A Summit in Shadow Read online

  Growling, Captain Solomon pushed passed Bernard, throwing open the door to the long, hauntingly quiet passageway. Jax tried to give the young guard a soothing smile, but she was less than impressed that he had not reported his predecessor missing from his post. She knew George was beating himself up for the blunder, and decided not to mention the ineptness at the moment.

  Following in the Captain’s wake, Jax entered the dungeons. It had been years since she’d been in the belly of the castle. Shuddering in the chilly, damp air, she was reminded why she’d stayed away. The palace dungeons rarely held any prisoners; most criminals were dealt with in their own towns and villages. Even Sephretta, the capital city of Saphire, had its own prison. No, the palace dungeons were used for traitors and threats to the Crown. Jax knew that only two of the fifteen cells currently held inhabitants.

  George grabbed a glowing torch, the light guiding them down the dark, cobblestoned hallway. On each side, Jax saw shadows dancing behind the bars of the spacious cells, dust and rot the only captives within sight. Up ahead, she could hear shuffling in one of the end cells. Her blood ran cold at the noise bouncing off the stone walls.

  George held out a hand and took Jax’s arm for a brief, protective moment. “Are you sure you want to see her?”

  Nodding, Jax urged him forward. She heard him take a deep breath, and she realized that seeing Arnie this way would be difficult for him, as well. She wrapped her arm around his, squeezing it in reassurance.

  Their pace slowed as they reached the final cell, the weight in Jax’s chest making it almost unbearable for her to breathe. The noise they’d heard earlier echoing on the walls had stopped. The silence signaled that their appearance had been expected.

  George lifted the shining torch up to the bars of Aranelda’s cell, the light slicing through the blackness. Jax’s eyes narrowed as she traced the perimeters of the cell, taking in the straw bedding on the floor with a small bucket in the corner. Even seeing it now, after all she knew Arnie had done, it still filled her with sorrow to know her former friend lived amongst this filth. Jax’s gaze trailed along the stone floor, a woolen blanket strewn haphazardly to the side. Everything was as she had imagined it would be.

  Except Arnie was nowhere to be seen.

  George seized the bars and rattled them, the door to the cell swinging open in mock hospitality. “What in bloody hell!” he roared, storming into the chamber. He turned around, his rage heightened by the torch flames dancing across his face. “She’s not here!”

  Gripping the bit of parchment in her hand, Jax silently acknowledged that this discovery had not come as a shock. As soon as she saw the letter, her instincts told her that Arnie had escaped. And as to how, she could fathom a guess.

  “Bernard!” George commanded. “Send the riders out; we have an escaped prisoner! Lady Aranelda has vanished, likely on foot, but check the stables to make sure she hasn’t made off with a mount. Even with her head start, she could not have gotten far. She’s weak from the diet we provide, and she would not have appropriate clothing for this type of weather. I want her apprehended and brought back…alive!”

  “I once heard her say she had family out west who would take her in,” hissed a voice from the shadows behind Jax.

  She whirled around to face the other occupied cell.

  The man staring back at her was gaunt and ragged, the years of his life spent in the dungeons aging him more than his nearly fifty years. Jax remembered the trial of this man, her first of its kind, when she was just nine years old. His dark, amber eyes had given her nightmares as a young girl. “Gabriel Reinbeck.”

  Recognition of the little girl-turned-Duchess flashed in the disgraced noble’s eyes. “You remember me, then?”

  Jax nodded, her expression hard as stone. “It’s hard to forget the face of the man who hired a band of thugs to try and kidnap me so he could get my father to pay ransom for my safe return.” She shuddered at the memory of the failed kidnapping attempt, which had been thwarted by the royal guards escorting Jax to a festival in Sephretta. On that day, a sixteen-year-old George Solomon had proven his worth as a member of the Ducal Guard and claimed her father’s favor.

  “I see that time has treated you better than it has me,” Reinbeck said, his words dripping with stark malice. “But then again, maybe not.” His amber eyes, the mark of his noble heritage, slid over to the empty cell where Arnie had once been caged. “She was a nasty one, but bloody brilliant. I didn’t think her scheme would work, but she did it. She pulled it off.” To Jax’s stunned silence, he chuckled, admiration apparent in his expression.

  “What did she do? How did she plan this?” Jax edged closer to the bars that separated her from her childhood tormentor.

  “What’s in it for me if I divulge this juicy bit of information?” Reinbeck asked with a weasel-like grin.

  George stepped forward to stand beside Jax. “You get to keep both your hands.” To emphasize his point, he pulled a gleaming sword from his belt.

  Reinbeck eyed the taunting blade with unease, and Jax knew the man realized Captain Solomon hadn’t spoken in jest. Spending the rest of his life in the dungeons with no hands would be significantly more unpleasant than his current miserable existence.

  “Fine. Only because you asked so nicely.” He licked his flaky lips before continuing. “The moment you threw her down here, she started scheming to get out. But as time passed, she grew more and more hopeless, moaning and crying all the time. The daytime guard, Marquis, tried to calm her down, spending all his time sweet-talking, telling her everything would be all right. So much so that she fell in love with him and his naive assurances.” He made a face. “It was sickening, watching them moon over one another. But it didn’t amount to much. She got bigger portions of food, and he would sneak her fresh clothes every so often. But she never asked for anything in return. She said she knew she had done wrong and needed to be punished.” Reinbeck stopped speaking to pick a phantom piece of grit out of his decaying teeth. “But about a month ago, she started prattling on, fantasizing about running away with Marquis and starting over in a duchy where they could be free without anyone knowing their pasts. I wanted to hang myself, having to listen to her go on and on about how much she loved the poor sod and how there must be a way they could be together.” He rolled his eyes, seeming to relive the nauseating conversations in his mind. “But then things got interesting. She started hatching a plan, and she convinced the guard that he could unlock her cell, and they could spirit away in the night and start their new life. I couldn’t believe how easily he agreed, especially knowing how noble and pure your Ducal Guards are supposed to be, Captain.” Reinbeck spat at George, and Jax felt her friend tense at her side. “The lovestruck fool told her he’d stopped sending money home to his folks and was saving up for passage out of Saphire. She was very pleased by this, and she rewarded him very generously.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Last night they put their plan into motion. Marquis switched shifts with the night watchman, so that he could smuggle her out under the cover of darkness, and considering you don’t have her in tow, it looks like they succeeded.” He appraised his audience with a look of triumph Jax found disturbing.

  “It doesn’t appear there was ever really a ‘they’. Marquis was found stabbed through the heart in the gardens this morning,” she said, suppressing a shudder rising from the ugly ending of the twisted fairytale.

  “Oh, she’s even better than I thought.” Reinbeck’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “I may have lost count of my days, but faking a yearlong seduction does take stamina.”

  Jax grimaced. Arnie had been down here for more than a year, and during that time she’d been toying with some young boy’s mind, just like she did during their days at the Academy. Jax recalled how Arnie had strung the Earl of Crepsta along with her cunning mind games, making him fall deeper and deeper in love with her with every passing moment. At the time, Jax believed it to be part of Arnie’s charm and love of a challenge, but as she tur
ned to stare at the empty cell behind her, she wondered if even back then there had been something more, something sinister, motivating her actions.

  Reinbeck cleared his throat, interrupting Jax’s reverie. “She did ask me to pass on a message to you, Your Grace.”

  Her violet eyes locked with his. “What did she tell you?”

  Reinbeck paused theatrically, clearly savoring his lead role in this unfolding drama. “She said ‘My games will not be ruined by the likes of you’.”

  Jax’s cheeks burned. That phrase had hit her ears before, Arnie having said them herself. She’d spoken those same words long ago, in their suite at the Academy. Jax had just told Arnie off that she’d gone too far this time, coercing Earl Crepsta into stealing a famed relic from the school’s archives, all to prove how much he wanted to escort her to the yuletide ball. Arnie had listened to Jax berate her schemes for hours. “The things you’re making this poor boy do, it’s not fair, Arnie. You should be reveling in his affections, not shunning them away and getting him to do these ridiculous stunts just to entertain yourself.”

  “You find them enjoyable at times, Jax. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy just because I want us to have a bit of fun,” Arnie had flippantly replied.

  “I admit that at first I thought it was funny, seeing what he would do to get your attention, but now you’ve made a game of it. Enough is enough. If you don’t stop this, I’ll be forced to tell Earl Crepsta myself. I can’t have this leading back to tensions between Saphire and Crepsta. There’s too much at risk.” Jax still remembered her reprimanding words.

  Arnie’s look could have frozen water midstream. “My games will not be ruined by the likes of you, Jax.” A dark tension that had never been there before now hung between them. But then, with a bright smile, Arnie shrugged. “But you’re right. I’ll tell him tonight that I accept his offer to court me.”

  And that had been the end of it. Jax had never given those heated minutes another thought. They had the time of their lives at that yuletide ball. Jax had never seen Arnie so happy, so glowing as she’d been by the Earl’s side that opulent night. Had that been when her plans began to form? Was she planning even then to take down the Xavier bloodline and claim Saphire as her own? The thought of a decade-long deception made Jax feel ill.

  As fear and rage trembled with violence in her veins, she knew she had to remain calm for now with Reinbeck’s eyes locked on her in a curious stare. Obviously, he did not know how Arnie’s words would affect her, and she could tell he certainly did not expect this.

  “We need to go,” Jax said tersely, grabbing George by the arm and yanking him away from the man he had helped imprison.

  “We’re just going to leave him?” George stuttered, incredulous at Jax’s dismissal.

  “He’s got nothing more to offer us. He clearly doesn’t know where Arnie took off to. She has no family out west. Her bloodline descends from the eastern border of Saphire.” Jax stopped briefly, eyes narrowing on George’s bewildered expression. “I will overlook all the inept decisions made by men you have trained over the years if you are able to bring Arnie back to me.” Jax left a shocked Captain of the Ducal Guard in the wake of her billowing skirts. As she ascended the dark staircase leading away from the dungeons, she yelled over her shoulder, “And I don’t care if she’s brought back alive.”

  Chapter Three

  Jax’s fingers tapped on the armrest of her golden throne, staring blankly across the imposing hall. Alone at last, she let the hard wall around her shatter the moment the guards closed the grand doors behind them.

  My games will not be ruined by the likes of you.

  Shuddering on her throne, Jax swore she could hear Arnie whispering the poisoned words from the shadows of the room.

  The windstorm of emotions churning inside her boiled down to one thing: rage. Her anger at Arnie for pulling this desperate stunt ran so deep she could hardly breathe. Jax had half a mind to behead the fallen woman the moment she set foot back inside the walls of the palace. Not only was she outraged by slaying of an innocent man…no, her true anger came from the fact that Arnie had made the Ducal Guard and Saphire look incompetent and foolish. If word about this got out with the impending summit looming, her credibility and leadership would take a serious blow. She could not afford a moment of weakness with the future of the realm on the line.

  A creaking door shattered her reverie, jarring her from her brooding thoughts.

  “Jax? What is going on around here?”

  The soothing, deep voice pulled her back from the abyss in her mind, and the Duchess’s violet gaze focused on the stunning figure of her Prince Consort as he emerged from the shadows of the hall. Lord Pettraud, the seventh son of Duke Pettraud, marched with concern down the length of the throne room, his unruly dark hair sweeping above his lavender eyes. Just seeing him relaxed the tightness in Jax’s shoulders, her stern expression melting away, for there was no other she would let into her fort of solitude but him.

  Her throat constricted as she answered. “Perry, it’s been a nightmare.”

  He reached her side just as she stood, scooping her up in his strong arms. Trying hard to keep her regal composure, Jax explained her walk in the gardens and the disastrous series of events that marred the morning.

  Eyes wide, Perry knelt beside her throne as she sat back down, processing all she had shared. “It’s still hard for me to believe that Arnie could be capable of such deception, even after her role in your parents’ death,” he said with a shake of his head.

  Though the pain of it was still raw, Jax did not shy away from the subject. “Arnie was not a mere pawn in the scheme.” Her eyes flashed. “I know we initially thought Earl Crepsta orchestrated it all, but Perry, I truly believe Arnie was the real mastermind. Reinbeck delivered a haunting message to me down in the dungeon, straight from Arnie’s lips. It’s led me to believe she thinks this has all been a game, and she is simply making her next move.” Jax’s voice trembled at the notion.

  Perry placed a hand on her arm. “With last night’s frost, she’ll have left a trail leading away from the castle. I’m sure they’ll be able to track her down on horseback, even with her generous head start.” With his fingertips, he tilted her chin to meet his ardent gaze. “This will all be over soon, my love.”

  Jax nodded half-heartedly, begging the Virtues for Perry to be right. “The stablemaster reported that none of the horses are missing, so we know she left on foot, likely climbing the walls from within the garden. We used to do that when we were children.” Her memories danced before her. “The ivy made it easy for us to haul ourselves over the barrier.” Looking down at her lap, Jax felt tears well up behind her eyes. “I wonder if even back then, it was all a game to her.”

  Perry appeared to be searching for soothing words of comfort, when the main doors of the throne room burst open and Captain Solomon barged in. His cheeks were red from the cold, or perhaps from the embarrassment this whole debacle had caused. “Your Grace, apologies for the interruption, but we have word regarding the prisoner Lady Aranelda.”

  Jax rose from her throne, but did not descend the stairs. Scanning his face for any hint of whether the news was good or bad, her hands formed white-knuckled fists. “Please report, Captain.”

  George hurriedly beckoned a quad of soldiers shifting uneasily behind him to follow him to the base of the throne. “I’d rather the men speak about what they saw for themselves, Your Grace.”

  Jax looked expectantly at the worn-out guardsmen, knowing they must be exhausted from their pursuits. “Tell me what’s happened,” she snapped, unable to control her patience any longer. “Where is Lady Aranelda?”

  The oldest of the guards stepped forward, assuming the mantle of messenger. “Your Grace, our quad investigated the western walls of the castle. We found footprints toward the southwest hedge of the garden and were able to follow them on horseback through the forest. It took us about an hour to catch sight of the prisoner, just as she was about to cr
oss the banks of the Saltrine Lake. She covered an incredible amount of ground for being so poorly outfitted.”

  Jax stiffened with surprise. The Saltrine was miles away from Sephretta. Arnie had indeed gone a long way on foot. “Where is she? I want her brought before me now,” Jax commanded, locking eyes with George. To her shock, the Captain of the Ducal Guard looked down at his feet, his shoulders hunched with a weighty emotion.

  “You see, ma’am, we surprised her,” the guard continued. “We had her cornered on a ledge overlooking the water. She…she scrambled backward, and apparently she slipped. She fell over the cliff and down the embankment into the lake. She hit her head along the way. There was blood…a lot of blood,” he reported with a strangled gasp. “I believe the rock must have crushed her skull. We tried to get to her, but she fell into the deepest part of the lake. The depths claimed her. She…she did not resurface.” He made eye contact with the Duchess, an aging worry on his face. “Lady Aranelda is dead, Your Grace. Her body lies at the bottom of the lake.”

  “You’re sure?” Perry asked, his voice hoarse.

  “We waited for her to come up for air, sir. She never did,” the solider replied, his tone affirmative.

  Jax held up her hand, effectively ending the conversation. “I want her brought back to me. I don’t care if it takes hours to fish her out. I want to see her for myself.”

  The guardsmen exchanged wary glances, looking to their captain for confirmation.

  Jax felt George’s questioning eyes assess her. She turned her attention to meet his sharp gaze, her lips set in a thin line. “That’s an order, Captain.”

  His expression told her he didn’t have the heart to put up a fight today. Giving her a stiff bow, George beckoned his men to follow him out of the room.

  “Jax, do you really think it’s necessary to send them to fetch the body?” Perry asked, sounding rather put out by her morbid request.