Page 24 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

I’m upstairs cleaning the duke’s rooms when I catch a glimpse of him and his guest, that creepy baron with the unpronounceable name, riding back into the courtyard from the woods.

God, the things he said about me at dinner. And the way Ivrael looked at me…

I have to get out of here. My time is running out. I’m sure of it. I have to find a way to get back to the duke’s ship so I can get home.

At least, I think time is running out. I don’t really know how long it took us to get from Earth to Trasq, though from some of the things I’ve overheard Ivrael say about his trips to my planet, I don’t think it could have taken more than a couple of days.

I hope I’m right—along with the longer Trasqo days, I’ve been using the travel time as part of the crude calculations I’ve made for counting down how long I still have to save Izzy. But I’m not sure exactly how long I was unconscious on Ivrael’s spaceship.

The closer I get to my self-imposed deadline, the more I’ve been going over those first few days, trying to remember something I’vemissed. Something that will help me figure out how to get home. But I keep getting hung up on the horror of realizing I’m on another planet.

Worse, that I’m under the control of a gorgeous alien I cannot trust.

After we arrived on Trasq, I was still groggy when Ivrael pulled me out of that weird coffin-thing —and at the time, seeing that he’d kept me in a casket, I was a little surprised to be alive at all.

The duke nodded at one of his henchmen, who tugged on my arm. “Come on.”

I stumbled into step behind them as the servant pulled me through an open door to a field outside, where the first thing that struck me was the bitter cold.

It had been winter in Texas the morning Ivrael bought me at the market. But that doesn’t mean much, really. It can get cold in North Central Texas, and once in a while, it even snows. But a Texan’s sense of what constitutescolddoesn’t compare at all to the cold of Icecaix lands—they are winter at its iciest, its most arctic. Snow that never melts, frost coating everything in the mornings, icicles hanging like Christmas decorations from every surface’s edge.

The coat I’d grabbed at Roland’s urging wasn’t much good for blocking the chill. And I did not yet understand where I was. I’d started in a bustling if slightly chilly flea market, been forced to eat a bite of a fucking drugged apple, and awoken to a snowy plain stretching out before us and ending in a weird-looking conifer forest.

I staggered down a ramp, and when I glanced behind us, I saw we’d just exited what I realized was a silver, disc-shaped spaceship. An actual flying fucking saucer, straight out of some nineteen-fifties sci-fi movie.

That’s when I finally realized I might not be in Texas anymore. Or on Earth at all, for that matter.

The servant dude leading me—a white-haired lump of pure muscle whose name I later learned was Khrint—pulled me around to walk in front of him so he could keep prodding me from behind, and we made our way across the field, then into a small copse of trees, where a path led to an enormous gate.

This gate was different from the one I’d used to enter the Trasqo Market what felt like just that morning.

No, this gate wasn’t the typical wood and wire enclosure I was used to seeing in Texas. It was a wrought iron affair, tall and imposing, looming at the end of the path before us. Painted a bright white, the intricate curlicues reminded me of balconies I had seen when Mama had taken Izzy and me to New Orleans two years before she married Roland—but long after our birth father had left.

My gaze tracked the designs worked into the iron gate, following the lines of what almost looked like a wing as it swirled into the next part of the pattern, never quite finding an endpoint, always going deeper, as if the design itself were drawing me toward it, drawing me in.

The duke shook my arm a little. “Don’t get lost.”

It didn’t make any sense at the time, and yet I knew he meant I needed to quit examining the gate. But when I glanced up at Ivrael, I found myself similarly fascinated by his face, the lines of his chin, the seashell swirl of his ear as his golden-blond hair brushed across it.

I realized with a blink of surprise that the top of his ear was slightly pointed, a little like Mr. Spock’s in Star Trek. Or at least somewhere between the curve of mine and the Vulcan’s peak.

Ivrael let go of my arm and reached his hands up to cup the sides of my face, staring intently into my eyes. As I met his gaze, I noted again that his eyes weren’t quite as pale or cold as I had originally assumed. His pupils widened, and tiny sparks of silver and gold shot out into his irises, glittering in their depths.

“It has no power over you,” he said, his melted-chocolate voice deep and smooth, “You are in control.”

I blinked, and it was as if his words had pulled me out of some mesmerizing hypnotist’s act.

Ivrael gave a nod of satisfaction and took my arm in his grasp again as he spoke to the servants. “You two should go with Cyan—take her to the pole and see her settled at the spaceport. Then make your way home.”

They nodded and headed back to the shipas the duke waved his hand, and the white gate swung open—using some kind of automatic sensor, I assumed.

At the last minute, I dug my heels into the ground. But Ivrael did not slow, and as he moved through the gate, his hand on my arm, he tugged me forward so hard that I stumbled behind him, almost tripping as I landed on the other side of the gate, which slammed behind us with a final-sounding clang.

“Where are you taking me?” This time, my voice was shaky and small.

“To my home.”

Images of serial killers I’d seen on TV flashed through my mind, and I felt the blood drain from my face, leaving my skin prickly. Simultaneously, hot nausea tried to crawl up my throat, and I swallowed it back down.

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