Page 98 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

Rhaela laughs. “You don’t know much about firelords, do you?”

“No,” I say. “We don’t exactly have a lot of them where we come from.”

“But we’d like to learn,” Izzy says eagerly, and then cringes. I can practically see her silently berating herself for saying something stupid.

Rhaela falls into step beside my sister as Harai leads us in the direction she pointed.

“We don’t shift for the first time until we’re adults,” she says. I flash back to the story of the Caix woman with the firelordpregnancy, the one that Adefina had told me. I guess that hadn’t been true.

“Have you and your sister shifted yet?” Izzy asks Rhaela.

“No, though it could happen any day.”

“I still don’t understand why Father is taking us to the peace summit with our Change so close,” Harai says, turning around and walking backward as she speaks.

Something shimmers in the air behind her and I shout, “Watch out!”

At the same moment, Rhaela leaps forward, knife already in hand. She lands atop the thing that has separated out from the ice walls—a creature well over six feet tall, maybe seven, made up of tangled ice vines.

It opens its mouth and roars out a sound like an avalanche rolling down a mountain. The moonlight flashes off its sharp teeth, and I lunge forward, grabbing Izzy’s arm and jerking her behind me—as if I can do anything to protect her from this Caix-created monster.

Rhaela, on the other hand, clings to its back and at least tries to hurt it as she stabs that knife of hers into its neck over and over again. I don’t see how it can be killed—none of the knife strikes cause it to bleed, falter, or even flinch.

But then, Rhaela shouts, “Now!”

Harai spins around and throws her body into the air, kicking one foot into the thing’s chin and coming off the ground in as badass a move as I’ve ever seen in any action movie, much less real life.

Its neck weakened by Rhaela’s icepick moves, the creature’s head flies off and sails over the wall of the maze. The loss of its head doesn’t stop the creature entirely. However, it does seem to affect its ability to navigate as the monster begins reeling around, its arms outstretched.

Rhaela drops off its back and gives it a kick in its ass, sending it stumbling away from us.

Then the fierce firelord twin says, “Now—run.”

She waits until Izzy and I start running behind Harai, and she takes up the rear. As far as I can tell, we run haphazardly, Harai leading us but with no care for which way we turn.

After we make several switchbacks, Harai slows, and then stops. Izzy and I are breathing hard; the firelord twins aren’t.

We all stare at each other silently for a long moment. I don’t know who begins laughing first. But before long, we’re all hanging on each other, tears streaming from our eyes. I’m not even entirely certain why—it isn’t like the monster had been all that funny in the moment.

More like terrifying.

Which is probably why we react the way we do. Stress followed by relief, and all that.

The laughter finally dies away, and we all catch our breath.

“Do you think it really could have hurt us?” Izzy asks.

I shrug. “I give it fifty-fifty. It’s certainly a Caix kind of thing to do, though pointing monsters at your guests seems like an odd choice for a peace summit activity.”

“Duke Ivrael is supposed to have guaranteed our safety while we’re here,” Harai says. “That thing didn’t seem very safe.”

“Did you see its fangs?” Izzy asks.

“I was too busy trying to cut its head off.” Rhaela grins.

“It had huge pointy teeth made of icicles,” I say.

“Maybe something went wrong?” Harai suggests. “Like… maybe all the monsters were supposed to be turned off or something, but that one got missed.”

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