Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

Shadows crawled menacingly up the sides of Galeta’s enormous mushroom cap cottage. The blue mushroom head gleamed in varying shades. From an electric neon, to a dusky hued navy and everything in between.

A plume of smoke curled from the chimney. But that didn’t mean the head mistress was home yet, she was still in eastern Kingdom, dealing with an improper use of fairy magic infraction. Which was rather ironic considering what Calanthe was in the process of doing.

The head mistress was the most powerful of all fairy, but she wasn’t much liked. Not after the way she’d handled the outbreak of fairy rash a hundred years ago. It hadn’t been the fairies fault that inhaling the toxic fumes of the black mushroom had basically turned them into zombie like trolls hell bent on the destruction of the glen. Rafiella the Red had told Galeta she’d found a cure, that the venom of the sea anemone could undo what the black spores had done. Galeta had heard none of that, she’d been impatient to wait for enough batches of the cure to be made up for the fifty infected fairies.

Instead she’d chosen, under cover of darkness, to not only strip the fairies of their wings, but to banish them to a strange land called Ireland. Last Calanthe had heard the fairies were now known as dark elves, and still infected with the dark spore, were running amok through human lands. It made her sad to know their fate could have been so very different.

Galeta ruled with an iron fist and even though Calanthe’s palms were currently very sweat slickened, it did make it easier to steal from a head mistress she could hardly tolerate.

Her bare feet squished silently into the thick bed of moss leading like a trail to Galeta’s front door. Glancing one final time over her shoulder, she tucked her wings behind her back and turned the knob.

Her heart thrilled in wonder at the beauty of this cottage. Magic was a strange and wonderful thing. The inside of a mushroom cap should be squishy and moldy smelling, but in fact, a fairy could (depending on their inherent power) change the insides to suit their needs.

Galeta was as fairy and girly as the rest of them. Her home was a marvel of gleaming blond wood spiraling staircases that seemed to lead up into infinity. The inside of the home was easily three times the dimension the outside of it would lead one to believe.

Rugs, woven of the finest eastern silk, sparkled with droplets of dew. Crystalline spiders had been commissioned to weave silken webbings formed into the shape of chairs and tables.

Green vines with robin’s blue flowers wrapped lattice style up the walls and around banisters. The glow from hundreds of fireflies trapped in glass jars hung from wooden rafters.

The head mistress certainly knew how to impress. But staying in here for too long was a bad idea. It’d taken hours to shake June’s suspicion that she might try something this reckless tonight.

Calanthe had had to stay and watch the races and drink mug after mug of spiked apple cider, eventually feigning exhaustion just to get her friend to back off long enough for her to make her escape.

But should anyone walk past or peek inside, the jig would be up. Licking her lips, she unfurled her wings just slightly, enough to be able to glide without being forced to walk her way across creaky floorboards and headed toward the fireplace. But more specifically, the large oak cabinet beside the fireplace. That was where Galeta stored her treasures.

Once again she found herself prying open the doors, once again she was reaching for the glass jar hidden on the uppermost shelf in the very back row and once again she was plucking a very simple and unadorned seed from inside.

Calanthe had stumbled upon this knowledge by happenstance. All within the glen shunned Miriam the Delighted for her second sight. The seer was as feared as she was held in awe. Galeta had deemed the fairy’s power so potent that she’d banished Miriam to the outer edges of the glen. Many a time Calanthe had wanted to approach Miriam and ask thousands of questions. Questions about the world, about her destiny, about what she’d done to stir up such friction between her and The Blue, but getting too chummy with the seer put one immediately on Galeta’s naughty list and even she dared not cross that line.

Of course there had been the one time in the woods when she’d stumbled across Miriam gathering seed for her own garden and Calanthe had been unable to refrain from asking about the seers favorite flower.

That was the first time she’d heard of the moon flower, ever since then she’d been obsessed with seeing one for herself.

Three nights ago, and completely unexpectedly, Calanthe had received a missive from a blue bird at her window. There’d been a tiny parchment rolled up and tied with a leather string around its bony foot.

It’d been a note from Miriam telling Calanthe that her time was now. That her journey for truth must begin.

Calanthe didn’t question how the note had made it to her, nor what exactly that cryptic statement had meant. All she’d been able to focus on was the last line in the final paragraph:

Moon’s flower seed rests in The Blue’s cottage in the cabinet beside the fire…