Moonflower

Chapter 63: Revelations

Kiran was improving by leaps and bounds. She could read whole pages of material now without missing one word. Namjoon shook his head as he leaned over her while she read poetry from a book that he had given her. He didn't know it, but she had been stealing lines from it to write to her secret admirer.

Writing poetry was hard. Especially the rhyming part. But she had discovered a wealth of good lines in this book. Hopefully, if Joonie recognized the lines in her poems, he would simply be pleased that she had obviously been studying the book he had given her. Thus far, none of his poems had even alluded to the fact that she was writing him poems in return. But every single bird she'd hung from the tree had disappeared. So she had to assume he'd received them all.

She'd now received twelve poems. All of them had been beautiful. Each had extolled her virtues and hinted at his love for her. But she was beginning to wonder when he was going to declare himself. Why did he continue to hide behind words?

Kiran was ready for passion. She wanted a brilliantly flaming love. She wanted Joonie to pull her into his arms and kiss her lips. She'd been waiting for such a lovely occurrence for months now! How much longer would he make her wait?

In the beginning, his poems had given her hope that he loved her and was going to finally be open and honest about his feelings. But he didn't seem any closer to revealing himself now than he had been two weeks ago. Did he fear her brother? Or was he afraid to get his heart broken when she was married off to some foreign prince?

She was certainly afraid of that. Such an eventuality haunted more than one of her dreams of late. She was terrified of being separated from her home. And her family. And Joonie. She deplored the notion that one day she would be forced to give up her homeland to make an alliance between two kingdoms. It wasn't fair. She should have a choice. She shouldn't be a pawn.

Namjoon frowned. "Princess Kiran, why are you crying?" he whispered gently into her ear as he bent over her.

He was trying not to draw the attention of his other pupils to her tear-stained cheeks.

She gasped and glanced back at him as she lifted her hands and brushed the teardrops off her face. "It's nothing. Can you help me with this word?"

She didn't really require his help, but she liked it when he leaned over her and breathed on her neck. As he was doing right now.

"Breathless?" he murmured.

Yes, I am.

His eyes speared hers then. She really couldn't breathe now. Did he have any idea how glorious his eyes were?

That's it! I can write today's poem about his eyes!

Namjoon watched in wonder as her eyes suddenly grew wide. As though some great idea were lighting up her heart. He narrowed his own eyes suddenly. What was the girl up to now?

He could always count on Kiran to be involving herself in some scrape or another.

"Princess Kiran, what are you up to?" he breathed.

Her eyebrows flew sky-high. "What?" Her face turned into a blank canvas. "Why, I'm just studying poetry, of course!"

He held her gaze for a few very frantic beats of her heart before he finally walked away from her to check on the progress of his other royal students. Namely, her sisters.

She grabbed a piece of paper and began to jot down some notes for her latest poem.

—

But she was disappointed the next day to discover her bird had been removed from the tree, but its presence had not been replaced by another. He'd left her no poem today? Why ever not?