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My heart sank. Empirically, I knew. Of course, I knew. All of the evidence had said as much—she had agreed to my bargain, allowed herself to be dragged here, nearly drowned, and nearly been enslaved by the Unseelie Queen. She was no witch. Even if her mother had been one.

I vividly remembered the day I met her mother, Queen Belinda.

I had been out on my personal terrace taking breakfast when the glass doors flew open. An angry middle-aged woman with dark blonde hair stormed through with Harry on her heels. "How dare you!" she shrieked.

I looked up from my glass of orange juice and my morning political briefs to meet the woman’s icy glare. Her crystal blue eyes were red and swollen, rimmed with tears, and her hands shook with rage.

I didn’t move or speak right away. Human emotions were so volatile, so close to the surface, so... explosive. I had seen that in battles over the centuries. So, slowly, I set my papers down and said coldly, "I am not the overseer of bargains. If you made a poor one, I cannot correct it for you."

She let out an anguished cry as if she would be ripped in half by her grief, and I winced.

"For what it is worth, I am sorry," I told her. I cannot lie, so my words should comfort her.

"You will be," she muttered, rifling through her knapsack.

I incline my head toward her. "Excuse me?"

She held aloft a talisman and began to chant in a low, ominous tone.

I groaned. What more could I say? Would I have to remove this mad woman from the castle?

Then I felt the shadows creeping up from the floorboards. I felt the temperature drop in the room. This was dark, powerful magic.

I took several hurried steps backward.

But it was too late.

Something unnatural, something otherworldly wrapped its tendrils around my sternum, squeezing and bruising.

Then the air began to leave my lungs.

"Wait," I rasped.

"Too late," she said. "You cannot bring back what is already gone. You will take the form you truly deserve."

Suddenly the terrible squeezing was over, and I couldn’t breathe again. I opened my eyes, but everything was wrong. The table was the size of a house. And what was that ahead? An oversized shoe?

I followed the shoe upward to a leg.

That’s when I realized. The room was not larger. I was smaller.

I struggled to move to the nearby standing mirror. I... hopped.

In the reflection, my suspicions were confirmed. A large bullfrog stared back at me. A frantic ribbit escaped my lips. Then a stream of swear words.

The woman cackled. "As you and all of your kind deserve. I only wish your suffering would be half my own."

Those words lingered hauntingly on the air. It was only later I understood them and what she had lost that had driven her to this moment.

She hissed at me, "Perhaps, one day, you will find true love. Then you will understand."

"What did you lose? Maybe I can help."

"More than you could ever imagine, cold-hearted king."

I watched helplessly as she strode toward the doors to exit. Then she saw Harry standing there in shock, and she turned on him next. "For serving a master like him and impeding my path, you must be just as terrible. Just as cruel." She clutched at this tunic right above his heart, and the fabric turned to ash.

Harry fell to his knees in pain, and I cried out. "No! Leave him out of this."