Page 5 of The Rat King
At the top of a great flight of stairs, two massive wooden doors opened outward. Deep gouges crisscrossed the wood planks like Beast had gotten angry and clawed them in an attempt to escape. Two large gargoyle-like sculptures of mythical creatures stacked on top of each other were positioned on either side. Several of the creatures were missing their stone body parts and rubble was littering the ground. The castle would have been beautiful once, but had fallen into disrepair.
My heart thundered, but I got ahold of it. One, a curse. Two, a crumbling castle. Bad things always came in threes. How did the witches not warn me about this? With each realization the word betrayal flashed through my mind. My own aunt—she couldn’t have known. It was inconceivable.
My stomach sank as a soft male voice drew my attention. “You’re late.”
Both Nighval and I turned in the direction of the voice. A man wearing a deep navy cloak and knee-high black boots was standing on my side of the carriage with an arm lifted up to me. I couldn’t see what he wore under the draping piece of fabric, but more importantly, the man was wearing a crown, a gleaming silver band with huge sapphires embedded in the metal. My breathing hitched as I took the king’s hand.
The man wasn’t bad looking. His flat sandy brown hair was tied back neatly at the nape of his neck, and his light brown eyes glittered with intrigue as he took me in. He wet his smooth-looking cherry-colored lips as his gaze made its way to my face. He was tall, broad shouldered, but his hand felt soft in my hand, unlike Nighval’s calloused one. He wasn’t as handsome as Nighval either, but I wasn’t repulsed by him. Nighval’s face held all hard angles and smooth planes, but this man was softer, more rounded and a little ruddy at the tip of his nose and his cheeks.
His smile was kind, as my aunt suggested. He looked like the type of guy you’d meet at a frat party and immediately friend-zone. Pleasant looking, but not hot. As he stared up at me, I decided the king was not number three. I remembered the portraits I’d seen of Henry VIII and counted my blessings. I’d been willing to do this on behalf of my coven regardless of what the king looked like and upon first glance, I could have done much worse. As I savored the relief that washed over me, a church bell gonged once, twice, a third time. The sound was still vibrating through the courtyard where we’d parked the carriage, and I stepped down with the king’s help. As I turned to fetch my backpack from the back of the carriage, I came face to face with Nighval.
Stumbling back into the king’s chest, my hand flew to my mouth. Nighval wasn’t the warlock who’d picked me up from the clearing any longer. He was… he was…a rat. Or more specifically, a rat-man. His nose had flattened into his face and the tip was pinkish. Whiskers poked out from either side over smooth cheeks lightly dusted with a fine black-brown fur which made his already angular face even more so. The green in his eyes was gone. They were now more of a burned caramel with the whites no longer visible. His forehead sloped at a deeper angle than it had moments earlier, softening his heavy brow. And his eyebrows were nearly blended into his fur. His medium brown hair was now a flat brown and somewhere between a rats and a man’s. The ears which poked out were also a strange combination of the two, human-ish, but more rounded and lined with cream fur similar to peach fuzz. I glanced behind him to see if anything poked out underneath this cloak. No tail, thank God.
He was still recognizable as the man from before, but now I could understand why he told me to wait and see. Had he explained this, I might have thrown myself out of the carriage to spare myself from seeing him cursed like this. At least my future husband was still human—the thought caught in my mind. Bad thing three still loomed before me.
Nighval cleared his throat and held my backpack out to me in a clawed hand. Literally clawed. It was also human like, but instead of five digits, there were four. A tiny pinkie, a thumb and one larger one, like the two middle fingers, were fused together, then a pointer finger. Each was tipped with wicked claws. I didn’t take the pack. I could hardly move as a sense of foreboding took root in my chest.
Instead, I looked up at his face again to find his beady eyes drilling into mine. His lips twitched before a grin split them, exposing his teeth, but the front two on the top and the two on the bottom were oversized. It was horrible. And he was watching me take him in—savoring my reaction as if he were enjoying watching my panic rise.
I tore at the top of my dress, the high neckline restricting my airflow. I needed more oxygen, or I was going to pass out. Focus on the facts.You’re going to be a queen… married to a normal human king. Right? Oh God, I hadn’t envisioned my emotional state capable of dwindling quite so rapidly. But there was no way my aunt, my friends, my coven would have sent me here had they known what I would be faced with.
My swirling gut told me the curse affected my future husband, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to rip my eyes away from the monster before me to confirm it. I didn’t need to. I knew. My mouth dropped open, and I panted as a hot wave of nausea scorched through me, doubling me over. The strong woman I knew myself to be had apparently skipped town, and I was at the mercy of my body’s fight or flight response. Another wave of panic hit, and my world tilted. I dropped to my knees, hyperventilating.
Oh, God. No, no, no, no. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t how my fairytale began.
“Avery, you’re safe,” the king said, kneeling in front of me.
Surely, he wasn’t cursed, too. My gut had to be wrong. I tilted my head up toward him and screamed.
Chapter 3
Avery
Iwokeinalarge four-poster bed covered with a plush and heavy blanket. Light streamed in through a floor-to-ceiling multi-paned window to my left, and I could see particles dancing in the rays of light. Long green curtains hung from a gold rod that was set across the windows and dust collected on the folds as if no one had bothered to pull them closed in a long while.
I squinted, taking in my surroundings as my memories of the night before flooded back to me. After I’d fainted—that’s right,fainted—someone deposited me in this room. The bed was soft, and it was in decent repair compared to what I saw of Ravsted from the outside.
Taking a few calming breaths, I tried to make sense of the situation I found myself in. These people were under a witch’s curse, apparently some family drama, according to Nighval, that took away their power and turned at least him and his brother, my future husband, into rat-men.
Presumably, once the curse was broken, they’d become human again, and I’d be able to go on about my life as queen as planned with a reasonably attractive husband and a kingdom to rule. And all of that would somehow save my people. From what, I did not know.
Right as I eased into my resolve, welcoming my strong inner goddess back, two rat-women strolled into the room in a very routine fashion, like they’d done this before. The one who appeared to be older, stepped up to the side of the bed and said, “I’m April. That is Alice. We are charged with taking care of you, so if you need anything, please let us know. We’re running a bath and will help you get your things in order and get ready for the day. Do you have questions?”
I sat up, blinking, and shook my head, willing my face into a neutral expression. April had a long tuft of hair at the top of her head, which was pulled back behind her ears in a no-nonsense bun. Her jowls sagged and her general appearance was tired. She had a medium build and wore a gray frock with a white apron cinched at the waist. The female she called Alice was younger, quite thin, and wore the same uniform. Her brown hair was in a long braid down her back and she stood behind the other woman, waiting. Their features were so rat-like, it was hard to pick out the distinct human traits that made them unique, and I wondered what they looked like in human form.
The thing that was most notable about them was the scars. They crisscrossed their faces, necks, and exposed arms, presumably from the sharp points at their fingertips.
Alice saw me eyeing them and said in a gentle voice, “Most of them happened soon after the curse while we were still learning to live with our new bodies.”
“Oh,” I said, not really knowing what to say to that. “Hang on, I do have a question now that you’ve brought it up. Can you tell me about the curse? I can see what it does, but I want to know what it takes to break it and what that has to do with saving my people. Nighval wouldn't tell me anything.” By now, I had ahold of my emotions and planned to force determination into the leading role. I shot them a friendly, open smile.
Alice avoided my eyes escaping into the bathroom and a moment later I heard water running. April winced, but walked over to my backpack, moving it from the floor to a chair which sat in front of a wood desk. She unlatched the leather closures and began emptying it, sorting my things into piles on top of the desk as I watched her from the bed. “She shouldn’t have said anything, Miss.”
Frustration bubbled to the surface, and I reminded myself to exercise patience. My situation wasn’t their fault, but I hated being in the dark. I really wanted to ring the information out of the woman. She looked like, with a little bit of pressure, she would give in. Yet, as I watched her scarred hands work, I knew I couldn’t do that to her, when my anger should be directed at a coven of women a plane away or the warlocks who, it seemed, kept this vital piece of information from them.
Even if I was to be queen, that didn’t change who I was inherently. I had been someone in the service industry. Someone wealthy men snapped at whenever I took too long to make their drinks. Literally would put their pointer finger and thumb together and snap at me. Occasionally, they would whistle to get my attention and, more often than not, they wouldn’t even say hello or make eye contact as they rattled off their orders. We were all but objects to them, and I would not treat these women that way or any of the other castle staff. If that’s how things were in this world, that shit was going to change with me as their monarch.
“Okay, April. I will ask His Majesty about it when I see him. Can you tell me how long this curse has been in place?” I asked, because that would at least give me a better sense about the gravity of the situation.
