Serpentine (31 page)

“Enough,” Stone said. “The Great Battle will end today. Your job is done, Wu. You served well enough, and so would your soul.”

Abbot Wu had stood his ground but took several steps back now, until he was pressed against the cavern wall. The staff rattled in his hand, and he clutched it against his body. His ruddy face had gone pale.

“I did not think so.” Stone pivoted from the abbot. “Well, Skybright?”

Skybright stared at her hands. As much as she disliked the abbot, she wouldn’t sacrifice another person’s life for her own freedom. But what could Stone want with her? She knew it wasn’t to bed her—he could have that, probably more easily than she was willing to admit. Her physical pull to the immortal was strong, though it was nothing like the love she felt for Kai Sen. But what did her love mean, when it only hurt the two people she cared about most? That was the painful truth. “Agreed, Stone,” she finally said, the words as unpleasant to hear as she felt speaking them.

“Agreed.” The immortal nodded and the ground rumbled again; the glowing red fissure that had widened began to close. The entire cavern shuddered so violently that Skybright’s teeth clacked together. The mortals had thrown themselves to the ground again, but she slithered to the edge of the chasm, peering down. Heat blasted her face, so hot her eyebrows felt singed. Molten red careened endlessly into the earth’s depths, but she could glimpse nothing beyond it.

Stone joined her side, one hand casually encircling his wrist behind his back, and watched with her, as the earth ground together, obliterating their view. “It is an interesting place,” he said, as the sudden silence rang in her ears. “I will show you.”

A moment after the breach had closed and the earth stopped rumbling, Stone slashed a portal in the air and pulled her through it, before Skybright could even throw a backward glance. They had stepped into the center of a circular space surrounded by high walls, with soft earth beneath them. It smelled of moss, and there was the comforting scent of wood.

Skybright winced as Stone unwound the cloth from her arm. Her dried blood had stuck the material against her flesh, and he had to gently ease it from her skin. She held her forked tongue as Stone, head bent, worked at the binding, as patient as the Goddess of Mercy herself. Finally, he was able to pull it free, revealing crusted blood and the three characters Abbot Wu had carved into the inside of her forearm.

“What do they say?” she asked. Skybright loathed the deep, grating tones of her new voice.

“Show yourself true,” Stone replied. His large hand held her wrist lightly, as if afraid he might cause her pain. But despite his soft touch, she still felt the strong heat of him. She imagined that his core was molten lava, just like the view she had glimpsed into the rift of the underworld. “I cannot heal this,” Stone said. “It is a spell. But the enchantment will wear off once the wound closes. You will be able to shift back into your human form then.” The immortal cursed. “I should have tossed Wu into the breach anyway, for inflicting this upon you.”

He was kneeling before her, on one bended knee. A clean cloth soaked in something astringent materialized in his hand, and Stone began cleaning the blood from her cuts. Skybright held herself still, not wanting to show how much it stung. His concern seemed genuine, but it didn’t ease her distrust. He could afford to be kind now that he held her captive.

“What was that display back there?” she asked, feeling combative and wishing to get a rise from him.

“Display?” The single word resonated between them.

“You reminded me of a rooster strutting among hens,” Skybright grated out.

Stone paused mid-swipe over her tingling skin. One corner of his mouth tilted upwards. “You must remind mortals of their place,” he said.

“You don’t like Kai Sen very much.”

He took his time running the soft material over her cuts, shaking the cloth so that the blood would magically vanish from it and become soaked again with fresh medicine. Whatever Stone was using might have stung her nostrils, but its coolness now soothed her wounds. “I suppose I do not,” he finally replied. “He would have let you die in that cage, Skybright. It is unforgiveable. You are a rarity among demon kind.”

His words burned more than the cuts, and it took all her willpower not to wrench away from him, to scream in anger and grief. The characters were rising like welts now, after he had cleansed the blood away.

“You must let me follow them,” she said.

He laughed under his breath. “You promised to relinquish your mortal life then demand that I let you chase after those humans like an abandoned dog? I warned that you would never see them again, Skybright. They are no longer part of your life.”

“I need to make certain that they’re safe.” A sob threatened to rise, but she swallowed it. She had sacrificed her old life, her ordinary life, to save Zhen Ni and Kai Sen. What was the use in mourning it? Besides, the tears would never come, trapped as she was in demonic form.

“The breach is closed. And your false monk is taking your mistress to her lover. Nothing will harm them.” He began applying a salve to the cuts, with as much expertise as Nanny Bai ever did. “You will never again have to be a servile handmaid. It was beneath you.”

She barely heard him in her agitation. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.” The words came out even gruffer than before. “You should have given me that.”

“I owe you no favors. Would you really have wanted to speak with your mistress as your demonic self?” Stone stood, and she lifted high on her serpent body, so that their eyes were level. She may be shorter than him as a girl, but never while she was a serpent. “Give your lover another kiss?”

If he were mortal, she would have known he was being cruel. But as in so many instances with Stone, she didn’t know for certain his true intent. “He’s no longer my lover,” she said, her throat constricted over the words.

“Not anymore. No.” The immortal spoke with such quiet finality that she turned from him, hiding her burning face.

“Why did you do it?” She rasped through her thick veil of hair. The careful arrangement and pinning of her locks had come loose long ago. “Let me save their lives?”

“Because I knew you would agree to this in exchange,” Stone replied.

“But why? What do you want with me?” She began twisting her hair as a distraction, trying to still the tremor in her arms.

Stone handed her hair pins, gold ones bejeweled with rubies and studded with exquisite jade, ornaments he pulled from thin air. “I have a debt to pay,” he said.

Skybright jerked her head up.

“Your mother tried to reach me when she became pregnant with you.” His expression was as unreadable as ever, but his features were softened by the silver glow that illuminated him. He appeared more human than she had ever seen him. “I was occupied. I did not know the circumstances of her … distress. You were—you are—an impossibility, Skybright. I thought nothing of her request. Time stretches long for an immortal. I believed I could go to her in a few years time, be of aid when I was less busy. I was wrong.”

Skybright imagined Opal, a demon centuries old, suddenly with child.
An impossibility.
How confused and frightened she must have been, perhaps for the first time in her life. How desperate.

“Do you know who my father is?” she asked.

“Human, I am certain, by the looks of you. No doubt a victim of your mother’s. I never knew Opal to take a lover solely for pleasure.”

Her demonic mother dead from giving birth to her. Her mortal father murdered by her own mother after a single tryst. Skybright felt hysterical laughter bubble in her throat, and stabbed her nails into her arms to quell it. “But how? If I’m meant to be an impossibility.”

“Our worlds are filled with anomalies,” he said. “Perhaps you are what the mortals like to call a miracle—a demonic one. Or perhaps your mother crossed a higher deity, and the immortal wanted to teach her a lesson. I have no answer for you.” Stone took a long stride to close the distance between them. “But Opal was a good friend and ally to me through many centuries. You have lived as a mortal for sixteen years, Skybright. I owe it to your mother to show you what it means to be a serpent demon.”

Temptress, seductress, and murderer.

Would this be her life now? Would Stone force it upon her?

Feeling trapped, she veered from him, unwilling to contemplate her endless future. “Where are we?” she asked. She slithered to the wall and ran her fingertips along it, feeling rough bark. Lifting her chin, she saw that the hollow trunk thrusted high above them, but a small opening at the top revealed the night sky, speckled with stars. There was nobody, god or mortal, within leagues of them.

“At one of my favorite places in your realm,” Stone replied. “Nowhere of importance.”

Skybright slid along the edge of the entire circle, trailing her hand against the ancient trunk. “One thing I don’t understand—if the breach was at the base of Tian Kuan mountain, why did the demon attacks begin near the top?”

“Once the demons emerged from the breach, we were able to send them all across the kingdom through portals. The Great Battle always begins near the monasteries. It was what the monks were trained for, what gives them purpose and glory. The mortal sacrifice is a ritual that only Abbot Wu and his chosen successor would have witnessed, as agreed in the covenant.”

Had Abbot Wu groomed Kai Sen to be his successor all these years? As the special one?

No moonlight filtered into the ancient hollow of the tree; the only light came from Stone himself. Skybright studied the immortal, standing tall, arms hanging loose at his sides. Majestic. She knew what he was capable of now, in an instant, with one small twist of his hand. “Thank you, Stone,” she said, and touched her injured arm. “For this. And for saving me … from the abbot.” Although he seemed to answer all her questions candidly, Skybright was still uncertain of Stone’s true motives. It was better to remain in his good graces, to bide her time.

He smiled, and his expression was almost wistful. The feeling dissipated as soon as the curve of his mouth did. “I cannot let you track your mortal friends. But I may be able to offer you something else. It is something I have seen your mother do.”

Her heart leaped.

Stone dropped gracefully to his knees and a bronze bowl manifested on the earthen floor. The immortal’s silver glow gleamed off its smooth surface. He glanced into the bowl. Curious, Skybright slid closer to him. What did he see? The bowl was filled with water, reflecting nothing but Stone’s glimmering face. “You think of what you wish to see, and it will appear for you,” he said, moving aside.

Disbelieving, Skybright bent forward, peering into the bowl. She thought of her mistress and Kai Sen, closed her eyes and pictured them in her mind, then swallowed the lump rising in her throat. Skybright opened her eyes but the water reflected nothing back at her, not even her own image—she didn’t glow as Stone did. She tried again, holding the image of these two people she loved, but kept her eyes wide open this time.

After a long moment, Stone leaned in, and her senses filled with his vibrant earthen scent. His shoulder pressed against hers, and she was aware of her own nakedness in a way that she hadn’t been in a long time. He appeared armored, as he always was, but it wasn’t cold metal she felt against her skin; it was the soft fabric of a tunic. Her heart began beating so fast that she felt faint, and she shook her head to dispel it. “It did not work,” Stone said, more to himself than as a question directed at her, oblivious of his effect on her. “Opal was fully immortal. It may be your mortal half that is hindering the spell.” He stared into the water, so close that if he turned his face, he could kiss her shoulder. Skybright swallowed and didn’t move.

“Give me your hand,” he finally said, and she extended her uninjured arm. He pricked her index finger, and one drop of her blood fell into the water. “Try again.” And he shifted from her. The tension in her chest eased, and she was able to breathe again.

Skybright bent her head over the water, and almost jolted back when she saw Kai Sen and Zhen Ni’s image cradled within the bowl.