Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

up.”
     
    “It’s so hard to get the…” she said. “Fuck! Slippery bastards. And now I have a blister.”
     
    “This is the greatest game I have ever played,” Cruix said.
     
    “Gonna go for this one right here,” Meerwen said.
     
    “Two at once!” I said. “Sweet.”
    “I think I’ll get a spoon,” Mina said.
    “And fling fire all over the place?” Cruix said.
     
    “Why am I the only one getting hurt?” Mina demanded. “How do you all do it?”
    We looked at each other. We put our hands into the burning rum and pulled them out, except for Heronimo, who kept his hand in the flames a little longer.
    I held a fireball in my palm. Meerwen held up a burning fist. Dagonet showed a glistening hand. Cruix waved his unburned hand. And Heronimo flexed his fingers.
     
    “Fire magic,” I said.
     
    “Earth magic,” Meerwen said.
     
    “Water magic,” Dagonet said.
     
    “Fire resistance,” Cruix said.
     
    “Healing factor,” Heronimo said.
    We grinned.
     
    “Ah, fuck you guys,” Mina said.

Chapter 4
    The sourdough pizza and twice-fried chicken came in huge platters, while the deep-fried burgers and potato wedges came in individual plates. There was also beer. I’m more of a wine person, but this was the sort of meal that called for pitchers of it.
    “We never had anything like this back home,” Mina said.
     
    Sometimes I forget that Mina grew up underground and only among her own kind. The rest of us have more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Even Heronimo must have known halfling cuisine in the Northlands. It’s hard to imagine growing up not knowing the taste of a crunchy chicken leg, or the taste of a pizza hot from the oven, its crust deliciously sour from the yeast.
    Mina smiled. “What is this flavour?”
    “Apparently the cooking grease is thousands of years old.”
     
    “What?!”
     
    “They filter it and add new oil every day,” I said. “Halflings don’t like to waste things—remember their perpetual stew? This grease has a story.”
     
    “What was it?”
    “Something about Masha, the first halfling, and the time he invented doughnuts. He may or may not have been going through a divorce.”
     
    “Sensing a pattern here,” Cruix said. “Next you’ll tell me that Masha himself made the pizza dough.”
     
    “Actually, the starter is as old as the city,” I said. “Auntie Marilla donated it.”
     
    “I thought it tasted familiar,” Heronimo said.
    Sourdough is different from place to place. You can’t really transport it because starter quickly starts tasting like the local stuff.
     
    “… So then Raenion came at me with a mace and I had no choice but to punch him in the face,” Meerwen said. “He got up, so I had to punch him in the face again.”
    “Meerwen, I love your stories,” I said. “But you seem to solve every problem by punching it in the face.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “You think I should kick more often?”
    “Dessert’s here,” Heronimo said.
     
    A halfling woman wheeled over a cooking cart and brought out raisins and rum.
    Mina groaned. “Another game of snapdragon?”
    The halfling woman brought out milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. She combined them in a large metal bowl and added the rum. Another server came out with a bowl of finely-crushed dry ice, which she added to the mix while the first woman stirred it with a spoon.
     
    “Oooh,” Meerwen said.
     
    Fog spilled over the rim of the bowl. The dry ice didn’t melt, it went straight from solid to gas, chilling the mix as it bubbled away. The ice cream started to freeze. The halfling woman kept stirring while her assistant added more cold. Occasionally the assistant’s hand would dart into the bowl, snatch a piece of dry ice, and crumble it between her fingers, ensuring that none would remain in the finished product. Now the other woman wasn’t stirring so much as folding the mix. Heronimo picked up a chunk of dry ice.
    “This is really cold,” he said. “It’s burning