Sacrifice (25 page)

They would send the monks into battle again, send them to their deaths. And Kai Sen—was he still at the monastery?

“We can tell the Immortals,” she said. “They can fix this. Kill Master Bei and—”

Stone shook his head. “I’ve no way to communicate with the gods. Even when I was more powerful, I could only visit The Mountain of Heavenly Peace when I was summoned. We cannot wait for the gods to intervene.” He stood and straightened. “We have to do this ourselves. The next time I see the Goddess of Accord, I either live or die. I need your help, Skybright.”

She shifted back to a girl, and Stone threw a tunic over her shoulders before handing her a long skirt. Stone was right. They had to warn the monks and think of a way to save Zhen Ni and close this new breach. But the odds seemed vastly against them.

Kai Sen

The abbot’s funeral, along with all the other monks who had died during the attack, took place right after all the demons had been defeated. There was no time for formal ceremonies or a burial when one died by the tainted touch of a creature from the underworld. All the bodies were burned immediately, so the monastery’s large square was ablaze, lit as bright as midday. Kai Sen stood at the square’s edge, feeling numb, fighting off his light-headedness as he watched the flames leap. There’d been too many of these kinds of funerals this past year—hundreds of monks lost—and they had all believed they’d seen the last of the monstrosities after the breach had closed.

Ashes swirled through the night air, and the remaining few hundred monks observed in silence, too exhausted to cry out for their dead brothers and their leader. Kai Sen’s own throat was raw and felt swollen shut. His eyes stung, but he never looked away. Several monks came to him after the fires had flickered out, gripping his arm or patting his shoulder. He remained for as long as he could stand, before stumbling back to Abbot Wu’s quarters.

Kai Sen shot up in bed, his body damp with sweat, heart thumping hard in his ribcage. His dreams were plagued by screams and a montage of horrifying images: the rotten faces of the undead, brother monks he’d lost, eviscerated with their intestines spilling out … Disoriented, he conjured hellfire in his palm, illuminating the sparse room. He panicked for a moment, not recognizing where he was; then it hit him: Abbot Wu’s old bedchamber. He had moved in the previous night, after Abbot Wu’s funeral, when it was revealed among his papers that he had officially chosen Kai Sen as his successor in leading the monastery.

He swung out of the narrow, hard bed, feeling sore and bruised, tossing the ball of hellfire upward so it followed him, glowing above his head. He pushed the single door aside and walked down the dark and silent hallway toward the abbot’s study. The lattice windows covering one wall of the long corridor were carved in square shapes with white panels. It was right before dawn judging by the dim grayness shadowing the hallway, which meant that Kai Sen had had four hours of fitful sleep.

Entering the study, he murmured a quick incantation below his breath and the floating sphere of hellfire vibrated, then expanded, illuminating the chamber in an eerie blue. After the abbot’s body had been removed, a handful of monks remained to clear the wreckage. They propped the fallen shelves up and stacked the bound tomes carefully, took away the broken furnishings, and swept the floor of debris. But no matter how hard Kai Sen and Han tried to scrub away the dark outline embedded in the stone floor where that two-faced demon woman had died, they couldn’t remove it. Kai Sen’s eyes were drawn there like a compulsion.

Under the glow of the hellfire, the stain pulsed a deep red, like something alive. Shuddering, Kai Sen turned away from it to sit at the abbot’s long table. Everything that hadn’t broken had been returned to it, the calligraphy brushes and inkstone set at the upper edge, and his papers placed in a neat pile. But Kai Sen wasn’t interested in any of those things. He reached for an oval stone as large as his palm and surprisingly heavy. Thankfully, it had not been broken during the chaos. The divining stone was carved with words and symbols he didn’t recognize. In daylight, the stone was a milky gray, near translucent, but when he held it to the light, it was opaque, with a core composed of deep blue veins that seemed to swirl. Kai Sen had attributed it to a trick of the light and his own exhaustion. But now, in the dim grayness of dawn, the stone had turned a solid black in color. It appeared to have a mind of its own.

Abbot Wu had said that this could help him find the new breach, but how did it work? He had never come across a divining stone in his studies and didn’t recognize it either from drawings and etchings he had seen. If the abbot was unable to get it to work after decades of study, how could he possibly? The two roosters that lived in the monastery’s stockyard began to crow. Soon, the first gong would sound, and his first day as the head of the monastery would begin. He wanted to drop his head in his hands from the sheer burden he felt on his shoulders. Instead, he tried to work the stone. Concentrating on what Abbot Wu had been teaching him and his own surreptitious studies, he considered the elements of magic he could pull from: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.

Instinctively, he drew on the earth element to call to the magic of the stone. The strands of earth magic he pulled on were different than fire, more weighted, and the more he drew, Kai Sen felt as if he could taste dust between his teeth, the solidity of it against his solar plexus. The stone began to change color, from opaque black to milky gray, revealing the indigo veins at the stone’s core, which began to swirl and glimmer. His chest seized with excitement, and he continued to draw upon the earth element until a sweat broke along his hairline and dampened the back of his neck. Kai Sen tugged as much and as hard as he could, using himself as a conduit, until his vision wavered, yet the stone never grew any brighter.

The first gong sounded in the square, breaking his concentration, and the stone turned black once more. Kai Sen doubled over, wanting to retch, but instead dry heaved, his eyesight blurring. He propped himself against the desk and blinked, trying to clear his vision, attributing it to tears; his sight was obscured, like a gray veil had been dropped over him. The stone fell from his shaking hand, and to his relief, his eyesight cleared. He drew a ragged breath just as Han entered the library.

“Good, you’re up,” Han said.

Kai Sen cleared his throat, then swallowed. “I’m up. I have a lot to do.”

Han’s eyebrows drew together in concern, reading him too well, but Kai Sen lifted a hand. “You’ll help me today in leading the fortification of the monastery,” Kai Sen said.

“Of course, brother.”

Kai Sen stood, then reached over and slipped the divining stone into a leather pouch tied at his waist. The monks were lined up in rows, dressed in white muslin tunics of mourning, ready to receive him when he stepped outside to greet them.

Zhen Ni

Zhen Ni was relieved when she finally dismissed Pearl. She tried to draw a full breath, but her chest felt restricted by the new breast binder she wore—the binder that her husband had never bothered to unravel on their wedding night as custom dictated. It was one of the many duties he had shirked—and now she knew why. Master Bei probably had no penis at all, or worse, it was something two headed and monstrous. She wanted to throw up everything she had forced herself to eat for strength. Instead, she dug her nails into her palms and swallowed hard. “Oriole,” she said.

Zhen Ni hadn’t even raised her voice, and the older handmaid was in the main hall within an instant. “Yes, lady?”

“Please let everyone waiting outside know I won’t conduct any more interviews today,” Zhen Ni said. “They may return tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, lady.” Oriole was dressed in a pale peach tunic and trousers with green embroidering along the collar. Silver ornaments were pinned into her hair, pulled into two tight buns. She looked every bit the handmaid of a wealthy household, but still, not as well dressed or richly adorned as Skybright had been. Without being conscious of it, Zhen Ni realized she had decided no matter how much wealthier her new husband might be, she would never elevate a handmaid to the status that Skybright had held in the Yuan household. Or the place that she had held in her heart.

Quick on her feet, Oriole had disappeared before Zhen Ni even finished her thought. Feeling exhausted and emotionally drained, Zhen Ni was tempted to put her head down on the oval table when Rose entered, clutching Blossom’s hand. The little girl had been bathed, and her subtle sweet scent filled the hall, reminding Zhen Ni of honeyed cakes. Rose had combed the girl’s thick hair, plaiting it into two long braids. She’d been changed out of the rice sack that Master Bei had dressed the girl in, and now wore an exquisite lavender tunic and trousers embroidered with gold chrysanthemums. The demon child was the most beautiful little girl she’d ever seen.

Not even realizing she had extended her hand until it was already outstretched, Zhen Ni said, “Darling. My petal. Come.”

Blossom toddled over, wide-eyed, her cherubic face lit with a soft smile. The closer she drew, the more Zhen Ni’s mood lightened, until the demon child climbed into her lap and threw one chubby arm around her neck. “Mama,” she stated simply.

The little girl’s touch scattered all the sorrow and fear that had crowded Zhen Ni’s heart, like sunlight dispersing dreary clouds. She knew in the farthest reaches of her mind that Blossom was bewitching her, but after these past few days, why shouldn’t she stop feeling anxiety and dread? Why shouldn’t she allow herself to be awash in good feelings? What was the harm in it? She’d be forced to mother the demon child in the end, no matter what.

“Did she eat?” Zhen Ni asked distractedly, hugging the little girl to her.

A flicker of doubt crossed Rose’s serene features. “Yes, lady. She wanted raw meat.”

“Really?” Zhen Ni ran a palm down Blossom’s smooth braid. “I know they take raw beef in thin slices with noodles in some of the provinces—” She stopped abruptly as Rose shook her head.

“She took the beef in large chunks, lady. And wanted organs too.” The handmaid shifted on her slippered feet. “She ate a lot.”

“Uncooked?”

“Yes, lady.”

“What did Pei think?”

“Cook thought it was very strange, but she gave Blossom everything she wanted.”

Of course she did
, Zhen Ni thought. Skybright had always said that Zhen Ni didn’t know how to take no for an answer, that she had always gotten everything she ever desired. But that was before Zhen Ni had fallen in love with another girl. Before she had been married off to a monster. She had a feeling that her daughter Blossom would indeed get everything she wanted in life. She could charm her victim or eat his heart out, whichever served the demon child’s purpose.

Her purpose. What
was
Blossom’s purpose?

Blossom squeezed Zhen Ni’s shoulder with a dimpled hand, dispelling those annoying, nagging thoughts. “So hungry, Mama,” she said in a sweet, lilting voice. “It’s like I have a hole in my belly.”