Read Moon's Flower: Book 6 (Kingdom Series) for Free Online Page A

torture to pretend that he wanted to be anywhere other than where he was when every beat of his heart screamed her name.
    He’d already wasted three and a half hours of a very short night, just to make sure Siria wouldn’t know of his true destination.
    But finally the time had come and all the nerves in his stomach were forming into a massive ball that threatened to make him vomit. Once, long ago when he’d lived as a mortal on Earth, approaching women had been like second nature. He’d been gregarious, happy, and carefree. But for so long he’d been locked away in that tower of rock with only the darkness as his companion that he’d lost touch with how to interact with others.
    What if he said something stupid, or worse yet, nothing at all? If his brain just simply froze?
    “Jericho,” a mermaid he’d visited a time or two in the past called his name, breaking through the gripping panic.
    “Huh?” he shook his head, turning to look at the white haired and stunning beauty floating gracefully before the craggy and spiraling rock he’d been perched on the past hour.
    She laughed. “I can see that your mind is elsewhere, anything I can do for you?”
    Her voice was as dulcet and hypnotic as any proper siren’s voice should be. Normally, a sea-maiden could be quite deadly to a man. Mermaids did not give birth to males, ergo they were forced to find their mates above land, which was why so many stories of maidens dragging men to their deaths were so prevalent. They did, in fact, drag men to the briny depths of Davy Jones’ Locker, men who were never heard from again.
    But the moment the maidens had discovered he was the Man in the Moon they’d never tried to be anything other than playful with him. In fact, they treated him with difference and reverence, explaining once that it was the power of the moon that affected the very waters they lived in.
    That admission had made him feel safe enough to hang about with them.
    Standing, he dusted off the back of his pants and offered a weak grin. “I am fine.”
    “And in love,” her ruby red tail flicked briefly out of the water, as she laughed. “I know the look well.”
    Frowning, he stared up at the sky and their surroundings before quickly hushing her with a finger to his lips. “Do not utter those words again, maiden. Truths like that can be dangerous in the wrong hands.”
    “Ah.” She nodded as she brushed a finger against her petal pink lips. “Then consider my lips sealed. But whoever she is, lucky girl.” With a wink and a final nod, she sank beneath the waves.
    Heart pounding a terrible rhythm in his chest, he decided it was well past time to go, and with a simple thought, his funnel appeared.
    Fixing his mind on the glen, he went in search of his fairy.
    ~*~
    “Calanthe!” June shook her by the shoulder, her cheeks were splotchy and red from too much cider, her voice boisterous and her smile much too huge.
    The only thing she could do was shake her head and grumble, “what?”
    “You’re glum, that’s what. And I simply cannot have it. Look around you, Calanthe, you should be having a ball and yet you sit here, tucked away in a corner like one of Cinder’s ugly stepsisters, it’s really quite depressing.”
    And her friend was right. As always. The glen was beautiful tonight. Fireflies, their tiny golden butts aglow with flame, zipped and zagged through the trees, lighting up the fog filled woods. Casting everything in an eerie green glow. Toads were croaking, birds chirping their birdy songs, and spiders had woven the most amazing tapestries all throughout.
    The problem was, Calanthe wanted so much more than to dance, and laugh, and drink herself into such a stupor that she’d make herself a fool the way Julietta was doing now. A pine fairy whose gown of Douglas fir needles was coming perilously close to molting off her body as she danced and twirled through the air like a moth in the midst of its death throes.
    Which was why Calanthe was