With a strangled gasp, I took two hasty steps backward. I tripped over the leg of another chair behind me and nearly fell. Damian lurched forward, reaching out to help steady me, but I yanked my arm out of his grasp and stumbled even farther away.
“I can’t,” I said, my voice strained. “Damian, please …”
He froze when I said his name, his hand still outstretched.
I stared at him, breathing hard.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me?” he asked, his voice low. “To have you stand by me all day, outside my room all night, and to have to treat you like everyone else on the guard? To pretend to be your king and nothing more?” Damian wore the crown and robes of the king, but all I could see was the unmasked pain on his face when he looked at me.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I know what it’s like to pretend. I know what it does to me to … to … But it doesn’t matter,” I finished more forcefully. “A few more dinners with Lady Vera, and her beauty will sweep away any feelings you might think you still have for me.”
“Alex, you can’t possibly —”
The door behind us flew open, cutting off whatever Damian had been about to say, and I spun around to see Rylan coming in, followed closely by Eljin.
“Your Majesty,” Rylan said, his eyebrows lifting slightly when he glanced at me, then back at the king, “Lisbet has asked you to come immediately.”
“Is it about the taster?” Damian’s voice was completely calm; he slid back into the persona of the king without missing a single beat. My pulse still raced, and I could only hope I didn’t look half as alarmed and unsettled as I felt.
“Yes,” Eljin answered, stepping around Rylan to come forward. “Well, partially.”
“The taster died,” Rylan said. “He was dead before he hit the floor.”
Damian scowled at the news, his expression darkened. “Why does Lisbet wish to see me, then?”
“Because she left the room where they had brought him to find out what Lady Vera would like done with his body,” Eljin said, “and when she came back, the body was gone.”
“Gone?” I asked, drawing the attention of all three men to me. “How could a dead body just disappear?”
“That’s only the beginning.” Rylan’s expression was grim. “Not only did the taster’s body disappear, but so did Jax.”
“Jax?” Damian repeated in disbelief. “I’m sure he’s just off somewhere in the palace, doing who knows what. Causing mischief, no doubt.”
Eljin shook his head. “He was in the room with Lisbet when they brought the taster’s body to her. She asked him to wait in the hallway, but when she came out, he was gone. She didn’t think much of it, until the body went missing as well. We’ve searched everywhere, but no one can find him.”
The blood drained from Damian’s face. “Maybe he’s hiding.” He looked to me, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing — the secret passageways that so few knew about. The ones that Jax had used to deliver Damian a “letter” all those months ago when he was testing my loyalty.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” Eljin said, and I remembered that he, too, knew about the secret passageways. “I’m sorry, but we can’t find the body or Jax.”
THE PALACE WAS in upheaval as every able person searched for the missing boy. Damian was more concerned about his half brother than he was about the missing body, but Lady Vera had sent a message that she was extremely dismayed to hear that the taster’s body was gone and felt that it was further evidence of a plot against her. She believed the perpetrator did it so that we couldn’t discover what type of poison was used. She demanded that her guards be allowed to help search as well.
Deron, whose arm was now healed thanks to Lisbet, had argued with Damian for a good ten minutes but finally agreed to let the Dansiian guards search outside the palace, where it would be easier to keep an eye on them. He didn’t seem to trust them any more than I did.
I combed through the older wings of the palace, and even the courtyard, desperately hoping Jax was hiding somewhere or playing some sort of game. But as the hours bled past midnight and crept toward morning, it became increasingly evident that he was not in the palace or on the grounds. Exhaustion pressed down on me like a physical weight, but I forced myself to keep looking, hoping, praying that he was curled up asleep in a dark corner somewhere, blissfully unaware of the turmoil he’d caused.
Thunder growled in the distance as a storm headed toward the palace. A full moon hung just above the shadowed canopy of the jungle, enormous and pale. I retraced my steps through the older wings, holding a torch in one hand to banish the darkness the moonlight couldn’t reach and my sword in the other — just in case — as I opened door after door and searched empty room after empty room.
I was crouched over, looking under a bed, when the door behind me creaked open. I jerked up, lifting my sword in front of me. But when I saw who it was, I lowered it again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Rylan said, stepping into the room, holding his own torch, with his empty hand raised. “Eljin sent me to find you.”
“Why? What’s going on?” I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the worst.
“A ransom note arrived for Jax. The king has called off the search inside the palace — Jax isn’t here. He’s been taken.”
My legs buckled and I half sat, half collapsed onto the bed I’d been searching under for the boy. I had just been with him this afternoon — had just promised to teach him to fight. If only I’d done it sooner, if he’d only known how to protect himself better. Would he still have been captured, or could he have fought back and saved himself?
“We need to go after them — they can’t be far,” I burst out desperately. “If we split up the guard into patrols —”
“No.” Rylan cut me off. “He was taken hours ago, and it’s the middle of the night. Damian sent a few members of the guard to search outside the palace and in Tubatse, but the rest of us will have to wait for daylight if they aren’t successful. Then we can look for clues when it’s not dark.” Rylan strode over to my side and gently took the lit torch out of my hand and set it in a bracket on the wall across from me, then placed his own torch in a second bracket.
“But if it rains, the clues will be washed away.” I couldn’t believe Jax had been taken from the palace, right beneath our noses. “I need to go after him. I’m the best Damian has. I can’t believe he didn’t send me.”
Rylan came back and pried the sword from my hands. “You’re beyond exhausted, Alexa. You need to rest.” He set the sword down on the floor and then sat beside me. His weight made the mattress dip me toward him, but I didn’t have the strength to pull away. Through the last month, he’d always been there, quietly supportive, never again mentioning the feelings he’d expressed before the coronation.
“How could we let this happen? How did no one notice him being taken?” My voice was strained, on the verge of hysterical, and tears burned infuriatingly close to the surface.
Rylan put his arm around me and urged my head to his shoulder. The dam of emotions I’d been forcing down all day broke loose, and I couldn’t contain my sobs. He held me tightly as I cried. “I can’t lose him. I can’t let another person I love die.”
Rylan stiffened at my words but didn’t comment. He just held me as the sobs tore through me. Exhaustion, fear, confusion, desperation — I couldn’t even name everything I felt after all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
When my tears finally slowed and I was able to regain control of myself, I pulled away and Rylan immediately let me go. I reached up and wiped my face, sweeping the wetness from my cheeks.
“There’s nothing more you can do tonight,” Rylan said gently. “You’re going to be completely useless if you don’t get some sleep soon.”
“I couldn’t go to bed until we found him.”
He nodded sadly, his expression grim. “I know.” Rylan stood up and reached for my hand. “Let me help you to your room, a
nd then I promise we’ll start the search again at first light if the other guards already out there don’t find him first.” I put my hand in his and let him pull me to stand next to him. Then he bent down and picked up my sword and sheathed it for me.
“I’m not a child, you know,” I said.
“Trust me, I know. But you are about to tip over from exhaustion, and the last thing we need is for you to fall on your sword.” Rylan steered me toward the door with one hand on the small of my back. Normally, I would have moved away or told him to stop it, but I was just too tired. And as much as I hated to admit it, he wasn’t entirely wrong — I did feel like I might collapse at any moment. Sitting down and crying like that had made my head swim now that I was walking again.
He led me to the newer wing of the palace and the staircase that would take us up to our rooms. After walking in silence for a while, I finally asked, “What did the note say?”
“It was written in Blevonese.”
“Blevonese? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Rylan took my arm as we began to climb the stairs. It was beginning to irritate me, having him treat me like I was helpless, but I swallowed my annoyance and allowed him to continue to assist me. “King Damian didn’t read it out loud. All he said was that it was a ransom note and to call off the search in the palace so we could refocus our efforts outside of it.”
“I don’t believe it. Why would someone from Blevon do such a thing, just when Damian has reestablished peace?”
“Maybe not everyone in Blevon is as happy about the peace treaty as King Damian and the rest of us are.”
“But it doesn’t make sense” — I ignored his jab about not using Damian’s title — “Jax is half Blevonese. He’s not their enemy.”
“The king is half Blevonese as well, and it would appear that they don’t care about that.” He paused. “Look, I don’t want to believe it, either. But what other explanation is there? All the evidence points to them.”
“It could be Dansii. They could be framing Blevon.”
“Dansii? But why? They’re supposedly our allies, too, don’t forget.”
I shook my head. But before I could respond, the toe of my boot caught on the top stair and I stumbled forward. Rylan’s hand tightened around my arm, but I’d already regained my balance and straightened back up.
“Are you —”
“I’m fine.” Unable to stand feeling so helpless any longer, I pulled my arm free of his grip. Anger coursed through me — anger and horrible, crippling regret. That I wasn’t there, that I didn’t protect Jax. I reached up and pressed the heels of my hands to my temples, trying to force the building pressure behind my skull to recede.
But if I’d been with Jax, the king would have been unprotected. And after the attack today, he needed me by his side more than ever.
“Promise me you’re going to go to bed,” Rylan said, taking a step back, his expression guarded in the flickering light of his torch. “There’s nothing more you can do tonight.”
I clenched my teeth, tempted to say something less than kind, but I knew Rylan didn’t deserve my anger. He was only trying to help because he was concerned about me.
“Alexa, please, don’t do anything else until you get some rest. There are guards out there looking for him. And if they aren’t successful, I’ll come get you first thing in the morning. We’ll figure out what happened and we’ll get him back.” Rylan’s gaze was unwavering, his eyes imploring. “I promise.”
As much as I wanted to rush out into the darkness to help search for Jax, I knew Rylan was right. With a sigh of frustration, I relented and nodded. “Fine. As soon as the sun is up. Right?”
“I promise,” he repeated.
When I made it to my door and opened it, Rylan was still behind me, watching. I paused before going in and looked back over my shoulder. He stood a few feet away. He couldn’t hide the expression on his face fast enough, and the troubled look in his eyes struck me deep in the gut.
“Thank you for letting me know about Jax,” I said.
Rylan lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Of course.”
We looked at each other silently for a moment. The concern on his face changed, becoming something darker — something more powerful. A sudden, strange tension surged up in the gaping space between us and made my heart constrict in my chest. I was reminded yet again of how different life would have been had I never discovered Damian’s true nature — if I’d never fallen for the man who was now our king. Rylan took a hesitant half step toward me.
“Good night, Rylan,” I said quietly, and he froze.
He swallowed once, hard. His hand flexed and unflexed at his side. “Good night, Alexa,” he finally responded.
Without waiting to see what he did next, I shut the door and leaned my forehead against it. The pressure behind my skull had turned into a sharp, stabbing pain. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of me was still attracted to Rylan. But I could never go down that path — could I? Not when he knew my true feelings. He’d know that he would always come in second to the only man who had ever truly captured my heart.
Though I was as tired as I’d ever been in my life, my mind still whirled relentlessly. I straightened up and turned to face my empty room. I had to cut off thoughts of Damian and Rylan. There was no time to worry about either of them — not like that. I had to focus on the immediate problems at hand.
So many pieces didn’t make sense. The attacks from Blevon, Lady Vera, her taster’s death, the body’s disappearance, and now Jax being taken. I hated unanswered questions, and in this case, I wasn’t even sure I was asking the right questions. I thought about the suggestion I’d made to Rylan — that maybe Dansii was framing Blevon. It was possible, wasn’t it? We knew they had black sorcerers, since it was King Armando who sent Iker. And Eljin was adamant that Blevon didn’t have any. But why would they do it? Why would Dansii want us to go to war with Blevon again?
I stumbled toward my bed. Maybe if I slept, I could make sense of it all in the morning. I had to be missing something. I couldn’t keep my eyes open as I laid my head on my pillow. I didn’t realize I hadn’t unstrapped my sword until the hard scabbard bit into my hip when I rolled onto my side. But I didn’t bother trying to remove it. The exhaustion weighed me down so heavily I felt as though I were being pressed into my bed by some unseen force. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. Sleep had already begun to claim me.
And then the wall opened and Damian walked into my room in his breeches and a partially unlaced tunic and nothing else.
I squeezed my eyes shut and then reopened them, not entirely sure I was awake. And if I was awake, I was pretty sure Damian standing in my room was a hallucination. Until he started to talk and the tightness in his voice made me realize he was very real and this was no dream. If I’d been dreaming, he wouldn’t have said the words that came out of his mouth:
“I’m sorry to disturb you when I know you need your sleep, but we need to talk.” He stepped toward me. “I think someone is trying to frame Blevon for kidnapping Jax.”
SOMEHOW, I FORCED myself to sit up in bed, even though my body practically groaned in protest. “You think Blevon is being —”
“Are you sleeping on your sword?” Damian cut me off, his eyes widening when he saw my scabbard underneath me.
“Did you just use a secret passage that I didn’t know about to sneak into my room?” I shot back.
A brief, awkward silence fell, and then I said, “I was too tired to take it off —”
“I didn’t want you to think I’d ever use it to spy on you —”
We both spoke and cut ourselves off at the same time. Another awkward silence fell.
“Have you ever used it to spy on me?” I finally asked, not able to meet his eyes. This was the same room Marcel and I had shared before his death. Damian had decided to keep his old quarters, even after being crowned king. Had he ever come during the night to watch me? I couldn’t imagine him doing that, but —
<
br /> “Never.” His voice was vehement. “I promise, Alex. I’ll show you how it works, if you’d like. You can use it anytime — day or night — if you ever need me.”
“Need you? For what?” The question was out before I realized how it could be taken.
Damian lifted one eyebrow, his eyes inscrutable in the darkness. “To speak in private, for one. As is the case tonight, for me. But if you can think of any other reasons …”
My cheeks were hot, and my nerves were on high alert with Damian standing only a few feet away, barefoot, his well-muscled chest exposed by the open V in his tunic, his dark hair mussed. The exhaustion still bore down on me as well, making my body feel like a strange battleground. When I finally looked up at him, the room spun around me … or possibly I was the one lurching to the side, even though I was still sitting down, because suddenly Damian rushed across the space between us and grabbed my shoulders. The spinning stopped as I stared into his blue, blue eyes.
Oh, how I loved his eyes.
“How long have you been awake?” His fingers flexed against my shoulders, and it took every ounce of will I had to keep from letting my head fall forward and rest against his chest.
“If you don’t count my nap … a while. Two days? Maybe three?”
He smelled just how I remembered. The subtle aroma of his soap and the even more subtle scent of his skin — the smell that was uniquely him, that was Damian. I wanted to rest in his arms and turn my face to his neck and breathe him in.
The light of the moon was blotted out by the clouds from the storm that finally arrived with a torrent of rain pelting my window and the palace walls. Damian’s eyes were shadowed in the darkness; his face was so close to mine. Too close. I jerked back suddenly.
“Why are you here?”
He released my shoulders and straightened. “I couldn’t sleep. Don’t worry, you have made your feelings for me very clear, but I … I needed to talk to you about my suspicions. About the ransom note for Jax and the attack earlier today. All of it. I … I just wanted to talk to you.” He paused and my heart lurched. “It would seem that now is not the best time, however.”
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