Moon's Flower: Book 6 (Kingdom Series) (8 page)

But in his rush, he’d forgotten all about Siria, which should have told him just how reckless he was being.

“Jericho!” She called to him as he’d sped by, his name on her tongue made his body freeze mid-step.

Frowning, he whirled, a hundred different thoughts crowding his head. First and foremost among them, Siria could never know.

Tonight she wore a scarlet and gold robe that fell to the floor in a silky wave. The sash was tied loose enough that with each step she took he caught a glimpse of her lean, naked form.

“Siria,” he drawled, then bit the inside of his cheek.

Was Calanthe even now waiting for him? Had she counted down the days, did she know what today was? He shifted on the soles of his boots.

Her brows quirked. “Where are you going tonight in such a hurry?” her words were soft but with a flinty edge beneath.

Grinding his molars, he plastered on a tight smile. If he said he wasn’t sure, she’d know it for the lie it was, since it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that he was in a hurry. But if he actually told her where he was going, he didn’t see it ending well either.

“To the sea.” He was deliberately vague.

Licking her plump, red lips he could just see the thoughts moving like cogs behind her eyes. “Which sea, love?”

Hot beneath his collar, he slapped at his neck and swallowed the growl that threatened to choke him. “Why does it matter?” he chuckled, pretending as if he didn’t have a clue why she questioned him this way. But it’d been two months now that he hadn’t gone to visit Siria during the lifting of the veil.

The times he’d gone to see her hadn’t been anything other than an effort to keep their strained relationship from fracturing completely, but he wondered if maybe she’d hoped for more than what he’d offered. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it, but Jericho didn’t want there to be nothing but hate between them either. It was no way to live for the next three hundred years.

“Because you seem reckless in your attempt to get away.” Her smile was broad, open, showing most of her teeth. “Who is she, Jericho?”

He didn’t like the insinuation that it was any of her business, nor did he care for the way her words sliced the air. Like she was spitting out a curse.

“Siria,” he said in his most patient tone, though it was wearing extremely thin at the moment, “we’ve talked about this before. What I do, who I see, it is none of your concern. But if you must know I go to see a friend, that is all.”

She wasn’t buying it and he knew it. She was too smart and he’d been an idiot to let his temper show.

Siria’s temper was as fiery as the sun she controlled. The last thing he needed was for her jealous eye to turn Calanthe’s way. Which meant, he’d have to go to the sea first. She would probably send a tracker on him now.

Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply. Wishing he had more power than he actually did, but the sun controlled everything. And Calanthe’s blooms could not grow without its warm rays, so he smiled, and pressed a kiss to her hot cheek, before nodding.

“Siria, we are friends. And that is all you need to know.”

“Then come to my bed this eve. Make love to me beneath a blanket of stars, just as we once did.”

Tired of this battle, and her constant need for him, he rubbed his brow. “I can’t and you know why. We can be friends, Siria. Why do you always make me repeat myself? Why can’t you just accept that things are as they are?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Because you are mine. I brought you here. You loved me, Jericho. Do you know how many others I’ve burned? But not you.” She stepped in closer, framing his face in her hands, tawny eyes searching his. “You were made for me.”

Gently prying himself from her grasp, he shook his head. “You told me once, there are many mortals capable of filling my role. I am nothing special. You’ve had men in the moon before me, there will be more after me.”

“No!” She shook her head, as her face morphed into a mask of fury. “None that could handle my heat, my touch. You were made for me, Jericho. You are my match. My only match and I
will
not let anyone else have you!”

For the first time, her madness scared him. Not for himself, but for Calanthe. Siria’s obsession could be held in check, so long as he remained unattached. But what would happen if she ever discovered his truth? His love?

A terrible, slinking feeling burrowed through his gut and settled in his soul. Because the realization was this… to protect Calanthe would mean he’d have no choice but to leave her.

Siria’s reach was too powerful. He’d seen her capacity for cruelty in many forms. How she’d burn a land to ashes, refusing the skies to open and bring much needed rain. The drought that spread through certain lands like a plague, killing crops and people in an unmerciful path of destruction.

The glen was so rich with beauty, fairies were nature’s emissary… they could not survive in such a dead place.

His loathing for Siria grew even stronger then. For so many years he’d tried to set aside his anger and hatred, tried to be her friend again.

“I have to go,” he murmured.

Her nostrils flared. “Do not make me angry, Jericho. I only wish to love you.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he jumped into the tunnel that had formed and headed to the Seren Seas.

His disposition was cold and aloof when he took his seat on his rock. The maidens must have noticed, because they all gave him wide berth, casting furtive glances in his direction, but none came to talk to him.

His thoughts were like dogs chasing after rabbits, chaotic and frenzied. No matter how many different scenarios he ran through, the outcome was always the same.

He could not continue to seek out Calanthe.

Staring up at the sky, he noticed the murder of crows circling high above him. Siria had sent her spies as he’d assumed she would.

Tossing a pebble into the waters, he called the funnel to him and without so much as a wave good-bye, headed toward the glen. More precisely, to their knoll.

The emotions fisting his heart were both excruciating and exhilarating. Because she was here, she’d been waiting. For him. Her eyes danced, the rosebud silk of her pale white dress swished about her knees exotically, the long ends of her brown hair blew in the gentle, perfume tinted breeze and his insides were chaos.

“Calanthe.” Her name was a whisper of breath on his lips. A caress and a benediction.

“Jericho.” Her lips curved upward. “Sometimes I thought you were only a dream.”

Her words sped like an arrow through his soul. How could he walk away from her, from this?

They stopped striding toward one another at almost exactly the same time. Five yards of green grass was the only thing that separated them, but Jericho knew the distance was so much wider than that. He sensed the birds peering at from hidden branches, ready to share his every move with the sun.

She held out a hand and he curled his fingers into his palms so hard the nails dug at his flesh. And there he stood, a second, two, three, four… just staring at her, drinking in the sight of her, heart thumping wildly in his chest and knowing, knowing he could never make her his.

“Jericho?” Her brows dipped and her hand moved down a fraction of an inch.

It ripped him apart that he could not comfort her, could not offer her words of love. “Calanthe, I…” he shook his head, because all the words felt so inadequate, so imperfect to describe, to tell her what he really felt.

Blue eyes widening, she hugged her arm to her chest and sighed a loud sigh. “Oh.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Oh…” she laughed, but the sound was without humor. “I’m such a fool.”

And against his better judgment, he rushed to her. Grabbed her small form, and tugged her into her his arms, shivering, because the mere touch of her flesh against his made him forget everything.

Forget that tomorrow morning Siria would see he’d hugged Calanthe, would see his hand moving up and down her spine. Would see the way her beautiful eyes widened as she tipped her face up to meet his and she would see his kiss.

He wasn’t gentle either. He wanted to be. Knew he should be. Knew this would have to be their only night, Siria would never allow this to happen again.

Damning the consequences, he tasted her. Inhaled her sweetness, suckled on her tongue and moaned as her hands frantically slid under his shirt. Her sharp nails scored his hot flesh, making him hiss and burn, ache for more of her.

Calanthe was all that was pure and perfect and she was his other half. He knew it, felt it in her touch, in the way their bodies moved in synchronicity, how their flesh literally began to glow as his moonlight seeped from his pores and sank into hers.

“I must have you,” he whispered by her ear, before planting warm, wet kisses along her jaw line. If tonight was to be all they had, he wanted no regrets.

Calanthe nodded and it was all he could do not to tear the roses off her body.

But the eyes were still there. “Not here.” He panted out. “Not here. Someplace private, where no one can catch us, no one can see us.”

Face flushed, she licked her rosebud lips and a feeling of “mine” swept through him.

“I know the place. But you’ll have to shrink.”

Glancing down at himself, and then back at her, he shook his head. “My magic doesn’t work that way.”

“No,” she smiled mischievously, “but mine does.”

And then holding out her hand expectantly, she waited.

No more thinking. He was through with right or wrong, this was his life, and for once, he would live it as he saw fit. Grabbing hold of hers, he smiled as the brilliant glow of her fairy magic enveloped them.

Ever since his imprisonment in the castle, he’d yearned for the warmth of the sun. Not for Siria, but for the brightness of her rays. But he hadn’t really missed the sunlight at all. He knew that now, because as Calanthe’s brilliance enveloped him, he realized this was what he’d been yearning for.

Passion.

Excitement.

Love.

The world suddenly exploded around him. Trees towered eternally toward the sky, flower blossoms were enormous, larger than his face, and everywhere he looked there was life. Giant ants that climbed along the trees, beetles marching through individual blades of grass so long and thick they appeared like jeweled swords shooting up toward the sky.

He laughed and the sound was rich and deep. “I’m small.”

She nodded, as her large wings unfurled behind her back. And where before he’d thought them just white, he now saw the pearlescent veins running through the gauzy ivory.

“My gods,” he breathed, “you are so beautiful.”

Her entire body seemed to quiver at his words, and then she was pulling him into her embrace. “I’m going to take us someplace quiet and sheltered, you must hang on to me, okay?”

Wrapping a fat curl of her hair around his finger, he beamed. “Forever, Calanthe.”

~*~

Calanthe tried to quiet the frantic beating of her heart, but it was a pointless endeavor. She didn’t look at him as she sailed through the crystal caves. A brilliant blue glow grew from just a mere pinprick of light to a sea of color the closer she drew to her treasured and most private sanctuary in the glen.

Her magic made it so that holding on to Jericho was like holding onto a feather. She marveled in the wonder of his warm hand gliding along her neck and jaw. Her stomach twisted in a marvelously stomach churning way.

And when they arrived, Jericho breathed an audible sigh. The blue glow came from the crystals growing out of the rock face. Landing on what appeared to be an endless sea of inky black water, she watched his face as he studied the cave.

Glowworms tunneled overhead, leaving a shimmering trail of sparkling white along the ceiling, giving the effect that they were not only outdoors, but sailing through a blanket of stars deep in space.

He tapped on the water beneath them. “Fascinating,” he whispered. “It looks like it goes down for miles, and yet it’s barely higher than my ankle.”

She smiled. “I found it not long after my birth, when I was but a wee fairy child.” Blushing at the hint of the accent that always crept out when she was nervous, she wrung her hands together.

“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful, Calanthe. I want you to know that. To truly understand that you are, you mean…”

Deep in her heart, she had the sense that tonight, for whatever reason, would be all they had. It was in the way he touched her, the quiet yearning and desperation imprinted in his dark brown eyes. But she also felt his truth.

She’d always been good at that. Even though she was young—she was still a baby by fairy standards—he saw her as a woman and it made her want him all the more.

“Ssh.” She pressed her finger to his lips. “Let there be no sadness and no expectations this night. We are together, and that is all that matters.”

And though this place was only lit by the glow of crystal, she had no problem making out his expression. The sadness that tinged his features and tightened his lips.

“Did you know this cave has a name?” she asked.

“No.”

“It does. It’s known as the Cave of Song.” She looked up, at the tiny hole that dug from the ceiling up through the top of the cave. “It’s because of that hole, the way sound plays through it. If you sing, it sings back.”

“Can you make it sing for me?” he asked.

Unlike June, Calanthe had never really considered herself much of a singer. But the beauty of the cave, was that it didn’t take much. Just a single note. Forming her lips into a tiny “o” she hummed a melody.

The almost quiet whisper traveled from her lips, toward the hole and then it was more than a thread of sound. The melody bounced back to them—vibrant and rich, full of resonance and made her skin tingle as her ear canals danced.

His eyes widened as the sound continued to morph and grow. It became a haunting, lyrical wind song, wrapping itself around her head and making her dizzy with joy.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“I’ve never heard anything so beautiful,” he laughed. “Does it ever stop?”

“Thank you, cave, that was lovely,” she clipped her head and suddenly all the sound stopped. The silence was deafening.