Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

Yelping as she shot up into the sky, Genevieve gave her an evil glare before, with a tiny “humph” sound, turned and flew back into her tree branch.

A child peeked over at the sharp, dagger like thorn and swallowed hard. Danika merely smiled. Genevieve was a thorn in her side, always had been, served the temperamental and disruptive little twit right.

“Okay then,” Danika clapped her hands. “As I was saying… The Man in the Moon.”

“Danika?” A calalily fairy waved her hand, the golden halo of curls around her head, framing her heart-shaped, angelic face.

“Yes, child?”

“What is so special about the Man in the Moon?” Turning to look up into the sky, a study of concentration across her face, she asked, “all he does is sit inside the moon and guard the sky. What is so terribly exciting about his tale?”

Pointing upward, Danika waited until every tiny head looked up.

Voice low, she weaved a spell with her words. Calling forth colors from the trees, the flowers, the sky itself. The wind howled, gathering in strength as color danced and swirled, forming an image in the sky. An image of a handsome man with rich chestnut brown hair and piercing brown eyes the same rich shade of a tilled flower garden.

“His name is Jericho, and he does so much more than merely sit within the moon.”

The little fairies all sucked in a breath of awe at the vision of the man, he was quite possibly one of the best looking men in all of Kingdom.

Smiling back at the wispy curls of color forming his face, Danika nodded. “Jericho was a mortal man once. Born in a land far, far away. A wild and untamed land full of myth and superstition but very little magic, ancient England of Earth…”

“Ohhh,” whispered several voices. One girl with a mound full of dark braids twisted around her head, turned to ask Danika, “If he was from Earth, how did he get here?”

Nodding, Danika pointed back at the image. The colors were shifting, creating a new pattern now. A massive field of heather spread out toward the distant horizon as an orange sun began to set.

“Why was he brought here, Dani?” Janicka, a red-headed fairy with a riotous mass of curly hair, asked.

“Because Siria spotted him one day and his beauty transfixed her. She whisked him off to Kingdom… but seriously,” Danika waved her hand, as the colors began to shift again, trying to form itself into an image of a blindingly beautiful woman, “you’re making me get ahead of myself. Now listen to my tale and ask no more questions.”

The girls hushed, sitting upright with expectant looks upon their faces.

“As I was saying. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago…”





Chapter 2


Jericho strode to the balustrade, gripping the gray stones with white knuckled intensity as he gazed downward through the canvas of darkness and pin bursts of stars, peering into the magical realm beneath him.

Moonglow lit his corner of the castle. Once, long ago, he’d been a shepherd riding the rugged and peaked plains of sheep country. Alive and normal. But everything changed the day he’d found her.

The beautifully stunning woman draped in a glowing gown of buttery gold.

He’d stopped in a sheltered grove to give his horse—Midnight—a chance to drink. That’s when he’d seen the blond haired goddess, she’d been dipping her toes in the pond. At the sight of her bare feet and the gown that had fitted her like second skin, he’d fallen immediately under her spell.

Her big, luminous tawny eyes had captivated him. The rosebud lips and high, slashing cheekbones. The slender column of her throat, every inch of her was built for seduction. Proper women of his day didn’t dress like her. Didn’t let the long length of their curls tumble down around the head and shoulders, or wear a diaphanous gown that hid nothing of the curves beneath.

If he’d been smart, he’d have known something wasn’t right about the woman in gold. But as was often the case with him back then, it’d merely taken the sight of a beautiful woman to make him forget every bit of common sense he’d ever possessed.

She’d opened her arms out to him and they’d slept together. He hadn’t known he’d be sealing his doom, hadn’t known that sleeping with the sun would burn… hadn’t known that things like fairy tales could actually exist.

Sighing, he peered into the endless expanse of sky, heart longing to see the bejeweled beauty of land.

Darkness, it belonged to him now. He could never walk the daylight hours. What Siria hadn’t told him when she’d taken him into her body was that she’d marked him, turned him into a man of myth and legend.

That every five hundred years a new man would be chosen. Jericho had gone from being a humble shepherd, to being the Man in the Moon. Locked away forever in this part of the castle. Only allowed to walk the land of Kingdom on the thirtieth day of the month, during the turning of the lunar cycle.