Page 40 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

Dammit.

This night would indeed change everything—though perhaps not in the way I’d intended.

CHAPTER 12

LARA

As I fought for my life in the cemetery in the forest, Duke Ivrael strode out of the fog, passing through the open iron gate with little more than a flinch—something that did not strike me as odd at the time, though later, I spent hours contemplating the significance of it.

And for a bare instant, he looked like an avenging angel.

His gold-embroidered coattails flared out behind him, and his sword gleamed with an internal light. His golden blond hair waved around him in that undetectable breeze, and his eyes blazed with the same light as the sword. As he passed through the fog, he spun his sword around over his head in a wide, sweeping arc, intoning something in the language I didn’t understand. A bright white light flared from the tip of the sword, and everywhere it touched, the fog retreated.

With his appearance, I began to fight even harder, kicking out from where I lay sprawled on the ground. I drew my knees to my chest and kicked out at the kneecaps of the rotting creature closest to me, hearing the sharp crack of bones breaking. I barely managed toroll out of the monster’s way as it toppled toward me, and then I pushed myself to my feet as fast as I could.

I wasn’t fast enough, though. As I began to run for Ivrael, I felt the scrape of a bony hand against my scalp, my hair tangling in the thing’s finger bones as it closed its fist and jerked me back.

I screamed, and the sound was answered with a roar from Ivrael, again in that language I didn’t understand. I toppled backward, landing hard on my ass, my hair ripping away from my head, leaving my eyes watering with the pain.

With a handful of my hair now dangling from its closed fist, the skeletal creature moved around in front of me, its jaw opening and closing, teeth clacking as it prepared to bite me. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I could not allow it to sink its long, pointed canine teeth into my skin. With a sob, I rolled over to my knees, once again pushing myself to my feet, my soggy sneakers slipping as I tried to find purchase against the icy ground under the snow.

This time, the monster grabbed my sweater, its bony fingers tangling in the threads as it attempted to pull itself toward me even as I tried to pull away from it. I grabbed its wrist, and without even thinking about it, I twisted my hands in opposite directions. With a snapping sound reminiscent of a rubber band popping, the tendon holding the hand to the rest of the skeleton snapped.

I lunged toward where I’d seen Ivrael last, every instinct telling me in that moment that he represented safety.

When I caught sight of him again, he stood in a circle of undead, his sword flashing as he whipped it around, every motion economical and graceful as he danced in a small circle, turning this way and that. Several dismembered bodies lay scattered around him, and there was nothing between us—it was a straight shot. And I knew that if I could get to him, he would protect me.

It didn’t occur to me until much later that assuming I’d have Ivrael’s protection was insane. But at that moment, I accepted the thought at face value and began racing toward him, ducking and weaving past the undead Caix staggering toward me.

Other monstrous Caix zombies lurched toward Ivrael, and I had towork to keep track of him. Eventually, I settled for aiming toward the sword flashing through the air. I ducked around mausoleums and jumped over headstones in my dash toward him.

I almost made it, too. He’d been steadily moving in my direction, slashing his way through the monsters attacking him, and there couldn’t have been more than three or four yards between us when the last undead Caix anywhere near us fell to his sword.

I gulped out a hiccupping sob at the thought of safety. Ivrael didn’t say a word, instead holding out one hand imperiously as if expecting me to race toward him.

That gesture probably saved my life.

As intent as I’d been on reaching him mere seconds before, the sheer entitlement of that hand held toward me, the fact that he expected me to come to him without question or doubt, froze my feet in place.

Almost instantly, the ground directly in front of me—the ground that I would have been stepping on in that moment if I’d kept moving—exploded into the air. Clods of frozen dirt mixed with cold, wet snow and ice pelted against my face and rained down on my head. I closed my eyes and ducked my face away from it.

When I opened my eyes, another Caix creature stood before me. This woman was so newly dead that I might have assumed she was still alive if not for the fact that her eyes were no longer in her face. Her lips and gums had shriveled a little, too, pulling back from her teeth so that they looked more like fangs than regular teeth.

Then I realized that her teeth were in fact fangs, and despite her eyelessness, she was aiming those fangs toward me, her mouth open and air whistling through her throat in a wordless moan.

My first instinct was to take a step back, but my calf banged up against a headstone I’d jumped over seconds before, and by the time I ducked to the side, it was too late. She’d grasped my shoulder in a relentless grip with her bony hand, and no matter how hard I tried to wrench away from her, I couldn’t get free, until she was so close the strands of her long white hair brushed against me.

When her hand jerked and she thrusther chest forward, I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned as far back as I could, certain she was coming in for the kill. But when nothing happened immediately, I opened one eye to check.

The monster’s face was frozen in a rictus grin, her face tilted downward as if staring at the tip of the sword protruding from her chest.

Ivrael’s sword. The duke wrenched it upward, slicing her in half, the sword curving up at the last moment to carve its way out between her shoulder and her neck, leaving the arm clutching my shoulder dangling uselessly. I peeled her fingers away from me, the papery feel of her skin sending a shudder through me.

The creature stumbled to the side, dropping to her knees, and in an instant, Ivrael had his arm wrapped around my waist. He lifted me up, keeping me close to his side, and spun toward the creature, slicing her head off her body. It hit the ground and bounced before rolling to a stop, strands of hair covering the holes where her eyes had once been. The rest of the body shuddered once, then toppled to the ground.

At least for the moment, we were free, the area around us clear of any undead Caix.

“Are you all right?” he demanded, his voice rumbling through his chest and vibrating against me.

---