Page 2 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

“What are you staring at?” she demands, and I drop my gaze to the stone floor.

“Nothing.” My voice goes quiet. “Nothing at all.”

With a huff, she takes the tray from Adefina and backs out of the kitchen, swinging toward the main house.

I catch a glimpse of the servants’ dining room and the stairs leading up to the main house. My breath catches in my throat, and I swallow down my rage.

If I could manage it, I’d burn this whole place to the ground.

Sometimes as I stretch out on the hearth and try to fall asleep, I stare into the embers until I dream of flames engulfing this place, of watching first it and then the Ice Palace both melt away, taking the entire court, too.

Not that Prince Jonyk would allow fire anywhere near his frozen stronghold. I know most of the nobles consider Ivrael strange, think his preference for cooked food and warm drink at best an affectation and at worst an aberration.

But he’s far from the only Icecaix to pick up odd habits from other cultures, other worlds.

I’ve seen enough among the nobles to…

Well, to make my blood run cold.

There are other ways to kill them, of course. Fire is my favorite fantasy—and according to Kila, it’s the Icecaix’s greatest fear to be devoured in the kind of heat they can’t stand, just as the Starcaix fear freezing to death.

But iron…

Iron kills them all.

“Time to get moving, girl.” In a quiet reminder to quit daydreaming, Adefina jostles against me with her soft, rounded form—a shape I might have considered matronly in another life. Here, however, I know all that flesh is wrapped around a hard central core.

She has to be stone to survive. We all do. But as a human, I can hold iron.

Someday I will use it to kill my captor—and that will save my sister from ending up in this nightmare.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

I’m just afraid that the fantasy of saving my sister is as much of a fairy tale as the ones I tell myself about fire and iron.

CHAPTER 2

IVRAEL

On Earth, there are countless tales of fairy princes, handsome and charming, who slay dragons, rescue fair maidens, and restore peace to all the lands.

None of those stories are about me.

I’m not a prince, and I’m certainly not charming. I won’t be slaying any dragons. As for rescuing maidens? Fuck, no.

And I have zero intention of creating peace on my planet. The exact opposite, in fact. In order to save my world, I’m planning to start a war. By sacrificing a couple of those maidens I won’t be rescuing, in fact.

I’ll agree tohandsome, though. Of course, that might be the problem. Women see my face and assume I’m the answer to their…what? Prayers? Dreams?

Wild imaginings, more likely.

Sometimes I think human women are the worst. For generations, my people have visited Earth, often enough—and carelessly enough—that the humans have created myths surrounding my kind.

They never get it quite right, of course.

The fairy mounds have always been my favorite—places where people disappear, holding destinations the humans travel to, where they dance and eat and drink, only to return home to find years have passed.

Traveling faster than the speed of light in a cryochamber can have that time-dilation effect. It certainly did in the early days of our interstellar travel, when the humans we took with us slept away entire star-cycles as we made our way between our planets.

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