Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

“Go on,” he urged her, curious what she meant to say.

She sighed, giving him a shy glance from the corner of her eye. “I’m a flower fairy, Jericho, there’s not much else that a being like me should want or crave, and yet…” her eyes were huge and luminescent in her pale, freckled face, “and yet, when I touched you,” she trailed a finger down the bridge of his nose, “I wanted so much more.”

Nipping at the finger she now had rested against his lips, he smiled. “Long ago, when I was simply a man tending sheep in the lowlands, we had a saying among my people.”

“Yes?”

“That the soul knows.”

He expected her to ask him what that meant, or to ask him to expound further, but all she did was lean in and kiss him. “I know,” she whispered, and then laughed softly. “I never believed in love at first sight. Simply thought it a myth humans invented because their lives were so dull. But it is not a myth, simply a reality few souls ever get to truly witness.”

“Aye,” he nodded. “A distinction Siria doesn’t understand.”

“Siria,” her brow lifted, “and again we return to the sun. Why do I feel like she is very important to us, Jericho?”

Calanthe was no fool, a trait he respected and appreciated. Playing the fool was a game he’d grown weary of through the years thanks to Siria’s constant scheming.

Twirling a ribbon of her luscious, nut brown hair around his finger, he nodded. “She is, Calanthe. And should she ever discover what we’ve done, as I suspect she has a good inkling of, things might not go so well for us.”

Clasping his hand, forcing his eyes to her face, she shook her head. “Why? Why does she care? I understand that the sun and moon are tied through nature, but is it true also of their… bodies?” The last was a whisper so low it was more a breath than an actual sound.

Jerking up, so that he could pull her tight into his embrace, he knew the only way to ever truly gain her trust was to be upfront about everything. “Once, Calanthe, we were. It is why she brought me here to this land to begin with. She fancied herself in love with me.”

Her eyes were closed and her cheek pressed to his when she asked, “And you?”

Inhaling deeply, wishing more than anything that he could deny it, he shook his head. “Once, I believed it so.”

She didn’t speak for a moment, merely curled her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “And now?”

Pulling back, so that he could frame her face, he shook his head. “That ended almost two centuries ago. For me anyway.”

She frowned. “I do not think that I could respect a man who has left a woman to pine away for him.”

Calanthe made to move out of his arms completely. It had never even crossed his mind that that would be her first assumption. “Calanthe, do you think so low of me to believe that I could do something like that?”

She laughed. “As much as I believe in love at first sight, the fact is, Jericho, I barely know ye. It could be that I’ve fallen for a cad and—”

With a growl, he silenced her words with a breath stealing kiss, desperate to make her understand him. “No. The truth is Siria, apart from cheating on me repeatedly, is a heartless, vindictive woman.” He shook his head, thinking of the things that she’d done.

“Like what?”

She licked her lips and Jericho wasn’t sure why he felt so loathe to share her misdeeds. The truth was Siria had done so many terrible things, but him just telling those things to Calanthe wasn’t really proof, in fact, down the line she could misconstrue him telling her as him simply lying to make himself appear more redeemable. He did want truth between she and he, but not at the expense of another.

“Calanthe, my dear sweet fairy.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “I could tell a million stories, but I refuse to degrade another that way. Because while she’s been cruel to me, she’s been nothing but kindness to this glen and to your kind and that is all you should know. That, and that I desperately love you and probably always will.”

Their gazes held for interminable amount of time. It felt like eternity wrapped up in a second.

“My heart is breaking,” she finally said, pressing his palm to her breast. Over the beating of her heart. “You are leaving me. I sense it.”

He was trying with all his might not to think of what must be, to simply live and breathe in this moment, but he couldn’t deny her the right to know. Nostrils flaring, he briefly jerked his head forward. “I must, you know I cannot stay.”

“No.” She clenched her jaw. “I’m not speaking of our month long separation. You’re never coming back.”

She wasn’t asking a question, so he wasn’t going to pretend she was. “Her crows saw us. Calanthe, there is much in this life I do not like, but it would kill me if anything ever happened to you. I have no choice.”

“Is she really so much of a devil?”

“Worse. So much worse.”