Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

Only once a month could his feet touch land.

Two days from now. He squeezed his eyes shut, as the old familiar feelings of hate for Siria tried to rear its ugly head. Two hundred years ago, give or take when he’d first been brought here, he’d attempted to escape every night for the first year.

But the Man in the Moon could not leave, could never leave his duties. He’d be a prisoner in this castle until his five-hundredth year.

The wavering heat of the setting sun massaged his back. Shaking his head, he knew what was coming.

The air tightened, shivered with the pressure of her. The air rushed with the smell of spring and sun warmed honey. Heart clenching, not because of her, but because of how much he missed what he could no longer have, he inhaled deeply. Damning himself for craving her presence every night.

“Jericho,” Siria’s sultry, exotic tones whispered across the heated flesh of his neck, making his heart clench with both revulsion and painful need.

“Siria,” he murmured, refusing to turn.

Though they shared the same castle in the sky, the two of them could only meet for an ephemeral period of time each day. The fleeting moment when both sun and moon hung together.

“Will you not turn and look at me?” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so.”

As much as he hated her for damning him to this solitary existence, he couldn’t help craving what she brought him. Twisting on his heel, he turned, attempting to ignore the hunger of her touch. His desperate need for warmth and life.

Siria was as heart-achingly beautiful now as she’d been when he’d first seen her.

Her skin, flushed a radiant bronze, almost seemed to glow. Much like a hollowed out candle would after burning for several hours. Hair—a hundred different shades of yellow—was pulled up into an intricate knot of beauty, making his fingers itch to trace each fat curl coiled enticingly around her face.

Those tawny amber eyes he’d once compared to a lioness’, gazed at him with fierce longing, parting pearl pink lips, she took a step into his space. Rays of sunlight crawled upon the balustrade floor, driving away the shadow. He wanted so desperately to have that light touch him, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

Not again. Not with her.

“Do you not miss me?” she asked, tracing a finger down the front of her slitted gown which exposed more flesh than it helped cover up.

Her warmth cried out to him, brushed against his body.

Jericho had always loved the sun. To be condemned to a perpetual world of darkness was the worst sort of punishment for him. If she’d truly loved him, she would have let him go.

She would have never brought him here.

“Get away from me, Siria,” he snarled, wrapping his cloak of shadow tighter around his body, so that not even a trace of light could penetrate.

Liquid eyes turned somber. “Someday you will forgive me.”

“I will never forgive your lies, your duplicity.” The frothing, churning anger riddled his gut, and lifting his chin high he took a step back, shoving himself against the railing.

Her radiance was already beginning to dim. The moon and sun would soon be separated once again.

Nostrils flaring, she tossed her head. Even in her anger, she was regal. Beautiful. At times he despised her all the more for it.

“I gave you eternal life when I brought you to Kingdom. You only have to serve the moon for a time—”

“Five hundred years is more than a time!” he growled, clenching his fist.

Upper lip curling into a snarl, she waved her hand at him. “Stop acting like a baby about this. I gave you a choice, to stay with me or not. This was your decision.”

“Based on lies, Siria. You know that. If you’d told me the whole truth I would have never come.”

The golden glow of her body merely a flicker now, she took another step toward him. “You will show me the respect I deserve.”

He laughed. It was a sound full of scorn and disappointment. “You deserve nothing from me. Respect is earned, a lesson you clearly never learned.”

Lacing her fingers together, looking more human and less goddess-like now, she took a different approach. “I only wished your love. We could not be together on Earth—”

“Yes, we could have,” he argued, this was the same old argument. “You could have come to me as you did every day, I would have loved you until the day I died, Siria.”

Delicate, golden brows dipped. “That’s just it, Jericho. Now we can be together forever. Once your time is done serving the moon you’ll have no obligations other than to love me.” She held out a hand that was beginning to turn a ghostly shade of white.

Soon it would be the moon’s turn to reign in the sky and she would disappear from his sight.