Page 57 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

I turn to her, letting my eyes go cold. “Perhaps I’ve simply grown tired of games.”

“Games?” She draws back as if struck. “Is that what you think our relationship was?”

“Wasn’t it?”

The kitchen door swings open again, and more footmen enter with dessert. Lara doesn’t look at me, hasn’t looked at me all day, not since Uanna arrived.

“Well.” Svalkat pushes back from the table, his chair scraping against the floor. “On that note, I do believe I’ll retire for the evening. You two clearly have some matters to discuss.”

I start to protest, but he’s already rising. The wine has dulled my usual sharp reflexes, leaving me a heartbeat too slow to stop him.

“Don’t get up,” he says with a smug smile. “Lady Uanna, always a pleasure. Ivrael...” He pauses. “Do try not to freeze anything important.”

The moment he’s gone, Uanna turns to me. In the candlelight, her pale hair shimmers like fresh snow, and for a moment I’m transported back to that first festival where we danced until dawn. Back when her smiles held charm instead of calculation, when ambition hadn’t yet frozen her heart.

“What do you want from me, Ivrael?” Her voice carries echoes of those earlier days, when she would whisper the same question against my skin in the dark.

“I want you to leave.” But even as I say it, the wine makes meremember how we once plotted together, sharing secrets and dreams in my private chambers. Before everything became about power and position.

“No.” She stands and moves behind my chair, her hands sliding onto my shoulders. Her touch is familiar—too familiar. She knows exactly where to press to ease the tension I carry. “What do you really want?”

When she leans down to brush her lips against my neck, I know I should stop her. But the wine has stripped away my careful walls, leaving me raw and aching for something I can’t even name. I remember how easy it once was between us, before we learned to use intimacy as a weapon.

She moves around the chair to face me, settling onto my lap with practiced grace. Her weight is different from what I crave—lighter, colder—but still achingly familiar.

“Remember how good we once were together?” she whispers against my mouth. The scent of ice roses surrounds me, bringing with it memories of stolen kisses in frozen gardens, of laughter that didn’t hide daggers.

When she kisses me, something savage and wounded rises in my chest. I thread my fingers through the back of her hair, wrap the strands around my fingers, and wrench her head back. Part of me wants to hurt her like she hurt me, that first time she chose advancement over whatever fragile thing had been growing between us.

Uanna moans, and I snarl at her, leaning in close to hiss, “Is this it? Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she whispers, and I pull her up to my mouth, my lips bruising against hers. The kiss is punishing, with nothing of warmth or kindness—nothing like the sweet kisses we once shared. But there’s history here, and understanding. Uanna knows what I am, what I’ve done.

Perhaps that’s its own kind of comfort.

She responds with equal ferocity, and for a moment, I think that if I can’t have what I want, at least I can have thisecho of simpler times. This ghost of what we once meant to each other, before court politics and personal ambition tore us apart.

The crash of breaking porcelain shatters the moment.

Lara stands in the doorway, a smashed serving bowl lying in pieces at her feet. Her eyes are wide, and something in my chest cracks at the look on her face. Because unlike Uanna, she still has the capacity to believe in something better than court games and power plays.

To be hurt by betrayal.

“I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I thought... I’ll clean this up.”

I push Uanna away and start to rise, to go to Lara, to explain... what? That I’m drunk? That every time I close my eyes, I see her face? That she makes me want to be better than what this court has made me, better than what Uanna and I have become?

Uanna’s triumphant smile stops me. If I show any concern for Lara now, Uanna will never let it go. She’ll make Lara’s life hell—or worse, make sure Prince Jonyk takes Lara for himself, to be used and destroyed.

That will demolish my plans as surely as if I sent Lara back to Earth now, so I force myself to stay seated.

Because that’s who Uanna and I are now—people who use love as a weapon, who sacrifice innocence for advantage.

The aftertaste of wine turns bitter in my mouth as I watch Lara kneel to gather the broken pieces. Like everything else beautiful in my life, she too must be sacrificed for the greater good.

And it means becoming the monster Uanna and I have trained each other to be.

“Do be careful,” Uanna calls out. “We wouldn’t want you to cut yourself.”

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