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

sitting on the heart shaped stump of a dead walnut tree and watching the scene before her with both a mixture of amazement and disgust.
    “I want more,” she muttered beneath her breath. Low enough that she expected her friend not to hear.
    “What?” June asked, leaning in as she cupped her ear while simultaneously chugging on her ale.
    Rubbing her forehead, knowing that perhaps she should just keep her thoughts to herself, Calanthe ignored her better judgment (as she was often wont to do) and simply blurted it out.
    “This is all so pointless.”
    “What is?” June turned, giving Calanthe her full attention. But she didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she seemed rather sore about it.
    “This, June. Look. Can’t you see it? What exactly is the purpose? The meaning of all this?” Drawing out her hand to encompass all of the glen, she looked and she saw hundreds of smiling, laughing, drunken faces.
    Life was just one big, pointless, ridiculous, unending party. Every night it was the same thing. Snail races. Dancing by the flame of a firefly’s butt. Seeing who could belch and fart the loudest, whose raven was faster? Which pine nut tasted pinier? Whose wings were more colorful? Who could run farther? Jump higher? Blah, blah, blah… what nonsense a fairy’s life was.
    Turning back to her, June shook her head. “I see fun. Excitement. I see the effervescent joy of simply being. What is wrong with that?”
    Scratching the back of her head, feeling like she wanted to rip her hair out because she knew she wasn’t getting her point across at all, Calanthe growled. “There is nothing wrong with that. But is it wrong to want more?”
    “What more is there, Calanthe?” June tossed up her hands, sloshing the cider over the rim of the hollowed out acorn mug she held. “This is it. We are fairies, this is what we do. We tend to what we love and what we love lies here, inside this glen. What is so difficult to understand about that?”
    But hearing her friend say it, Calanthe knew in her soul that either June was wrong, or Calanthe herself wasn’t much of a fairy. And judging by the lack of crisis in her sisters eyes, she tended to believe it was she and not them who suffered in this way.
    “I’ve been made wrong then, sister. Because this life,” she spread her hands, “it leaves me empty.”
    June’s ruddy complexion went bloodless. “What are you saying? Do you not love being a flower fairy? Harvesting the seeds, planting, seeing them grow and scatter all across Kingdom? Does that not fill you with joy and peace?”
    Once it had, if Calanthe was being perfectly honest. And it wasn’t even so much seeing the moon’s flower that had changed her. The change had started long ago, when one day she noticed that her life consisted of the same routine day in and day out. Nothing ever changed. She was in stasis, stuck in this monotonous routine, and then she’d seen the moon flower and everything had clicked into place.
    There was more to the world than the glen. She wasn’t sure what she was searching for, but she was searching, that at least she knew now.
    “No, it doesn’t.”
    June’s big gray eyes blinked several times as her mouth opened and closed like a fish flopping on land desperate for a taste of oxygen, before finally shaking herself as if coming to her senses.
    “This is unheard of.”
    Calanthe’s smile was bittersweet. “Then you’ll understand my dilemma, my friend.” Thinking about the blanket of stars filling the skies, and the lands all across Kingdom an excitement Calanthe hadn’t felt earlier began to buzz through her bloodstream and she snatched a hold of her friend’s hands. “Let’s travel, June.” She flung one of her hands wide. “Let’s see this world.”
    In her excitement she failed to note that June had gone stiff and unresponsive.
    “I want to swim through the Never Seas, touch the golden grains of Eastern sand, sail above the clouds in—”
    “Then become a fairy