Page 112 of The Frog Prince

“You saved me,” Alwin said. “After all the years of waiting and hoping, you came along and saved me. My beautiful healer. My young master.”

“You didn’t need saving, my prince,” Otto said. “You were always perfect.”

“HE IS A MONSTER!” A voice cut through the love-filled cloud around them, making Alwin flinch in Otto’s arms. “He takes human form to trick you. KILL HIM!”

Alwin turned his head to find Henne charging at them, breaking free of the people surrounding him, mowing them down with blind rage as he spat his venom into the air around him.

Otto clutched Alwin harder, muscles flexing as he got ready to just take him away.

But before he could try, a swarm of frogs leaped and hopped, chaining Henne’s ankles to the ground and making him stumble and fall. They crawled over his body, pinning his legs, hips,chest, and shoulders to the ground. His face was the only thing visible. Screams echoed around him as the first frog landed on his forehead. Another forced his eyelids shut. More of them crawled over him until the screams died down.

Through the swarm Alwin saw a flash of bright purple. Tiny legs crawling over other frogs. Inching closer and closer to exposed skin.

“Is that…” he heard Otto say, and Alwin nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I can stop it. If you want me to.”

The tiny, bright red frog broke through the last layer of frogs piled on Henne’s pinned, writhing body. Just a bit farther and…

“You are not a murderer, my prince,” Otto said. “You have more kindness in the tip of your finger than he has in his entire, rotten body.”

Alwin swallowed and nodded.

“Stop,” he called out to his frogs, but it was too late.

The spindly purple leg clambered and brushed over the bare skin of Henne’s waist. The rest of the frogs fell away, leaving the old man gasping for air and scrambling to stand up.

“Murderer!” he hissed. “Monster!”

“You have been poisoned,” Alwin said, voice calm. “You have been touched by a poisonous frog and do not have long to live.”

“You forced them on me!” Henne raged in his madness. “You thought you’d doomed me, but Henne always has a plan!”

He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of white fabric and a handful of ruined flowers.

“No,” he heard Otto gasp as he dislodged Alwin from his lap, frantically looking around himself. “He got to my bag! Alwin, he has the Blue Moons!”

“You thought you could hide this from me!” he hissed. “You thought I wouldn’t recognize the holy grail when I saw it. Fool! This can cure me. And everyone around me. I will restore my good name. I will prevail!”

He unwrapped the linen and dark-blue powder rained down around his feet.

“Henne, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Otto said. “You have to—”

“SILENCE!” Henne pulled a tiny flask from his pocket, uncorking it and adding a dash of powder to it.

“Henne!” Otto called again, but the flask was already being tipped back, and the contents slid into Henne’s open mouth.

“Salvation!” Henne said after he swallowed, that deranged smile frozen on his lips as the first convulsion hit.

His neck snapped around like someone was pulling an invisible string tied around it. The cries from the people standing by were deafening.

“Turn away,” Alwin heard Otto say as he cradled his head. “You have seen enough ugliness to last you a lifetime.”

“I have your beauty to counteract it,” Alwin said, unable to look away. He felt a sick need to see it through to the end. “I will be all right.”

Another convulsion. A crack in the skin on Henne’s face, dry and bloodless. Bony fingers clutched a heaving chest. Scratch marks opened, glimmering dark blue before a silent scream split Henne’s face in half.

A grotesque grimace pulled at his features before he crumbled to the ground, silent and unmoving.