Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

“Damn you,” he hissed. “I would have given you everything, but you stripped me of choice. I do not love you, Siria. Not anymore.”


For a split second there was a flash of pain in her eyes. But then she was narrowing them and they were suddenly filled with fury. “What does love have to do with this?” she snapped. “I do not need your love, Jericho.” Lifting a nearly translucent finger in front of her face, her last words before fading were a ghostly whisper, “I own your body, now and forever. You belong to me, you always will…”

The burn of anger dissipated the second she was gone. It was too exhausting to hang onto it.

He’d not been lying when he told her he no longer loved her. Yes, he craved her, imagined he always would. But not her, not really. He craved her fire. Her light. Eternal life was his eternal torment, because the light would never belong to him again. Even when the five hundred years were up, he’d never again be able to feel the heated press of sunlight bathe his flesh. That was the price he paid for sleeping with the sun, that was the price he paid for telling her he loved her.

Snorting, he turned his back on the empty space where she’d once been and gazed back down on the canvas of night.

When Siria was in the sky, the canvas was nothing but darkness. But when it was his turn, and the moon possessed the night, that was when the scroll of black became a wash of color.

All he had to do was will to see and he could. There was so much of Kingdom he now knew intimately.

From the deserted dunes of eastern realm, to the liquid lushness of the Seren Seas, the madness of the Hatter’s wonderland, to the old crone’s candy forest… but none of those lands appealed to him.

Not tonight.

Tonight he needed to see beauty. Needed to see that which could only come from the sun. And as the idea formed in his thoughts, so too did it coalesce into the sky. The darkness rolled away like fog over a moor and his world was suddenly alive with light.

Thousands upon thousands of pinpricks of buttery, golden light, setting his soul at peace.

The lights danced and twirled through a verdant garden of lush green. Thick carpets of moss climbed up the sides of gnarled and knotty, ancient oaks. A gossamer haze enveloped the forest, combined with the fiery bursts of glimmering luminescence; he knew immediately where his desires had led him.

Jericho was spying on the Fairy Forest.

Bulbous mushroom caps in varying shades of the rainbow littered the forest floor. For a while he lost himself, watching the hundreds of fairies flitting to and fro.

Some were swinging within thick green vines and any part of it they touched sprouted a miniature flower. Others were racing upon the backs of snails, wearing shells for hats and green leaves for dresses, pumping their fists as they cried and hollered to go faster.

Many flitted through the air on large butterfly wings with a drunken leer on their faces. Bonfires were ablaze throughout the garden, some of them green, others blue, red or purple.

It was chaos and life and slowly he felt his spirits restored as he gazed upon their tiny, happy faces.

Then he spied a fairy acting very differently than the others. Dressed in a silken gown of white, she hugged something to her chest. She was so small, it was difficult to make out her features.

Cocking his head, he leaned over the railing as far as he could, trying to decipher the meaning of her actions.

None of the other fairy’s even spared her so much as a glance. Even so she seemed anxious, nervous even. Zipping in between trees, remaining hidden behind a branch, before moving onto the next.

The whole thing was bizarre and gave him pause, long enough that it took him a moment to realize the fairy garden scene was no longer before him. It was just that little fairy with the bundle in her hands.

After several tense minutes, she finally paused against the base of a tree. Licking her rosebud lips before—with a grin— she planted a hard kiss on the bundle she’d been carrying.

At first he imagined it was a fairy child she’d been holding in her arms, but as the scene before him grew into focus he realized the shape was actually a large, brown seed bulb.

Jumping into the air, she flitted off, still holding on tight to her package. In no time she was in a meadow. The moon’s glow reflected off the surface of the dark, gurgling brook beside her. A silvery haze was draped across the area, making it appear as though she were walking on clouds as she descended to the forest floor.

Bored, Jericho was just about to return back to his perusal of the fairy garden, when a blinding flash of light hugged her body, obscuring her form.

Squinting against the brightness, he blinked his eyes as his vision readjusted, completely unprepared for the sight before him now.