Page 101 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

But then Kila’s tiny voice pipes up from the darkness: “You abandoned me once. You’ll do it again. Everyone leaves in the end.”

That one hits so hard I stumble, my boots sliding on the ice.

Because isn’t that exactly what I’m planning? To leave again?

The guilt threatens to choke me as the voices press in closer, each one finding another crack in my armor to slip through.

The voices fade away, and for a moment, I believe maybe the worst is over.

But then a cold wind begins to blow, first swirling around us, flirting with the dress I’m wearing, tugging at the ribbons I’ve used to pull my hair back. It picks up strength almost immediately, blowing harder and harder, carrying an even deeper chill than I felt before.

“Why would the Caix do this?” Izzy asks from in front of me. I can barely make out what she’s saying past the whistling of the wind and the chattering of my own teeth.

“Because they’re the Caix,” Rhaela says as if that explains everything—and she’s not entirely wrong.

“The Icecaix definitely tend toward cruelty.” I pitch my voice to carry over the wind.

The wind picks up even more, and a cold rain begins falling. Within seconds, it turns into driving sleet, and I want more than anything to cover my face. Instead, I turn my face down toward the ground and close my eyes, discovering it isn’t any darker inside my eyelids than it is out in the maze. The four of us continue to trudge forward.

That doesn’t last long, though.

As the rain and sleet mix on the ground, the slush hardens almost instantly into ice and turns treacherous.

I feel it as Izzy loses her footing and begins to slip. I probably ought to try to hang onto both Izzy and Harai. Instead, I let go of Harai and grab hold of my sister with both hands.

But that just means Izzy takes me down with her, and we land hard on the ground, limbs tangling as we slide across the ice.

When we finally come to a halt, I lie still for a long moment, catching my breath. Finally, I sit up. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Izzy says. “Rhaela? Harai? Are you all right?”

Neither of the firelord twins answers us.

“They couldn’t have gone far,” I say, pulling my legs out from under Izzy’s. I scoot away from her and feel around me, hoping to get some sense of which direction I’m facing.

No matter what direction I turn, I don’t touch anything other than the ice beneath us.

“Are you near one of the walls?” I ask Izzy. “I can’t find them.”

Now my sister doesn’t answer me, either.

“Izzy?” I call out her name several more times, but she still doesn’t respond. The unrelieved darkness presses in on me and I shiver.

That’s when the voices start up again.

“You’ll be trapped here forever, you know,” says one to my left.

“All alone,” it continues, speaking directly into my right ear.

“You were always meant to stay in the Icecaix lands,” a second voice says from behind me.

“And you’re never going home,” a third voice says from above.

It’s a trick, I tell myself, then I say aloud, “You’re just trying to scare me.”

Eerie laughter echoes from all sides, and I have to fight to keep from hunkering down, covering my head, and just waiting it out until Ivrael comes to find me.

But that won’t get me out of here anytime soon.

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