Page 28 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

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 menrestrain 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 himacross 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 takingmy 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.”

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