The Alien’s Vicious Starflash Manor (Empire of Frost and Flame #2)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

LARA

I ’m traveling with a monster.

Last night Ivrael—the unbearably attractive fae-like alien who bought me from my evil stepfather and turned me into a maid for a fucking year—brought a firelord, a dragon, into his home to burn down his house and murder people who trusted him.

Just to prove his theory that I’m the long-lost descendant of some ancient king on his planet, Trasq.

It was supposed to be a major step in his apparent plan to depose Prince Jonyk, take over the Ice Court, and…I guess put me on the throne in Jonyk’s place?

But it didn’t quite go according to plan.

Can’t say I’m sorry.

When Ivrael had reached out this morning to lift me onto the ice horse he’d created, I’d flinched. For someone with so much blood on his hands, he’d looked remarkably clean, as if the fire he’d arranged had burned away every trace of his guilt.

I didn’t like Oriana. Many of the other Icecaix servants who’d been in the ballroom had never even deigned to learn my name —to be fair, I hadn’t bothered to learn theirs, either. And plenty of the Icecaix nobles had been horrible people.

But that doesn’t mean I think they should have died bloody and screaming, their skin melting off their bones, their nerves burned away until they could finally no longer feel the fiery pain.

All of that was Ivrael’s doing.

I can never let myself forget that under that pretty face, behind those sparking, glowing eyes, he’s a monster.

I read once that fairy tales—the original ones, not the sanitized versions we saw in children’s movies—were dark and bloody because they helped children get over their greatest fears. Or at least cope with some of the terrors they faced.

In a world where horrible things happened all the time, where parents died and stepparents didn’t want you, a prince could save you. The villains were punished, the virtuous rewarded. Cruel stepsisters had their toes cut off. Evil witches were burned to death, beasts became lovers, and Sleeping Beauty was awakened by true love’s kiss.

Cinderella married the prince.

Fuck that.

Because one thing I know for sure is that Prince Charming might have had the castle, the diamonds, the ballroom, the fancy clothes. He might’ve been gorgeous and rich and…well, charming.

But when it comes right down to it, that’s never enough.

I mean really, let’s face it. We’re talking about some prick who couldn’t be bothered to remember what the beautiful woman he danced with all night the night before looked like.

He had to go find a woman who could wear the shoe she left behind—a rigid, constricting, almost certainly painful glass container with no room to stretch or grow or change.

We’re talking about some son of a bitch with a foot fetish.

Sure, I adored the stories as a child, gobbling them up with popcorn and chocolate, slurping them down with sodas. I memorized all the songs and storybook lies telling me I’d be rewarded if I was virtuous and kind, if I took care of the animals in the forest, if I became a housemaid to strange small men in the woods.

If I was a good girl.

But fairy tales, real fairy tales, don’t happen that way. The oldest, goriest of the stories got it right.

And even those didn’t tell the worst of it.

The worst of it is that sometimes the monster wearing the prince's face makes you want to be wicked instead of good.

In my case, it’s knowing that no matter how many times I tell myself Ivrael's a monster, no matter how many people I watched him kill last night, some traitorous part of me still shivers when his ice-cold fingers brush against my skin.

Because after watching Ivrael murder his own court just to test my powers, I should be terrified of touching him.

Instead, I'm terrified by how much I want to.