Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(122)

Closest to the ground, the oldest volumes are bound in ancient, dry leather and are chained to the shelves with heavy wrought iron links. I’m tempted to draw one from the shelf and examine it, but stop myself. It feels like a real transgression to tamper with these. Judging by their looks, they’re probably hand copied, maybe older than the United States itself. Hell, they might be from before the New World was even discovered.

I work my way up. About halfway up, the volumes become more recognizable, with buckram and vellum covers joining the heavy leather, some with titles on the spines, some faded away. They’re in all different languages, Italian, German, some I don’t recognize, English. Near the top I start recognizing the authors’ names.

Closer to the top I find…comic books.

They’re in cardboard magazine holders. Vintage comics. Somebody in this castle is a huge fan of Spider-Man. They have to be, they own an original Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of the character, stored in a plastic bag. One comic book worth probably half a million dollars. I don’t dare touch them, but it looks like whoever collected these snapped up every issue from the very beginning.

I didn’t expect to find paperbacks in the library here, but they’re on the shelf, stacked up to maximize the space and nested on top of each other. Dust clings to each one, like they haven’t been touched for a while.

One of the wooden columns has been defaced, marked. Somebody carved something into it with a dull blade. I run my fingers around the edge and frown. It can’t be.

It’s a heart with initials inside. K + C.

The prince could be K. Who’s C?

The gently sloping walkway leads up to one last floor.

There’s only one shelf here and something about it unnerves me. There are maybe fifty books, all about the same size, each bound in a weird, pale leather that sort of looks like pigskin, but isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but looking at it makes my skin crawl. They’re enclosed in glass, and I turn around before I start getting too much of an urge to examine them.

I yawn as I reach the bottom, startling myself as the sound echoes. It bounces off the walls and sounds almost like laughter.

More than ever I suddenly feel like an intruder, like someone up on the balcony I can’t see is watching me. I rush back out into the corridor and start walking again, and stop after I realize I’ve lost track of where I am. I can’t remember if I turned left into the library, or right.

The walls and tapestries here give me no help, so again I walk.

After what feels like hours, I sit on a bench for a while until my aching feet feel better, then walk some more. This place is enormous. It feels like it would take days to explore it all.

I turn a corner and pass through a pair of open doors then stop and back out. I don’t know if this is the armory, but it feels that way. Suits of armor line the walls on both sides of a huge room that ends in a massive oaken throne, the back carved with the phoenix arms that the prince bears on his armor and cloak.

I can’t help but look, at least a little. The armor closest to the door is just armor—steel plates fixed onto wooden mannequin-frames, and all weirdly small, like the guys who wore them were less than six feet tall. Farther away they…change. Get more elaborate. Nearest the big throne stand suits of armor like I saw him wear last night, and one strange one.

A person can’t wear this thing. It’s ten feet tall, and two smokestacks jut up from behind the shoulders, like it has a diesel engine in it or something.

Then again, the armor he wore last night made noises when he moved…like little motors, and it was wired to provide electrical power to that sword he used. It heated the blade or electrified it, or something like that.

I swallow hard and rush back out, wondering if he’ll somehow know if I went in. This place has to be loaded with cameras I can’t see.

God, what if he watches me sleep? I shudder, and walk into another room.

I think I’m safe to go in here. It looks like an art gallery. Lots of paintings. Men that look like the prince himself, sometimes posing with women and families. In the older, faded portraits with cracked paint, they wear suits of armor, the same ones from the other room. In newer ones they wear uniforms.

I walk to the end and find the prince in a painting that looks so new, I’m surprised it’s not still wet. He stands on his own, looking younger, maybe fifteen or sixteen…next to his identical twin.

That can’t be right.

They’re exactly the same. The artist captures it so well, it’s like a photograph. The only difference I can see is a slight scar on one twin’s cheek. The prince doesn’t have it. It must mark his brother.

Where the hell is his brother? I’ve never even heard of him having one.

There’s another painting.

A tall, slender girl, of an age with the prince when the other painting was done, in a dress not unlike the ones in my wardrobe. Honey-blonde hair tumbles loose down her back, and she smiles warmly.

There’s only one painting of a woman alone in this room. This one.

Why?

I stand there contemplating that for a while, a thought nagging at the back of my mind while refusing to take shape.

Then I hear a commotion outside.

Running through the corridors, I follow the noise, lifting my skirts so I don’t catch them under my toes. I run faster, until I’m starting to puff for breath, following the sounds.