth. The days are so much longer. But I’ve been locked away in that castle for over two hundred Kingdom years.”

She frowned. “Then how can you safely move in between realms. I’ve always heard that only those from Kingdom can go to Earth and not age back to what they should be now.”

“True, and were I to actually leave Kingdom, I would surely die.” He said it with such bluntness, she didn’t think he’d actually mind if he did.

But just the thought of it made her heart want to seize with terror. She’d only just found him, and strange as it seemed, she knew deep down with every fiber of her being that Jericho was the excitement she’d been waiting her entire life for.

No, it wasn’t done. A fairy shouldn’t want more than what a fairy had. But being with him now, she was full. No longer empty, or cold, or depressed. He filled the hole, the ache. The night she’d met him as a flower, and now, meeting him in the flesh… he was her adventure.

It was wrong on so many levels, she knew that, and knew that should they get caught now it wouldn’t go well for her… but she simply couldn’t bring herself to care, because this was right.

She grabbed his hand, slipping her fingers through his. Looking down at their joined palms, he smiled and it made her heart sail.

“I live in the castle, up there.” He pointed to the moon and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t see a castle at all. Nothing but the crags and cliffs of the moon. “The magic of Kingdom permeates my home. In essence a slice of Kingdom goes with me wherever I go.”

Wiggling just an inch closer, she tried to hide the blush. She knew she was acting bold, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Not where he was concerned.

“But you’re here now.”

Lifting their hands he stared at it for a while and then shrugged. “Yes, for now. But I can only do this once a month.”