Page 3 of The Alien’s Cruel Starfrost Domain (Empire of Frost and Flame #1)

CHAPTER 3

LARA

T echnically, I was still seventeen when the man who was supposed to protect me sold me to Duke Ivrael at the Trasqo Market.

Technicalities matter here.

Roland was a fool. Anyone who knows enough to find the Trasqo Market ought to know better than to make a deal with the Caix. Or at least know enough to pay attention to the technicalities.

I only hope the price he paid was infinitely more than whatever he got for me. It usually is. Although my stepfather took the coins Ivrael gave him, I doubt they bought him whatever he thought he needed. The smug prick.

In the darkness of that early morning, terror clogged my throat and kept me from screaming when my stepfather yanked me out of the passenger side of his pickup truck, his enormous, calloused hand holding my thin bicep with a bruising grip. Tear tracks ran down my cheeks, but any wetness had long since dried, my sobbing having given way to the occasional sniffle.

Roland’s betrayal had already hollowed me out, and I didn’t know the half of it back then. I only knew he’d come home drunk again less than six months after my mother’s death and announced he was done with me—he didn’t owe me anything, and I ought to be worth something to him.

It had started when he pulled me out of my bed. “Get up.”

I’d blinked, instantly awake. “Is it Izzy?”

He’d scowled as if he found my question deeply stupid. “No. She’s fine.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever was going on with Roland, whatever awful thing he was about to inflict on me, my sister was safe, spending the night at her best friend Bridget’s house. Her safety was all that mattered.

“Get a coat,” he grumbled, and this time I was the one who frowned. My stepfather had never before shown any concern for my comfort—or well-being, or anything else a reminder to get my coat might suggest.

But before I could ask him about it, he ordered me out to his pickup.

Like an idiot, I went.

Mama had died in a hit-and-run, mowed down by a driver a witness said had almost certainly been driving drunk. In the moment, I didn’t see the irony of a drunk Roland leading me to my own doom. Looking back on that day, I find the whole situation darkly funny—or I would, if I ever allowed myself to think about it.

I didn’t fully understand the magnitude of my mistake until Roland got behind the wheel and began careening down the back roads of our tiny Texas county, muttering all the while. I caught only part of what he said, words like “stupid little bitch” and “thinks she can mooch off me forever.”

I wasn’t crying—not yet. Instead, I begged Roland to let me drive us home, promised he’d feel better once he had some sleep, offered to make him coffee, anything.

His broad shoulders curved forward, and he ducked his head, leaving him hunched over the steering wheel as my words battered against him. He stayed focused on the road and never answered me .

In fact, he didn’t say a word until he’d dragged me out of the truck and into what I initially assumed was a flea market, the kind that pop up all over the Texas Hill Country as soon as the weather warms up in the spring or cools down in the fall.

For a moment as we made our way through the gate in the barbed wire fence, relief actually swirled through me. Roland couldn’t be planning anything too terrible, right? Not if he was taking me to a flea market.

He’d been acting weird, sure, but not so strange I couldn’t convince myself it was all in my head.

That’s what I thought—I’d been imagining things—right up until the moment I finally looked, really looked, at the people manning the stalls.

Their faces were wrong, gray and lumpy, their bodies twisted and misshapen under their clothing, and as we walked by them, they all called out the same words. “Come buy, come buy!”

Sometimes they added descriptions of their wares—silver and gold, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, strange fruits glistening in the dawn sunlight just peeking over the horizon—but mostly they repeated that odd phrase, their voices blending into a hideous chorus.

I didn’t realize they weren’t people at all until later.

Too much later.

“Come on, Lara,” Roland growled, tugging at me harder. “We’re late.” I blinked in surprise. Roland almost never called me by my name. For a while after he and my mother had first married I hadn’t been certain he even knew it.

We made our way deeper into the field, moving through the rows of stalls. Other than the creepy vendors, it struck me as being just like any other outdoor market I’d ever been to. Some of the stalls had cotton or vinyl awnings, half-tents set up to cover the tables. Other vendors had their wares stacked on tables in front of them and on the ground around them.

But the one time I glanced over my shoulder toward the entrance, I could no longer see it.

That’s when I realized the stalls in this market stretched out into the distance, going much farther than I thought they should be able to, given the size of the field I had seen when we parked the pickup.

There were people milling around, as well, and it hit me with a shock that felt almost physical—there were many more people here than could have come from the few vehicles parked in the almost-empty parking lot by the entrance. I tried to convince myself there must be another parking lot somewhere, another area where the vendors loaded and unloaded. But even then, I didn’t believe it.

I should have listened to my instincts. I should have wrenched my arm out of Roland’s harsh grip and run.

Somehow, though, I knew it was already too late.

When I began to see the other market patrons—the fantastical shapes, the pointed ears, the fluttering wings, the extra joints and crooked noses and glittering, unbelievable beauty of some of the creatures wending their way among the stalls—I didn’t even gasp. I must have decided it was a dream, though I don’t remember consciously thinking it.

The brown, dead grasses left from the end of summer had been trampled down by the passage of hundreds of feet, and my tennis shoes occasionally kicked up clumps of dirt. That seemed real enough. But nothing else around me did.

Roland never let go of my arm, and any time I tried to stop to examine something that caught my eye—not because I was interested in buying anything, but because I could not help myself—he jerked me along, still muttering under his breath, although now I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Roland!” a voice called out, and his head whipped around. “Over here,” the voice continued, and with a wave, Roland made his way down a side aisle of the market.

I was so dazed that when Roland finally jerked me to a halt, I stumbled against him, then reached up to push my hair out of my eyes.

Where we’d stopped, an odd little man stood behind a battered wooden table. Unlike the other vendors, he didn’t have anything out for sale—just a ledger and several pens. Not regular ballpoint pens, either, but the truly old-fashioned kind with feathers on one end and a pot of ink next to them.

He was even weirder than the people I had seen manning the tables toward the entrance. His skin was a mottled gray and green, his shoulders hunched under the off-white linen shirt he wore, its sleeves rolled up to accommodate his short arms. His eyes were completely black, as if the pupils had swallowed both the irises and the whites, leaving only bright buttons reflecting the light, and his smile curled up on one side of his mouth, revealing glimpses of what looked like a sharp yellow fang.

He looked like an unholy cross between a human and a frog, with his skin slightly damp and his body squat and round, his arms too short, his legs slightly bent.

No. Not a frog.

A toad.

With fangs.

The vendor glanced up at Roland and laughed. “I didn’t believe you’d do it.” His voice managed to be squeaky and high with a low rumble underpinning it.

“Told you I’d be here,” Roland said. “Let’s get this over with.”

The vendor’s high-pitched giggle went straight through my ear and stabbed into my head. “We need to wait for the buyer.” He paused and glanced around as if expecting his words to conjure whoever it was he waited for. “Oh, there he is.”

Toad-man tilted his chin, pointing down the winding pathway between tables in the direction opposite the one Roland and I had come from. Still uncertain about what was happening, I jerked my head around to see what he was talking about.

Ivrael Eluwyn, High Duke of the Ice Court, Lord of Starfrost Manor in the Empire of the Caix strode toward me.

Of course, at that point I didn’t know his name, any of his titles, or where he was from—the far-away planet of Trasq, I learned much later.

Nonetheless, my first glimpse of him just about stopped my heart.

The first thing I noticed about him was the way he moved. He didn’t simply walk. He strode through the market as if he owned the place, and the people—things—milling around the stalls scattered out of his path.

Since then, I’ve learned Ivrael never just walks anywhere. He stalks, he prowls, sometimes he pounces. He moves like a cat.

His unearthly beauty struck me next. Everything about him was gorgeous. Tall and slender, yet muscular at the same time, with blond hair brushed back from his face.

He wore dark pants molded to his hips and legs, outlining every muscle, and his shirt was a pristine white that practically glowed. Over it, he wore a white coat with gold embroidery. The effect should have been effeminate—the shirt had ruffles at the throat and sleeves. But it wasn’t effeminate at all.

No. This man could get away with wearing anything, and the sheer force of his personality would overwhelm reality, bending it to suit him rather than the other way around.

He stalked toward us, and his gaze bored into me. His eyes were ice-cold, a blue so pale they were almost white, the color of a husky dog’s or wolf’s eyes, one I didn’t think I had ever seen in people.

He drew closer, and with a start, I realized his pupils were slitted, as if he really were part cat.

Deep inside the cool silver of his eyes, bright flecks of molten gold sparked and swirled, and his eyelids flared wider for a split second as his gaze moved slowly up and down my entire body.

For an instant, I thought he'd recognized me, or maybe he—what? Thought I was attractive? My eyelashes fluttered down despite myself, and my gaze flickered across the muscular lines of his body.

As he held my gaze, heat crawled up my cheeks. When one corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile, heat coiled in my stomach, exploding into something akin to desire.

In some ways, his intent expression mirrored the vendor’s. But what had been horrific on the gray man’s face was painfully, almost unbearably handsome on Ivrael’s features.

His gaze pinned me, and I couldn’t tear my attention away from him .

One of the two men with him leaned over and whispered something in a fluid, sibilant language I didn’t understand.

“This is the one?” The duke’s voice was dark and smooth like melted chocolate, and it struck me as odd that something so warm could come from someone who otherwise seemed so cold.

“As promised, Your Lordship,” the vendor squeaked.

The duke reached out one hand, palm up, as he silently, imperiously, demanded Roland hand me over to him.

My stepfather’s grip tightened even further, and I whimpered.

“Not until I get my money,” Roland muttered.

The pleasant expression fell away from the beautiful man’s face, and the air around us chilled by several degrees. He completely ignored Roland as he continued speaking to the vendor.

“You are certain of her lineage?”

“Yes, Duke Ivrael. I verified it, just as you requested, Your Lordship.”

Ivrael reached out and touched his forefinger to Roland’s hand where it held me. My stepfather’s bruising grip on my arm suddenly loosened as one finger after another peeled away from my bicep. Roland stared at his hand as if he had no control over it.

The duke then took my arm in his own hand and slid his fingers down to my wrist, clasping it lightly. Pinpricks of awareness shivered across my skin everywhere he touched, leaving behind an odd heat. His thumb traced small circles against my pulse point, and I tried to tell myself my racing heartbeat was from fear alone.

As if we were performing some strange ritual dance I didn’t know the steps to, he spun me around, his gaze moving up and down my body, assessing me. His other hand came to rest at the small of my back, and even through my jacket I could feel the strange contrast of his cool touch and the heat it sparked under my skin.

At the end of my slow twirl, I wound up facing him, and he pulled me up against him. The scent of him, like vanilla and ice with some kind of spicy overlay, overwhelmed me as he molded his body to mine.

The duke reached out and brushed my hair out of my eyes, then smiled a little when it instantly fell back down. The next time, he pushed the whole mass of curls back behind my shoulder, his fingers trailing along my neck. I stood immobile, staring at his otherworldly beauty and already hating how my body responded to his touch.

“She’s lovely.” He glanced at the vendor, but his hand remained curved around the nape of my neck. “And you are absolutely certain of her bloodline?”

“Of course, Your Lordship.” The ugly little man with the ledger spoke obsequiously, all but bowing as he responded.

Then the duke dropped his hands away from me and took a step back. For all that the air around us had been chilly, I hadn’t felt it. Not until he was no longer touching me, and I was left feeling bereft, as if by denying me contact with him, he was literally leaving me out in the cold.

I blinked rapidly, my mind reeling in a haze of confusion and unwanted attraction.

“I’ll take her,” Ivrael said, turning to look at Roland.

Take me?

What the hell did that mean?

Avarice flashed across Roland’s face, the same look he got every month when the Social Security checks arrived. Despite the chill in the air, beads of sweat popped out around his hairline. “I’ll get what we agreed on, right?”

The duke’s nostrils flared as if he smelled something unpleasant. “I promise you’ll get more than you bargained for.”

Even then, I knew his words portended something awful. I would have warned Roland he shouldn’t have made a deal with this man, this duke—whoever he was—who touched me like I was precious and spoke of me as if I weren’t there. But I didn’t care what happened to Roland.

The toad-like vendor began muttering to himself as he opened the ledger, running through calculations and jotting down notations in the book.

“What is the chattel’s name?” he asked, looking at me expectantly.

Chattel. I had heard the word before, but I didn’t know where. I couldn’t remember what it meant, but it still hit me like a punch in the stomach, knocking all the breath from my lungs. “Are you talking about me?”

“Yes, child. What is your name?”

“Lara. Lara Evans.”

He dipped the feather quill in the inkpot and began writing. As his pen scritched across the page of the journal, I glanced back and forth among the three men, the fog that had clouded my mind since we arrived in the marketplace finally clearing entirely.

The beautiful man had said he would take me.

Oh, holy hell.

Roland was about to sell me.

“This isn’t legal,” I blurted out.

And I wasn’t about to stick around for it. I spun away from them and marched away from the table, realizing as I did so I had no idea where the exit was or how to get there. But I had to find my way out eventually, right? There was only so far a market could stretch across a single field.

“Stop.” As the duke spoke, the word echoed around me like a thunderclap, ringing in my ears long after it had faded away.

I had absolutely no intention of following any command issued by any of those three, and yet I found myself freezing in place, my limbs tingling painfully as if they’d been encased in ice. My breath puffed out in front of me, mist swirling out of my mouth as I tried to speak, to protest, to scream that I could not be so cold.

Slowly, against my will, I turned, moving stiffly back toward the vendor’s table.

“When is your birthday, child?” the toad-man asked as if I hadn’t just attempted to escape.

I locked my jaw against answering, but my mouth moved, and I had no way to stop myself from speaking.

“Next week,” I said.

“How old will you be?” This time, the question came from the beautiful duke. My gaze flickered toward him, and in the depths of his eyes, I saw a reflection of the same kind of avarice in Roland’s expression.

“Eighteen,” I said, despite my attempts to remain silent.

The duke shot a look at Roland. “Eighteen is the age of majority on your world, no?”

Confusion creased Roland’s brow, but he nodded. “That’s when she’ll be a legal adult, yeah. It’s when I stop getting the checks for her.”

Nausea roiled up into my throat. It was one thing to suspect Roland hated me, only kept me around for the checks. It was something else entirely to know it for sure.

Ivrael’s cosplay clothing came complete with a leather drawstring bag. He lifted the purse and hefted it in his hands three times.

I don’t know why I counted how many times he made the contents jingle, but I did. I knew it was significant somehow.

The Caix are big on numbers, as it turns out. Threes have power. So do sevens.

“I will take her now,” the duke said, his words more a command than an offer. After he had Roland’s attention, the duke handed the purse to my stepfather, who opened it, his beefy fingers fumbling among the coins before he finally poured them out onto the table.

Ivrael watched him, staring down the length of his aristocratic nose as if Roland were too crass for words.

“She’s all yours,” Roland said, not even looking at me, too busy drinking in the sight of the silver and gold piled on the table. Then he swallowed hard and added, “But about her sister...”

Ivrael went perfectly still. Even the air around him seemed to freeze. “Yes?”

“Thing is, I’ve been thinking.” Roland scratched the back of his neck, his greed warring with something that looked almost like fear. “Maybe I’ll just keep the younger one.”

This time when I froze, no one but me caused it.

No. This man couldn’t have Izzy. No one could ever have Izzy.

“The agreement was for both sisters,” Ivrael said, his voice carrying a sharp, winter-cold edge. “At the appointed times.”

Roland’s face reddened. “Yeah, well, agreements can change. Fact is, I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t sell either of ’em.” He moved as if to sweep the coins off the table and back into the leather pouch. “Police might come sniffing around, asking questions?—”

The temperature plummeted. Frost crackled across the vendor’s table, creeping toward Roland’s hands.

My stepfather jerked back, eyes widening.

“The agreement,” Ivrael said softly, dangerously, “was for both sisters. The elder now, the younger just as she reaches eighteen. Their ages are... crucial to my purposes.”

Roland licked his lips nervously. “Listen, Your Lordship, or whatever you are. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but?—”

“This is no game.” Ivrael’s eyes flashed with silver and gold sparks. “You will bring the younger sister to me on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. No sooner. No later.”

The frost spread further, climbing up Roland’s sleeve. He tried to brush it off, but it only thickened. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “What are you?”

“Someone you do not want to disappoint.” Ivrael’s voice had gone quiet again, almost gentle. “Someone who can find you anywhere you try to hide.”

Roland’s teeth began to chatter. “F-fine. Both girls. But it’ll cost you double for all this... trouble.”

“Agreed.” Ivrael waved his hand and the frost receded. He produced another purse, identical to the first. “Half now, half when you deliver the sister. At the proper time.”

My stepfather snatched the second purse, his hands shaking. As he stuffed both purses into his jacket, I caught him muttering under his breath: “Eighteen. Has to be eighteen. What kind of bastard...” But he didn’t argue further.

Whatever he saw in Ivrael’s eyes terrified him more than any concern for the police.

I wanted to scream at them both, to demand answers about why our ages mattered, why it had to be both of us.

But my throat had closed up with fear—not for myself, but for Izzy.

Because whatever Ivrael wanted with us, whatever mystical significance our ages held for him, I knew one thing for certain, even then: He would never stop until he had us both. Not unless he was dead.

That was the moment I realized I was going to have to save my sister—and I was willing to kill Duke Ivrael to do it.

Of course, now I know more about what I’m facing. Now I know not even death will stop Lord Ivrael, Duke of Starfrost.

But I have to try.

S urprisingly enough given my steady diet of childhood fairy tales, I never once wondered if Ivrael was a prince coming to save me from my life with Roland. I might not have pegged the duke as the villain when I first saw him, but I knew heroes didn’t purchase their princesses.

As he prepared to drag me away from the market, Ivrael reached out and took my upper arm—not the bruised one that Roland had been holding but the other one—and again, that odd, prickling heat raced through me. Or perhaps it was bitter cold. It was as if my skin couldn’t interpret the sensation, leaving me with an almost feverish chill dancing up and across my shoulders.

That’s when I started to thrash and scream, begging anyone nearby to help me. They didn’t, of course—now I know we were in the Trasqo Market, and people there were used to seeing humans bought and sold.

Then he gave my arm a slight squeeze. It was light, and yet it was enough to make me stop fighting. Somehow I knew if I tried to escape, it would be like trying to fight my way out of metal handcuffs.

His touch was definitely cold, I decided, a burning freeze that sank into my bones.

Then, as if I’d been imagining it, his frigid touch warmed, soothing the irritated skin.

“Come,” the duke ordered imperiously. He gave a tug, and I found myself stumbling after him .

When we were several feet away from Roland, Ivrael tilted his head toward me and murmured, “Not to worry. He will receive exactly the payment he deserves.”

His words startled me so much that I stopped, only to be pulled along a second later when Ivrael continued walking.

Again, I wondered what he meant. But this time, I also hoped I was around whenever Roland got what was coming to him. With any luck, I could be the one to dish out that punishment—preferably to all three of the men who’d been involved in this transaction.

Assuming I got away from Ivrael unscathed. Sadly, that was seeming less and less probable.

Walking away from Roland and the toad-man, we took a sharp turn between two stalls, and an exit appeared in front of us. I’d been right—the market did not stretch out all that far. At least that’s what I thought back then. That was before I knew about Caix magic.

I stopped again, this time digging my heels into the dusty earth and refusing to move.

“Where are we going?” I demanded.

Ivrael glanced at me. His face was even colder than before, his expression assessing, as if he were trying to decide what to do with me—even though he was the one who’d purchased me as if I were livestock at some Texas cattle auction.

“The apple,” he said. Until he held his hand out to one of his servants, I thought he was talking to me.

The man reached into a satchel he carried slung over one shoulder and drew out exactly what Ivrael asked for: an actual apple.

He took the fruit from the manservant and shoved it into my face. “Eat this.”

I jerked away, shaking my head. “I’m not going to eat anything you give me. Besides, I’m not hungry.”

My stomach growled, loudly, and Ivrael raised an eyebrow.

It was the weirdest thing—I could have sworn I hadn’t been hungry moments before. Right up until he held out the fruit.

My gaze was pulled toward it. It was red, shiny. And it smelled better than anything I’d ever smelled before.

My mouth watered, and I bit down against the reaction, swallowing. “I won’t eat anything you give me.”

I was repeating myself, but I didn’t care.

He stepped toward me, and I froze in place like prey. His eyes glittered and flashed. I couldn’t look anywhere other than directly into them. He stood so close I could feel his body heat radiating, and damn… It was almost as enticing as the apple he held up to my mouth.

He leaned in, and his lips brushed my ear when he breathed into it, as if he was caressing the words with his mouth—exactly like the rest of his body whispered against mine. His voice was throaty, seductive, as he murmured, “Just one bite.”

He enunciated each word carefully, and at the feel of his voice vibrating against my skin, I closed my eyes and whimpered softly. But I didn’t open my mouth.

He drew the back of his hand down my cheek and across my jaw to my collarbone. His fingers played with the skin at the neckline of my sweater. “Now, Lara.”

The cool skin of the apple brushed against my lips, and I could almost taste its sweetness in its scent, feel the crunch as my teeth sank in.

Why was I working so hard to resist eating it?

In the back of my mind, a sane voice whispered, It could be poisoned.

But I knew it was more likely I was refusing simply because I didn’t want Ivrael to win.

Didn’t want him to believe he had any power over me.

Didn’t want to be seduced into anything—not even something as simple as taking a bite out of an apple.

But then he snaked one hand around to the back of my head, tangling his fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck. He fisted his hand in my hair, and with a jerk, used it as a handle to both tug my head back and drag the rest of my body up against his.

This time, my whimper was one of pain—but somehow, that pain also became something new.

Something foreign.

Something aching and mixed with desire .

He hadn’t moved the hand with the apple—he still held it in my face—but now he ground it against my mouth, much as he forced my body to grind against his.

His voice turned harsh and grating, a dark vein of violence threading through it, underscoring every word. “Take a bite.”

Everything around me stopped, going perfectly still. That’s when his cock hardened against me. I gasped, and I couldn’t say if it was from horror or excitement.

Ivrael used that moment to shove the apple against my parted lips. “Open your mouth, princess.”

And finally, I did, unable any longer to resist his orders.

My teeth crunched down into the apple, and it flooded my mouth with sweetness.

“That’s my good girl.” Ivrael let go of my hair and smoothed his hand down the center of my back until his fingertips danced right along the top of my ass. He never looked away from me as he took a half step back, a smile playing along the edges of his mouth.

The periphery of my vision darkened, and I glanced around to see why the light had changed.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, and for an instant, his tone turned gentle. “Not without me.”

Then the darkness hovering around the edges of my vision spread inward, and the last thing I was certain of was Ivrael’s voice as he murmured, “Don’t worry, I have you.”

My knees buckled, and he caught me in his arms.

I knew that fucking apple was poisoned.