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

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

LARA

I wake the day after our arrival to find Izzy lying with her head turned toward mine, watching my face.

“What’s going on?” she asks quietly. “For real, Lara, where have you been all this time?”

I’m silent for a long moment, and tears form in her eyes as I try to find the words to tell her about my last year.

“I celebrated our birthdays, you know,” she says. “Just like we always celebrated them together.”

“I’ve been counting down the days to yours,” I manage to choke out past my own tears. “I tried to get to you before Ivrael did. But I wasn’t able to.”

The words seem to break through the dam of my emotion, and I tell her everything. It spills out of me—incoherent and confusing, I’m sure, but my sister has been listening to me tell stories all my life, and she follows my train of thought better than probably anyone else could have.

“So you haven’t been staying in this room the whole time?” she asks as my story winds down and my words fade away.

I give a harsh laugh. “Hell, no. I’ve been baking bread and scrubbing out fireplaces and dusting sitting rooms and washing dishes. And sleeping on the floor by the kitchen fireplace. Last night was the first real bath I’ve had in months. The rest of them have been in a tin tub like a water trough for horses—you know, the kind Joey Benjamin’s family used out on their ranch?”

Izzy shoots me an incredulous look. “Seriously? That sounds awful.”

“Oh, you have no idea. I was definitely not here as an honored guest. I stayed in the kitchens with Adefina and Kila.”

Izzy rolls onto her back, tucks her hands under her head and stares up at the ceiling. “Why does the duke want us? It’s not like we’re special.”

“I have no idea. Although every time I tried to escape he came to rescue me, it wasn’t like I was exactly coddled.” I glance around the luxurious quarters. “Until now, anyway.”

“Tomorrow’s your birthday, you know.”

I blink at the apparent non sequitur. Her words startle me. Somehow, in the midst of everything, I have completely forgotten my own birthday.

“You’ll be nineteen,” Izzy continues. “And then two days later, I’ll be eighteen. You said he made a big deal about you being a legal adult. That makes me think we should try to get out of here and go home before we’re both technically adults.”

I move to sitting, leaning back against the headboard, and lift my fisted hands in front of me to waggle them. “I can’t get that far from Ivrael. You saw what he can do to me now.”

Izzy bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “I don’t believe it.”

“Which part? The bit where he tied magic ribbons around my wrists?” I hold out my hands again and turn them back and forth to show off the ribbons. “Or the part where it almost dislocated my shoulders when I tried to walk away?”

I don’t say the words that race through my mind next: Or the part where he kissed me senseless, and I liked it?

“Look,” Izzy says, sitting up and crossing her legs like a kindergarten child. “Last night, I spent hours traveling on a flying horse made of I don’t know what.”

“Ice,” I supply helpfully, mirroring her posture.

“Ice that didn’t leave my ass frozen to it. Ice that moved like a real horse,” Izzy counters. “Ice that disappeared into the air when he was done with it. I’m not saying he isn’t capable of magic. I’m thinking he is. This is at least the most bizarre shit I’ve ever seen. But it’s not the kind of stuff you see in our world. Right?”

“Usually not,” I say dryly.

“What if…” Izzy began. “What if their magic doesn’t work in our world?”

“But it did. He put these damn things on me in the Trasqo Market.” I flick one of the ribbons circling my wrist.

“Right. But…”

“Dammit, Iz. He put those ribbons on me right in the middle of the market,” I repeated, emphasizing my words heavily.

“The market,” Izzy repeats. “The Trasqo Market, you said.”

“Yes.”

“When Roland took me there, we entered through some regular gate. Did you?”

“Yeah,” I say slowly, not sure what she’s getting at. “Like we were going to a regular flea market or something.”

“Right. But once you were inside, most everybody was weird, right?”

“Yeah. They’re all Caix—that’s what Adefina told me, anyway.”

“Right. So here’s the deal,” she said. “I think maybe the Trasqo Market isn’t like our world. Not entirely. Like…it’s been treated to work like Trasq or something—set up so they can work magic there.”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with any of this, but I nodded to let her know I was following along.

“So… like, Ivrael has to go to the Trasqo Market to get us. He doesn’t just ride his magic ice horses to our house.”

I blinked, not having considered any of this before.

“Clearly,” Izzy continued, “there’s some kind of similarity or connection between the Trasqo Market and Earth. But the Trasqo Market is not Earth—not exactly.”

“Okay?” I drew the word out, turning it into a question.

“I think he had to go through the Trasqo Market to buy us from Roland in the market because maybe Ivrael’s magic doesn’t work on most of our world. On Earth.”

“Yeah?”

“And if his magic is failing as much as you think it is, then he’ll have to let loose of you a little.” She glances around the room. “I mean, this place is huge. And he left you in here all night while he went…who knows where?”

“And the ribbons didn’t cause me any trouble at all.”

“Exactly—even though in the market, you couldn’t get more than a few feet away from him.”

Gobsmacked, I stare at her with my mouth hanging open. “That never even occurred to me.”

“Of course it didn’t,” Izzy says smugly, “because I’m smarter than you.”

I roll my eyes.

I’ve spent the last year of my life longing for my sister, unable to bear the thought that I might never see her again. Crying myself to sleep night after night because I feared I might not be able to save her.

How did I ever forget what a pain in the ass she is?

“That means,” I say, deciding to ignore her smartassery for now, “if we can get out of Starfrost Manor without setting off the power on these ribbons, then figure out how to get back to Earth—and stay out of the Trasqo Market once we’re there—then maybe he won’t be able to use his magic on me at all.”

“Exactly!” Izzy says triumphantly.

Of course, the fact that he supposedly paid Roland in cursed coins makes me think there might be a problem with this theory…

But at this point, I’m willing to try almost anything when it comes to escaping Ivrael’s control, so I push that thought to the back of my mind. Besides, I don’t want to pop any bubbles Izzy can find it in herself to imagine right now.

“Anyway,” Izzy continues, “unless Ivrael wants to keep you next to him twenty-four seven, he’s got to let up on whatever power he’s using to control your bindings. Even now, if he’s really in the room across the hall, then he has to have already loosened that control. If his suite is even half as large as ours, you’d be in agony from being this far away from him.”

Living in Ivrael’s domain for the last year has scrambled my mind even more than I realized. But now, as Izzy finishes her statement triumphantly and leans back with her arms crossed, a smug smile curving across her lips, I have to admit that she’s right.

I’ve been buying into the Icecaix belief—or, at least, the belief among Ivrael’s servants—that the duke was barely one step shy of all-powerful, second only to Prince Jonyk.

I have not been asking enough questions.

“You know,” I say thoughtfully, “it just occurred to me to wonder why Prince Jonyk is the ruler here.”

This time, Izzy is the one to blink in surprise. “He is? You mean, there isn’t a king or a queen or something?”

I shrug. “I never asked. But Jonyk is the only Icecaix ruler anyone ever mentions.”

“I think it’s time for both of us to start learning more about this place,” Izzy says.

“We just have to be careful,” I remind her. “The Icecaix can be vicious.” The memory of the two creepy Icecaix nobles who drugged me floats to the surface of my mind.

I shove the thought down, unwilling to follow that memory into the intense yearning I’d felt for Ivrael before it had worn off.

“In the meantime,” I continue, “we should start trying to figure out how to talk a firelord into helping us get out of here.”

“The dragon dudes? Sure. Preferably one that isn’t in cahoots with your duke,” Izzy adds.

“He’s not my duke.”

“Mm-hmm.” Izzy smirks, and I have to force myself not to reach over and pinch her leg like I used to when we were kids, and she did something obnoxious. “I think it wouldn’t take much for him to be your duke.”

“Dear Lord, Iz. The man kidnapped me.”

“I know, I know. And you’re right.” She shakes her head. “But I saw the way he kissed you in the Trasqo Market. And how you kissed him back. He may have brought you over here against your will, but you can’t tell me you don’t feel anything for him.”

“It’s fucking Stockholm Syndrome, that’s all.”

“You know that doesn’t exist, right? Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real.”

Izzy’s words are light, her tone teasing, so I respond the same way. I roll my eyes.

But I know my sister well enough to recognize when she is putting on a brave face. It’s the same thing she did after our mother died. It’s her coping technique.

I’m determined to make sure she doesn’t feel like she has to keep my spirits up. I’m also going to take her suggestion and get us back to our world as quickly as possible.

Back to the world where Caix magic might not mean anything.

Where I hope it doesn’t mean anything.

Where Ivrael won’t be able to get me.