Page 43 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

“The court will accept you,” I say, forcing ice into my tone. “They’ll have no choice. Not once they see what you can do.”

“We can’t do anything,” Izzy protests. Lara, however, gives me a thoughtful frown.

“We’ll be working on that, too,” I say. “Your powers are your birthright.”

“And if we refuse?” Lara asks, but she already knows the answer.

“You won’t.” I flex my fingers again, and both ribbons around her wrists constrict slightly. Not enough to hurt—just enough to remind her of her bonds.

Lara whimpers, though whether from pain or fear or something else entirely, I can’t tell. In any case, at the sound the blue ribbons around her wrists pulse again and she gasps.

“You have to submit.” I smile, letting frost coat my lips as I imagine all the ways I want her to submit to me. “After all, what other choice do you have?”

Lara stares up at me with wide eyes, and despite the distance I’m maintaining between us, I swear I can hear her heart pounding.

“Besides,” I murmur, barely conscious of what I’m saying, “the court must accept you before my plans can proceed.”

“Your plans?” Izzy steps forward, positioning herself slightly in front of her sister. “You mean your plot against Prince Jonyk?”

I blink as she cuts off my visual line to Lara.

Smart girl. Too smart.

I move to my left, and the ribbons around Lara’s wrists pulse with blue light as I exert a subtle pressure, drawing her two steps closer to me. Her breath catches, and something hot flares in her eyes before she looks away.

“I need to go get Kila,” she says, her jaw tensing.

The fact that she tells me as much lets me know she’s capitulating, though. No surprise, given the way I spent the past year training her.

“The raya? You want it up here?”

Lara nods, anxious energy practically radiating from her.

I couldn’t believe she thought she should bring a raya upstairs into the manor proper. I was probably the only Icecaix noble who’d ever had a raya in any part of the house for any reason other than to watch it suffer.

I’d bought the half-dead thing off a traveling peddler out of some misplaced sense of... I’m not sure what. Maybe pity? Not knowing what else to do with it, I’d brought it home to Adefina, assuming she would make sure its death was as painless as possible.

Instead, she and Lara had nursed it back to health, and Lara had bonded with it.

I shake my head. “Not now. You can deal with your pet on your own time. After today’s court lessons.”

Lara’s expression falls, but Izzy narrows her eyes as she glares at me. “Why should we agree to participate in your lessons at all?”

“Izzy,” Lara hisses, “don’t.”

“Don’t what? Piss him off?” She raises her eyebrows, never taking her gaze off me. “Why not? What are you going to do to me? Hang me in the courtyard? Beat me? I don’t think so. Not if you need us to work with you, you won’t.”

The room’s temperature plummets as rage burns through my veins.

Frost explodes across the floor in jagged patterns, climbing the walls like crystalline vines. Both sisters shiver, their breath visible in the suddenly arctic air.

“You’re right, of course.” I force the words out through clenched teeth. “I won’t harm you. But there are other ways to ensure compliance.”

I flex my fingers, and the ribbons around Lara’s wrists drag her forward another step. Her eyes widen as she fights against the invisible pull. The sight of her struggling sends a pulse of heat through my body.

“Stop it,” she grits out. “Using me to control Izzy is low, even for you.”

“I’ll do whatever necessary to achieve my goals.” But I release the pressure on the ribbons, hating how her words sting.

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