Page 25 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

I shivered and wrapped my utterly inadequate coat around me, zipping it up and shoving my hands into the pockets. A path had been carved through the snow, which was easily a foot deep.

What was I doing here?

Just because Roland had said I was supposed to go with this beautiful man with the pointy ears, that I belonged to him now, didn’t make it true. I shook my head, doing my best to dispel that foggy feeling, the knowledge that this man had no right to tell me what to do finally spurring me to action.

But when I jerked my arm out of his loosened grip and spun around to dart back toward the spaceship, the ornate wrought iron gate was nowhere to be seen.

Fuck. Where had it gone?

I blinked and shook my head again as if by doing so I would bring it back, but all that stretched out behind me was the rest of this broad, snowy plain leading to the base of a mountain—and I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but I knew damn good and well that North Central Texas didn’t have any mountains.

Slowly, I turned back to face Ivrael, opening my mouth to say something, demand to know where I was or how I could get home.

He stood perfectly still, both hands in front of him, around … well, I didn’t know what, but initially I thought it was some kind of crystal ball. Until I realized it had blue lightning striking throughout it, and I wondered why he had a novelty toy—the ones where lightning tracks along the inside of the glass globe when you rub your hands over it. This one was brighter than any I’d seen before. And when the blue-white lightning flashed outward and hit the snow about ten feet away, sending it up in a puff of white powder, I yelped aloud.

Beside me, Ivrael muttered words I couldn’t understand. Then the snow tossed up by the lightning began to swirl, forming into ribbons of tiny ice particles, moving up and around into the shape of two horses.

The lightning flashed out again, splitting into two streams, arcing out until each one hit a snow-ribbon horse. The longer the lightning flowed, the more solid the horses became.

A thick fog moved in, filling the ribbony outlines.

“That ought to work,” Ivrael said, releasing the globe. With a snap of his fingers, the lightning disappeared, and the fog cleared. The ribbons that had flowed like satin hardened, turning crystalline and clear, containing the clouds inside the animal-statue bodies.

“Pretty.” My voice shook. The beautiful pointy-eared man who had bought me from my stepfather could create ice sculptures out of thin air—well, thin air plus some clouds and snow and lightning.

The duke shot a glance in my direction, and his lips curled up once again in a half smile. He spoke another word I didn’t understand, and the horses began to move, stamping their feet and tossing their manes. They were still made of ice, but they moved as easily as if they were flesh and bone.

“That one is yours.” Ivrael pointed at the smaller of the two.

“Oh, no.” I held my hands up in a negating gesture and backed away from both the duke and his creepy magic ice horses.

Because that’s what they had to be, right? Magic. There was no other way to explain what was going on here.

“I don’t know how to ride…that thing. I don’t even know how to ride a normal horse.”

Ivrael raised one eyebrow. “You don’t know how to ride a horse? I thought your part of the human world was known for its horses.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not the trailer park I live in. Horses are expensive. I’m lucky I know how to drive a car.”

Ivrael heaved a put-upon sigh and took several steps toward me, shaking his head. I backed away just as rapidly, still shaking my head.

“You’ll die if I leave you here.” Irritation threaded through his tone. “There’s no one else here, no way to return to your home.” He waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed everything around us—the mountain, the woods, the snowy plain.

I swallowed thickly. I never should have allowed him to drag me through that gate.

“Oh, by the goddess.” The words were spoken in the tone of a curse, like I might say ‘for fuck’s sake.’ And when Ivrael moved, he darted at me so quickly that I didn’t have time to get away. He wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me up, and before I had time to do more than inhale sharply in preparation for a scream, he deposited me on the ice-horse’s back.

I grabbed the pommel of the saddle—or the ice-sculpture equivalent of it, anyway—to keep from sliding off again.

With a single fluid leap, Ivrael mounted his own frozen steed. He snapped his fingers a second time, and the horses bunched up their hind legs and jumped straight into the air, their hooves flashing beneath us, as if they were actually running on something more solid than air.

This time I managed to get a scream out, the wind whipping it away from me to leave it streaming behind us. Ivrael merely laughed, the sound of his voice disappearing with mine.

The ice horses ran atop clouds that first night, never needing to rest between the spaceship and Starfrost Manor. As we rode through the night sky, my face and fingers began to ache, then went numb with the cold.

About an hour into the ride, the duke glanced over at me from his horse. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and then rummaged around in a pack hanging from his ice-horse’s flank.

“Don’t die on me,” he ordered, tossing a black velvet cloak to me.

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