Page 8 of The Alien’s Cruel Starfrost Domain (Empire of Frost and Flame #1)

CHAPTER 8

LARA

T hat first night Adefina showed me to the kitchen, gesturing around the room, and told me that was where I’d be working and staying.

I asked her where the bed was, and she laughed. With a shake of her head, she said, “Get as comfortable as possible and grab whatever sleep you can. We’ll be up early tomorrow morning.”

Then she moved through a set of doors on the far end of the kitchen that I learned later led to her own bedchamber.

I was so tired I didn’t think I’d be able to stay awake long enough to choose a sleeping spot. I ended up huddled by the fire, though, and wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking myself, trying to find comfort in the fact that I was still alive, and that the duke did not have more nefarious plans for me.

In the end, I took a stack of towels from a basket and used one as a pillow and the others as blankets. Or at least, I tried to cover myself with the others.

I curled up closer to the fire, still shivering, remembering all the nights back home when Izzy and I had huddled together in my bed right after Mom married Roland.

Back then, Roland had turned the heat way down to save money, but Izzy would press her cold feet against my calves and whisper, “Tell me a story,” until I made up tales about magical creatures who’d swoop in and save us.

Now, a universe away from her, I knew better than to hope for someone to come rescue me like in those stories. But I could still wish.

Between the towels and the fire, I finally managed a few hours of fitful sleep.

The next morning, Adefina toed me awake with a nudge from her booted foot. “If you’re going to use the kitchen towels, don’t dirty the clean ones.” With a scowl, she pointed toward a corner. “The basket of used towels is over there. You can sleep under those.”

I blinked groggily, my teeth already beginning to chatter, and Adefina took pity on me.

“Come on, then,” she said. “His Lordship has called us to the courtyard.” Her tone was brusque, but I heard the fear lurking beneath her voice.

After I staggered to my feet, my head pounding and my back aching from my first night on the hearth, she led me to a storage closet, where she quickly sorted through piles of fabric, finally coming up with two cloaks, both worn thin. One was a scratchy, dark green wool full of holes. The other was made of a thin red cotton.

“Layer these for now,” she said. “You can stitch them together later. They ought to keep out the worst of the chill.”

I noted that her own cloak was less worn, but similarly patched together from several other items.

“I guess the duke is the only one who gets nice clothes around here,” I muttered.

Adefina jerked, looking at me askance. “Don’t you let His Lordship hear you talk like that.”

“Why not?”

She frowned as if stunned by my stupidity, and then shook her head before muttering darkly, “You’ll see.” Without another word, she turned and moved out of the kitchen. At the same doorway we had entered through the night before, she paused and glanced back at me. “Well? Get a move on, girl. We’re likely to be late already.”

My stomach clenched, but I couldn’t have said why—not at that point at least, not beyond my general horror at being carried away to what looked like a production by the History Channel and felt like the North Pole.

In the courtyard, a large group of people waited. At least, I assumed they were people. As at the market, they were all sizes and shapes, many of them obviously inhuman.

They stood in two neat rows lining the pathway leading from the circular drive up to the entrance of what I could see in the morning light was an enormous, grand house, not quite a castle, but definitely a mansion—and not like the McMansions of the US, either. More like one of those old-money houses in England or some other part of Europe. My mouth fell open, and I stared at it for a long moment before turning to examine the rest of the courtyard.

The entire space was walled in, as if it were some kind of medieval castle or something, the bright white stone glittering with silica crystal, making the whole scene look as if it had been bedazzled by some rhinestone-happy giant. In the distance, mountain peaks stretched into the hazy blue of the sky, the only thing I could see outside the wall.

Snow blanketed most of the space inside the wall, the morning sun glinting off the ice, and I shivered despite my two cloaks. A white gravel drive had been shoveled clear of snow, as had a path leading from the drive to the entrance of the mansion.

Tucked in one corner of the walled area stood a wooden structure with a single heavy crossbeam across two poles held up by a platform. The whole thing stood about eight feet off the ground.

“Quit your gawping, child.” Adefina gave my shoulder a shove.

I scowled at her, not certain what I should do, or even what gawping meant, though I assumed she didn’t want me to stare wonderstruck at my surroundings.

“Stand here,” she said, maneuvering me into place at the end of one of the two lines facing each other. “Push your hood back.”

“But it’s cold.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It’ll be worse than cold if you don’t.”

Reluctantly, I pulled both cloaks’ hoods off my head, pushing them back onto my shoulders. Directly across from me, two young women in matching, long, pale blue-and-white dresses—Oriana and Ramira, I would later learn—sneered at me and whispered to each other.

“Eyes forward, and if His Lordship speaks to you, look down and curtsy.” Adefina’s words came out at a hurried clip, and as the door at the top of the entry stairs swung open, she fell into line beside me, snapped her own gaze forward, and straightened her shoulders.

I still wasn’t certain what would be worse than cold. Except possibly sobbing and cold. I was tired and angry and terrified. I crossed my arms over my chest to keep from crying, and Adefina made a tiny warning sound in the back of her throat. With a sigh, I dropped my arms beside me, my hands curling into fists.

Two young men with pale skin, white hair, and perfectly straight backs, dressed in matching pale blue-and-white fitted coats, blue leggings, and black boots stepped out of the house, swinging the double doors wide and holding them open.

I blinked when I realized they both had pointed ears, much like the duke’s.

Moments later, the duke himself stepped out, looking as rested as if he had not spent the day and half the night before dragging me here against my will. Once again, I was struck by how unbelievably beautiful he was. But this time, I bit the inside of my lip so hard I tasted blood, determined to wipe away any admiration I might ever have for him.

“Good morning,” Ivrael called out.

“Good morning, Your Lordship,” everyone said in unison.

The duke moved down the stairs, pausing periodically to speak to someone in line while I craned my head to watch him—until Adefina pinched me hard when he wasn’t looking. When he got to the end of the gauntlet we had created for him, he glanced at Adefina with a nod .

He didn’t give me a single look before stepping onto the circular drive and turning out to face the courtyard. For some reason, his indifference to me sent acidic anger swirling through my gut.

When Ivrael moved into the drive, all the servants turned to face the same direction he was looking. I followed their lead, a beat behind their coordinated movements. Now Adefina stood in front of me, and I was glad to be able to see over the shorter woman.

“Bring out the offender,” the duke commanded—and we all waited, the air charged with an awful expectation. I glanced around, trying not to move my head too much, but all the other people—creatures, whatever they were—continued staring straight ahead.

It couldn’t have taken more than the space of a few heartbeats, but the time seemed to stretch out, laden with that painful expectancy.

Then another pair of servants, two burly men also dressed in what I would later learn was the house livery, pulled a young man—a boy, really; he couldn’t have been any older than I was—from somewhere behind us and held him by the arms several feet away from the duke.

He was sobbing, his words tumbling out in a mangled plea, so rapid that I couldn’t untangle them enough to hear exactly what he was saying—only that he was begging for his life. A shudder went through me when I realized that last bit, despite not knowing yet that he literally meant it.

Ivrael stared down his nose at the boy, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Akkar Waesnir, for your crimes, you are hereby sentenced to death.”

Wait. What the actual fuck?

My mouth dropped open, and I gasped. “You can’t do that!”

A muffled gasp came from the rest of the lines. This time when Adefina turned to pinch me into silence, I jerked my arm away.

“Hush,” Adefina hissed. “Unless you want to share his fate.”

“Fuck this.” I took a step out of line, terrified but equally certain I could not allow this to happen, even as the acid swirling through my stomach burned its way into my throat.

Ivrael glanced back over his shoulder at me. His gaze flickered over to one of the men who’d been with him when Roland sold me to the duke. “Have your men restrain her, Khrint.”

Khrint nodded and flicked a hand in my direction.

I tried to take a step forward to go to the boy and help him. But two more overdressed, burly men had moved up behind me without my noticing. They surged forward, and each grabbed an arm. Shaking her head, Adefina stepped away from me.

“Hey! Let go of me!” I had time to get out one shout before the larger of the two clapped his hands over my mouth and nose, and suddenly I was struggling for breath, not just escape.

Adefina turned her head away from the duke long enough to say, “Be quiet. It’ll be over soon.”

I felt my eyes grow wide, and desperate for air, I nodded. But my captor did not take his hand away. Instead, he loosened it enough so I could breathe. I could smell his skin over my nose, meaty and moist, an earthy smell that made my stomach roil.

Ivrael watched this all with an air of clinical detachment, waiting until he was certain I wasn’t going anywhere. Without another glance at us, he stepped out into the center of the courtyard, and with an imperious motion, gestured to his men to bring the boy, too.

With another wave, he had several of the people who’d been in line with me follow him, moving to the giant wooden contraption. Ivrael’s people kicked at the bottom, releasing the wheels, and that’s when I realized it was movable. They rolled the whole thing over to a space just in front of the duke.

With a sudden twist, the boy broke free of his surprised captors and surged forward, throwing himself at the duke’s knees, wrapping his arms around them. “I won’t do it again. I swear!”

The duke raised an eyebrow at his servants, who grabbed the boy and hauled him, still begging, back up to his feet. Then Ivrael nodded, and two of the men pulled the boy toward the wooden stage. Only as one of them tossed a rope over the cross beam did I realize what was happening.

This was a lynching. A well-organized and almost painfully polite one, but a lynching, nonetheless.

With a wail, the boy tried to dig his feet into the ground, but they just made deep furrows in the snow as the servants dragged him across the courtyard. The steps leading up to the top of the hanging tree were wide enough for all three of them, and even when the boy began to thrash and scream, Ivrael stared at him impassively as the duke’s men tied the captive’s hands behind him.

I completely stopped resisting the men holding me, too sickened by what I was watching to move.

The servant who had thrown the rope over the top of the machine now slipped it around the boy’s neck and tightened the noose. At that moment, all the fight seemed to go out of their prisoner. His shoulders slumped, shaking as he began sobbing. Once the boy was secured, the servants who’d marched him up the stairs let go, and each took a step back.

I stared back and forth between the boy and Ivrael, trying to convince myself that this was all a dream or a joke. The duke raised a single finger by his side, telling the men on the platform to continue. At the duke’s signal, a third man pulled a lever, and a trap door fell away from under the boy.

A sickening crack pealed out across the courtyard as the boy's neck broke. His body dangled there, swinging slightly.

The nausea I’d been fighting down finally won, and I retched once before the man holding me whipped his hand away from my face. Bending over, I vomited on the ground in front of me, barely missing splashing Adefina’s feet.

The duke turned and gave me a disapproving glare. “Clean that up,” he instructed the man who’d been holding me. As his henchman scrambled to follow the order, Ivrael glanced over the members of his household. “Remember,” he said sternly. “At Starfrost Manor, this is the price you pay for betrayal.”

I could have sworn he was staring straight at me as the words left his mouth. But then his gaze skimmed across the rest of the servants, and I couldn’t be certain of what I’d seen.

Ivrael turned and marched back into the house through the front door. Once he was gone, the servants dispersed silently.

“What was that?” I whispered, my voice harsh and strained.

Adefina ignored the question, instead taking my upper arm in her hand and dragging me around the side of the house to the kitchen entrance. “Go inside,” she said. “We need to begin breakfast.”

I stumbled inside and leaned back against the closed door. This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare, right? There was no way any of this had happened. Not really. My stomach clenched, and I heaved again.

If it was a nightmare, then none of it could be true. Because nothing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours could possibly be real.

That hope hasn’t really faded since…

Yet I keep waking up to discover it’s still not a terrible dream. So every day, I continue to try to find a way home.

At the same time, I can never forget the crack of the boy’s neck breaking, the way his feet continued to swing above the platform. And I know that Ivrael will consider the escape I’m planning an act of betrayal.

The kind of betrayal that might very well lead me to the same fate as that boy.