Kirastasia wouldn’t say she took the responsibility of caring of Lucaya seriously—because she didn’t. The snowy heiress didn’t take anything seriously, least of all a job somebody else told her to do. Free-spirited didn’t even begin to cover the absolute liberty of Kirastasia’s untamed self; she existed in a universe of her own creation, without rules or consequences. If she wanted something, she got it. If something suited her fancy, she did it. Checking up on Lucaya wasn’t an awful chore—in fact, Kira quite liked the mysterious raven-colored beauty—but Kirastasia wasn’t planning on ensuring her charge healed perfectly simply because King Lucifer asked her to.

Or maybe it had been a direct order, and not a suggestion? Oh well. What would the new Czar do—punish her?

The thought made incredible shivers vibrate over Kira’s flesh, zips of silver electricity that traveled all the way down to her curling toes and tempted a naughty purr from her smirking mouth. The fishnet punkette tended to fixate on objects that fascinated her: her goddess Kahlan, the firebird Rom, her broken phoenix Eriel. Each ornament more lovely than the last. Her amazing little menagerie. But Lucifer . . . this striped soldier was different. Never had Kirastasia seen another wolf as an equal; the world supplied her with playthings in the form of living creatures and she used them at her leisure, tossing them to the side when they no longer amused her and fighting ferociously as a spoiled child when someone else threatened to take them away. Lucifier, on the other paw, had made it starkly clear that he’d been carved from a different stone. Beneath his hellfire gaze, Kira felt like the object for once. He had captured her interest and every waking thought. He had stabbed her with fear as surely as if he’d plunged a serrated blade into her chest.

And Kira wanted to bleed again.

The terror Lucifer had struck her with had been indescribably exquisite. For a monster such as she—for whom emotions were fleeting and pointless things as capricious as the wind—to feel something so powerful, so over-mastering, was nothing short of astounding. His dominance was a drug and she needed to feel it coursing through her veins. Spending time with Kahlan outside of Malignant had helped alleviate her bizarre withdrawal, yet as soon as delicate brindled slippers traversed the border Kirastasia’s craving skyrocketed. She found herself tracing her Alpha’s path like a brainless romance novel heroine mooning after her forbidden love.

Snow drifted gently down from the heavens, lit brilliantly white by the clear winter sun. This is how the pallid damsel found her Emperor: alone, framed by shimmering snowflakes like a newly born god. Heat flushed through her bodice, that delectable tingling anticipation roiling in her abdomen like a nest of intertwining snakes. “Taking some alone time for yourself, My Leige?” the ice princess chirped, sauntering closer with her feathered banner waving audaciously above her spine. “What a terrible fate has befallen you: King of a land populated solely by femmes. However do you survive?”