“Trapped? Curse?” I sat down on the banquette, feeling dizzy. “What?”
“How did you break through?”
I shook my head and tried to take calming breaths. “I didn’t break through anything. I just stepped into a stone circle and landed on your table. Or maybe I died? I don’t know.”
He came over and grabbed my chin, making me look up at him. His touch was chilly as he glared at me. After a moment, he tsked and shoved me away. “You’re not dead. You’re justhuman.”
He’d said that like an insult and, even through my panic, I took offense. “Being human isn’t a bad thing, you little Jack Frost wannabe.”
He recoiled like I’d slapped him, but then he curled his lip, glared daggers at me, and tipped his chin up. “Guards!”
Well, shit, someone had a temper.
All of a sudden, people in frosted armor burst into the room and started yelling at me while pointing clear glass spears at my head. They wanted me off the bench, away from the prince, on the ground, hands where theycould see them… Jesus, my heart was beating so hard, I thought I might pass out as I tried to follow their orders as fast as I could.
Once they had me on my knees with my hands on my head, they looked to their glittering leader who couldn’t take a joke.
I stared at him all over again. He wasn’t real tall but he had a presence that demanded attention. I had no doubt that he could order my death, and the guards wouldn’t hesitate to do as he said. The scowl on his face should’ve had me rethinking my every life choice but, for some reason, I found myself getting turned on.
Maybe it was the fact that I could see the bump of his dick behind the drape of his flowy gown covered in twinkling gems. Maybe it was because I wondered if he wore anything under his skirt. Maybe I had a concussion from landing on his table.
He started having a sharp but quiet conversation in another language with one of the guards. This one had a helmet with a mohawk of white hair cascading down the back of it to their shoulders, making me think they were important. The two of them went back and forth, both agitated, each making a few cutting gestures, and then the prince growled. It was probably meant to be an intimidating sound, but it had me adjusting my sporran to hide that I was seriously chubbing up for him.
I’d always known I gravitated toward smaller, pretty men, but that I liked bitchy ones on a power trip was new for me. And he was royalty, too? That couldn’t possibly end well for me.
“Sir,” I said, “I swear I don’t mean any harm to you oranyone else. I didn’t come here on purpose, don’t want anything from you, and would just like to go home.”
He eyed me up and down, the move emphasizing that he didn’t like the look of me. “All of the rings sealed three years ago when the curse took effect. We can’t send you back to the human realm.”
“Can’t or won’t?” That popped out of my mouth before I really thought about it.
“You question my veracity?” the prince barked.
I was in it now, so I said, “If I managed to get here through one of your rings, then that means they aren’tallsealed, doesn’t it? So where’s the one that’ll send me back?”
The prince smiled, and this time, a shiver did go down my spine. “My father, the king, created the rings to this realm before he created me and my brothers, so I don’t know where all of them are. And I cannot ask him where I might throw you to send you back home because the curse encased him in amber.”
I gulped and nodded, looking away. Curses closing portals and freezing kings in amber sounded like something I should run far, far away from. But where the hell could I go?
“Welcome to the Court of the Winter Prince, human.” He turned away and snapped his fingers. “Put him in the dungeon.”
“Wait!” I lunged toward his retreating back, but didn’t get far when three guards got their spears up and in my face again. “Your Highness, please! Don’t do this to me!”
He didn’t turn or pause as he sashayed out the doorand down a long hallway. The size of this place—this palace—started to register as I stared after him and dread seeped into me.
This was bad. Very bad.
And, for some crazy reason, I still wanted to haul that prickly shit against me and ravish his frigid lips.
Chapter 2
Iwasn’t ashamed to admit that I’d watchedFrozena time or twenty and this place reminded me of it. Each hallway on the walk down to the bowels of the palace and the dungeon itself looked like Elsa had just lost her shit on her way up the mountain. Every surface was covered in a layer of frost or crusty snow that didn’t melt when I touched it or burn my skin like it was super cold. It wasn’t like things had been replaced by frozen versions, but like they’d been wrapped in ice or snow. As if a storm had come through, or the prince had thrown a fit.
“Never had a human in my dungeon before.”
That was Lars. He was everything scraggly and ancient and seemed to be the one in charge of the dungeon. He smelled like stinky cheese and had pointy ears like the prince. I probably could’ve broken Lars in half instead of submitting to being chained to a wall, but the guards had supervised that. Plus, I still didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do if I could get myselffree. Run out into the snow? So I stood against a wall, shivering in the cold, and watched Lars go through my backpack.
He shook my water bottle, opened it, sniffed it, and took a drink. He immediately spat it out. “What is that?” he asked in disgust.
