Castle Charming by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Author:Tansy Rayner Roberts [Roberts, Tansy Rayner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648763901
Publisher: Tansy Rayner Roberts

It was crocodiles.

The bathroom was enormous, far too big to exist inside a tower. It was more like the public baths in the centre of the city of Charming than anything Kai had ever seen in his visits to the castle. One room led to another and another.

Only, instead of tiles and saucy murals, instead of concrete and sensible bamboo matting lining the paths around the hot and cold pools, every inch of this place was lined with mirrors.

This was uncomfortably revealing about the mentality of the person who made the decor choices, or the person who hired the decorator. (That raised an odd thought about who designed this whole nightmare castle in the first place, or did it spring up fully formed from the dreams of kings and queens?)

Revealing. That was the word. In all the reflections and half-reflections of this enormous crocodile infested swamp of a bathroom, Kai saw himself: wrecked and ragged, tense as hell.

He hated holding a sword, hated having to be constantly aware of the snapping danger at his feet.

Queen Ella strode past the tiled pools like she was used to having a thousand eyes on her. She carried an ancient spear in one hand, and a ceremonial axe in another. When the waters frothed and a tail or snapping jaw surfaced near her, she stabbed and flicked, marching onwards as blood spooled in a slow orbit around her latest corpse.

Kai wondered if you could read patterns of crocodile blood in the water like you could read your future in tea leaves, and then he wondered if he was hysterical.

Had this place broken him?

Zed was enjoying himself far too much, frenzied with energy and twitchy as hell. “There was this kid already here when I turned up,” he said to Kai, as they headed through the steamy caldarium. “Prince Nathanial of Herondale. Sweet as hell, very loyal to his hometown girlfriend. He was always trying to figure out where we were, why this place was the way it was. Whose nightmare we were living in, and so on.”

He paused in telling his story to explain the difference between steam bubbles in the pool, and the ones that meant there was a crocodile lurking beneath. Kai tried to listen but honestly, the bubbles looked exactly the same to him.

“He asked all the big questions,” Zed went on. “Like you do. Why is it always Royals? Why do the stories latch on to us? What is it about crowns and castles that lures in a fairy tale like a hungry crocodile?”

“Did he find any answers?” Kai asked.

“Oh, nah,” said Zed. “He died. We always die.” There was a rush of water to his left and a thing rose up out of the steaming water… twice the size of the crocodiles Queen Ella had been spearing, it had a huge snapping jaw and a long silver horn jutting it out of its forehead like a freaking unicorn.

Zed rallied, forcing the thing back and swinging his sword around. He miscalculated the timing, and the monster pressed him back, into the water.

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