Sacrifice (32 page)

“We all need rest,” Stone replied. “We have no chance if we try to do this as exhausted as we are.”

“Let’s go back to the monastery first then. I will choose monks to return with us to fight above ground.” Kai Sen turned to her. “It will give you better odds, Sky.”

She was eager to save Zhen Ni but accepted that they needed time to regroup, as well as eat and sleep. “There has to be an entrance from below directly into Bei manor,” she said. “We can bring the monks in through the tunnel we made and infiltrate the estate from underground—catch them by surprise.”

Stone lifted his axe again. “Let’s find that entrance first.”

They all three nodded together, as if agreeing to a pact.

One of life and death.

They discovered the entrance into Bei manor easily enough, in the opposite direction of the steep corridor they had emerged from. A long rope ladder dangled from the dark trapdoor set above. Skybright thought she smelled Zhen Ni’s lingering scent on the rungs but didn’t know if it was her desperate imagination.

Standing beneath the tunnel exit they had excavated, Stone sealed the entrance aboveground, creating an illusion that made it appear that nothing had been disturbed.

Kai Sen watched him with interest. After Stone was finished, Kai Sen said, “That wasn’t elemental magic.”

“No,” Stone replied. “My conjuring is an ability that the Goddess of Accord gave me.”

Kai Sen then slashed a portal to take them back to the monastery. Skybright felt that familiar tingling sensation when the scene split in front of them, but it fizzled, then snapped closed. Kai Sen cursed under his breath and tried again. The rent opening into the large square was even smaller the second time and disappeared within a heartbeat.

“Is it the ward?” she asked.

“The spell protecting Bei manor allows for portals
out
,” Kai Sen replied in a frustrated tone. “It’s not working because I’m empty.” He cast a sheepish glance her way. “We’ll have to crawl back out and walk.”

It wasn’t a far distance from the town of Chang He to the monastery, but this evening, it seemed to take twice as long. Both Stone and Kai Sen were spent from working the divining stone, then using their magic to make the tunnel. She could sense that they put one foot in front of the next from sheer determination. They stumbled more than once, and she was always ready to break a fall with her serpent coil but gleaned that they’d prefer the pretense of being all right than her help. In truth, Kai Sen and Stone were likely to fall asleep standing soon if they didn’t get some rest. Skybright remained in serpent form, alert for any threats, feeling protective of the men in their weakened state.

The skies were still dark, and the night wind chill against her skin, welcomed after the insufferable heat and stale air in the caverns below Bei manor. The forest hummed, enveloping her senses with pine and earth, life and decay. Finally, they reached the monastery and were let in by a gaping gatekeeper, who stared at his feet after a word of reprimand from Kai Sen. She recognized the large square from when she had climbed up a cypress tree upon Zhen Ni’s urging and had glimpsed Kai Sen for the first time. He had said it felt like their fates were intertwined from the start, but she’d venture he never guessed in this way—fighting to the death against an ancient demon lord.

The square was empty, although she knew that the monks began their days soon after dawn. Slithering behind one of the massive cypress trees dotting the edge of the enormous square, Skybright shifted, out of respect for the monks. She was no longer shy about her naked form but did not want to elicit strange reactions from either Kai Sen or Stone. The more she became comfortable with her bare body, the more they seemed to be disconcerted by it. Stone kindly handed her a pale pink tunic and skirt from the other side of the cypress trunk, and she murmured her thanks.

Exhaustion, thirst, and hunger almost brought her to her knees. She pulled the clothes on with trembling arms, then leaned against the tree, her vision swimming. The terrible pain from where Kai Sen’s blue fire had eaten into her shin had lessened, feeling like a day-old burn. She hitched her skirt up and stared at the injury—an angry welt as thick and long as her thumb marked her shin. She touched it gently with a fingertip and winced.

“I am always hurting you,” Kai Sen said.

She had sensed him before he appeared in front of her, as exhausted as she felt, swirling with a mixture of conflicting emotions. Straightening, she said, “You were trained your entire life to hurt my kind, Kai.”

“Don’t say that.” He drew closer and reached for her hand, interlacing their fingers. With his other hand, he lifted her chin so their eyes met. “You are not one of them.”

She smiled, but inexplicably her eyes filled with tears. She had suppressed so much for so long in her demon form. “You’re right,” she replied and squeezed his hand. “I am my own self.”

It had taken this time apart, stripped of everything she had ever known or found comfort in, to accept herself, to truly appreciate her duality. And in doing so, she had lost Kai Sen along the way, perhaps Zhen Ni too.

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, briefly, and she took comfort in the love that she felt from him, underscored now by the hard edges of unknowing and
fear
. She reached up and cupped his face, and he drank her in with his eyes aglow from the small blue flame he had conjured, flickering beside them like a glimmering fairy.

“It will heal,” she said.

“I didn’t think when I cast the hellfire—”

“This blue light …” She jerked away from it, realizing that even this small cool flame could cause tremendous pain.

“It only hurts those of the underworld,” he said.

She gave a rueful smile. “There is the confirmation none of us needed then. Even if I were born in these forests, I am still
of
the underworld.”

He traced the scar on her face with his fingertips, barely grazing her skin, causing the flesh of her arms to pimple. “I’m sorry, Skybright.”

“Don’t be. I regret nothing.”

“Ah,” Kai Sen said in a thick voice. “Is it over then?”

She took a step away from him, so she could really see him. This familiar stranger he’d become, a grown man with haunted eyes. She wished she could wind back the days like silken thread on a spool, reel them back to a more innocent time, when they were just discovering each other, when they were able to make each other forget their fears and loneliness, even if for a short while.

“Oh, Kai,” she said. “You are the head of the monastery now. And I … I cannot refute my serpent side. It is a part of me as surely as the stars make the night sky.”

“I know. I can accept that—”

“I cannot accept your fear of me.”

Stricken, he glanced away. “It is something I need to grow used to.”

She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “No, Kai Sen. It isn’t. Your reaction is natural, key to your training and survival. I don’t fault you—”

“No, Sky.” His eyes gleamed. “Don’t say these things.”

“What will you have me do then?” she asked. “Shall I move into the monastery, be your bedmate in your quarters?”

He looked down at their entwined hands.

“Will you leave the monastery? Abandon your role as its new leader?”

“I don’t want to be the new abbot,” he said, his brow furrowed in frustration. “But that corrupt covenant must end. Enough innocent lives have been lost; enough monks slaughtered. I see no other way to thwart it but to take this role.” He ran a thumb over her open palm. “Still, we could see each other, be together—”

“You would take the oath—one of celibacy—and break it, Kai?”

He wrenched free of her grasp and ran a hand through his short hair so it stood on end.

“I know you,” she said. “As rebellious as you might like to be, when you take an oath, you keep it.”

“Your practicality will ruin it for all future lovers, Sky.”

She let out a surprised laugh.

Kai Sen slipped a hand behind her neck, drawing her to him, so close she could feel the beating of his heart. They clung together, and it felt as if they were bearing each other up. “Neither of us knows what the future might hold,” he whispered in her ear, his lips brushing her lobe. Her entire body reacted. Her skin remembered those lips, that touch, and she wound her arms tightly around him, drawing her hands down his muscular back, tilting her face up. “I regret nothing, either,” he said and bent down to kiss her.

It was no chaste kiss like before, because deep down, they both knew this would likely be their last. They took their time, hungry for each other, saying with their lips and their tongues, with their teeth and their hands everything that words could not convey. He was tasting her neck, alternately biting and sucking on the tender flesh there when someone cleared his throat loudly behind them.

It barely registered the first time from where they hid behind the giant cypress, and the interloper had to do it again, even more loudly the second time.

“Kai Sen,” the man said, and it resounded as loud as a whip cracking in the empty square.

They jumped apart from each other, both out of breath.

“Han,” Kai Sen said, blinking.

She smoothed her dress, retying the belt, trying to gather herself.

“I interrupted,” Han replied, “because the man standing alone in the square said that we are going to battle within the day.”

Stone.

“He explained as I was about to attack him, for he appeared out of nowhere,” Han went on. “Care to explain, brother?” He lifted his dark eyebrows, his brown eyes flicking to Skybright for a breath. He recognized her but didn’t acknowledge her.

Kai Sen cleared his throat too before speaking. “It’s true. We’ve discovered another breach and a breeding ground for hundreds of new demons.”

Han’s tanned face went pale, and he shook his head.

Kai Sen clasped his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s regroup in Abbot—my study. I’ll fill you in.”

“So the man spoke truth,” Han said. “I almost killed him.”

“Stone?” Kai Sen replied. “He is not so easily killed.”

They walked together from the edge into the center of the square, where Stone stood like a lone statue. But not before Kai Sen looked back, and his eyes met Skybright’s. His mouth quirked in a faint, sad smile. “Come,” he said to everyone. “We’ll discuss strategy, then eat and rest before we attack.”

After going over the details of their plan together, Han left to gather weapons and prepare the monks for battle. Skybright, Kai Sen, and Stone shared a simple vegetarian meal of hot rice porridge, lotus root, tender bamboo shoots, and spicy bean curd together. Weary, they ate in silence. Kai Sen then led Skybright into a spare chamber with a narrow bed and told her he’d be sleeping in the study. She slid the wooden door closed as Kai Sen and Stone were unrolling thin pallets on the floor. Stone glanced up then and caught her eye, nodding once before the door clacked shut. He had kept his distance ever since they arrived at the monastery, and she didn’t know where his thoughts lay. But during their discussions on how to infiltrate Bei manor, she could feel his focus and determination, despite his tiredness. Stone’s life depended on their success, just as much as Zhen Ni’s. She leaned her brow against the rough wood for a moment before lying down on the hard bed and instantly falling into a deep slumber.