Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

No longer was she a tiny, flitting fairy. She was a woman with a woman’s curves. Large ivory wings undulated gracefully behind her back. The white dress she’d been wearing he now realized was actually made up of thousands upon thousands of white rose petals.

Her body was long and slender, willowy, he thought might actually be the right word. Her face was more angular than Siria’s, but no less pretty. There was an innocence in her startling blue eyes. Waves of chestnut hair spilled down her back, coming to a point right above the juncture where back met bottom and something he’d thought long dead in him began to stir.

Licking his lips, Jericho inhaled.

The scenes, the images before him were so real. Sometimes he got lost in them, forgetting that while he could see the world below, the rest of his senses were deprived.

But he could imagine that if he smelled the air hovering around her it would be dripping with the rosy scent of petals. A gentle breeze ruffled the ends of her hair and swayed through the branches above her head.

Frowning, she tipped her face up and his heart sped because he felt the press of her eyes. She was looking at him.

Well, not right at him. She was looking at the moon.

Involuntarily he reached out his hand, maybe from some deep-seated need to grab hold of her, to hang on, to keep her looking his way.

With her face tipped up the way it was, he could pretend, even for a little while, that she was actually looking at him—Jericho. That she saw him. Not the craggy cliffs of his moon, but the man behind it.

Swallowing hard, he felt trapped by the weight of her gentle gaze. Those big blue eyes were so radically opposed to Siria’s. There was no agenda, no hidden meaning dwelling behind them, simply curiosity, and he felt his own brows twitch in response.

Could she feel his stare? Even across space and time? Was such a thing even possible? He’d studied many in his life and none had ever seemed to notice…

But the spell was soon broken. With a little sigh, she opened the palm of her hand and gazed down at the bulb inside.

He wanted to scream at her to look back at him. But she wouldn’t hear him. No one ever heard him. No one but Siria, and he couldn’t abide the thought of her intruding on this moment.

Heart speeding in his chest, he watched as each step she took upon the bed of emerald green grass bloomed into a trail of purple flowered vines.

Holding her hands up to her mouth, she pressed them to her lips and it seemed to him as if she were cooing at the seed. A look of delight spread across her face, lit through the icy beauty of her eyes and made her already beautiful—almost alien-like features—radiant.

The creature had literally begun to glow. Light poured off her in waves, pooling at her feet in a golden puddle.

Palms sweat slickened, he gripped the railing tighter, completely transfixed as she knelt down and passed her hand across the bed of grass, upturning it to reveal the rich soil beneath.

Placing one final kiss onto the bulb, she buried it, patting the soil back into place.

And that’s when something strange began to happen inside of him.

First he felt warmth, sliding like sweat soaked fingers up his legs in a gentle, almost erotic caress.

Mouth going dry, he frowned as the warmth turned into a fiery kiss. As if someone had taken flame to him. It didn’t hurt, but there was a lot of pressure. Like something were being ripped from him from the inside out.

Glancing down at himself, he watched as his body suddenly exploded in a silvery-purple sheen of light. This had never happened to him before, he wasn’t exactly sure what was happening to him now.

He knew if he asked Siria about it tomorrow, she’d probably know. No doubt this had happened to other men in the moon in the past, but the thought of asking her for help sat like bile in his throat.

Running his fingers across his palm he smiled as the light swirled, coalescing into a tight ball of dense matter, growing bigger and bigger in his hand, pouring out of him until he was no longer glowing. All the light was now trapped within the sphere he held.

He’d glowed many times before, but not this shade, and not like this, where the light was literally being pulled out of him.

Frowning, he turned back to her image, sucking in a sharp, almost painful breath because she was looking back up at him again.

This time there was a worried frown pinching the corners of her doe shaped eyes. She looked like she was waiting for something…

Jericho looked back at the ball in his hand, then back at her, before understanding finally dawned.

Whatever this light was that’d come off him, she’d called it forth. Licking his lips, he held his hand out over the railing. Nothing happened.

Twisting his lips, he watched her again. She was definitely worried now. It was obvious by the way she chewed on her lower lip as she idly patted the mound of dirt where she’d placed the seed.

“Maybe if I…” he said, and tipped his hand over so that the sphere fell out. It fell through the sky, as if in slow motion, heading straight for her and as it did it turned from a ball into a sphere of radiant silver-purple light.