Read Sacrifice for Free Online Page A

most popular dishes,” Stone said.
    The young man nodded before rushing off without a word.
    Stone poured into both cerulean cups and passed one to her. “Have you visited Qing Chun before?”
    “I’ve heard of it.” She took a cautious sip of the wine; it burned her throat yet seemed to steady her insides. “But I have never traveled so far south within the kingdom.” Her gaze wandered above the slate blue tiles of the curved rooflines, catching peeks of peach trees in blossom and the sweeping leaves of weeping willows along the banks of the canal. “It is as beautiful as they say.”
    Stone smiled. She noticed he had not touched his wine.
    The same server from before returned holding a round, lacquered tray. He placed a plate of chopped roast duck, a bowl of beef stew with carrots, and a platter of mushrooms and young bamboo before them. Then he set down a bamboo basket filled with steamed dumplings. Skybright plucked one out with her eating sticks, unable to resist. The filling was a mixture of shrimp, pork, and chives. She ate three more without speaking before taking another sip of rice wine. Her cheeks felt too warm, and she draped a hand outside the lattice window, enjoying the soft breeze that brushed against her palm.
    Two rowboats floated along the canal beneath them. One man sang in a hearty voice a song Skybright wasn’t familiar with, about the flow of the river giving life even as the days slipped by. He moved his oar to the rhythm of his song, and she listened, humming the refrain under her breath as he drifted around a bend and out of sight.
    “You should eat some more.” Stone’s voice jarred Skybright from her reverie. He sat across from her, unmoving, and still unnervingly handsome. Stone had kissed her three times already but never in passion or desire. Each time she had literally been taken away from herself, stripped physically, as if flung into the heavens. It was unimaginable that she desired this remote immortal, so lacking in emotion and condescending to humans, ludicrous that he had somehow worked a sexual charm on her.
    “Eat with me,” she replied. “I feel strange eating alone.”
    Stone picked up his eating sticks, and she reached for two more dumplings before filling her plate with beef, mushrooms, and bamboo. The food was cooked and flavored as well as any dish served in the Yuan manor. She ate until she was satisfied, feeling the contentedness of a full stomach. Skybright couldn’t remember the last time she had a nicely cooked hot meal—not since she left the Yuan manor in search of Zhen Ni so long ago, it seemed. All the meals she had eaten had been conjured by Stone before this. He had mostly kept her away from towns and other people until now.
    They dined in silence, and she felt Stone’s dark eyes studying her as the server came and removed their dishes, leaving them with a pot of tea and a platter of lychees. “What?” she finally asked, uncomfortable beneath his gaze.
    “You make quite the vision of a lady.”
    “I wasn’t born to be a lady.”
    “No,” Stone said, and she heard the weighted emphasis behind that one word. “You are a serpent demon.” He leaned an arm across the top of the carved redwood banister that displayed a scene of the Immortals in a heavenly garden in perfect detail. “Look at the patrons below.”
    She obeyed, filled with an unease that tasted sour at the back of her throat.
    “What do you see?”
    The teahouse had become even more crowded since they had entered. A few consorts had moved into the laps of their various patrons, and most of the men below were red-faced and becoming increasingly boisterous. All the tables were cluttered with half-empty dishes and multiple jugs of rice wine.
    “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said.
    “Look closer.”
    She opened her mouth to retort, but the seriousness of Stone’s expression stopped her. Skybright narrowed her eyes and observed the faces of the patrons below: the drunk man in his