Page 120 of The Frog Prince

Otto cupped his cheek. “You deserve everything.”

Alwin resettled himself in Otto’s arms and they shared soft touches as they planned their next steps. They kissed and held each other close. They whispered secrets and fears and desires into the barely there space between their bodies, hopeful the ruins would keep them safe from everyone else.

The night approached, chill and dark but comforting to them. Familiar. They allowed it in like an old friend, letting it wrap around them and dull the outside world until there was nothing but their bodies on the makeshift bed in their tiny kingdom.

The prince.

And his young master.

“I always did wonder what happened to my golden ball,” Otto whispered just before they both sank into sleep. “And you had it this whole time.”

“The one thing I’d never bargain,” he said. “You.”

Twenty

Alwin

“Is this how the entire trip will be?” Gisela asked from her side of the modest, rickety carriage.

The villagers had jointly gifted it as a thank-you for being healed by Otto, taking the time to repair it after it had sat gathering dust for years. No one had a need for a carriage or the money to pay for its upkeep when you could barely afford to eat.

Alwin had been uncomfortable accepting it and had tried reasoning with them until Liesel and Brigit unified into a terrifying maternal force and shoved all three of them inside, slamming the door and telling Otto to “get it together.”

So…together, he got it. And they were on their way, Otto seated on one side with Alwin stretched out along the seat withhis head in his lap and Otto’s hands in his hair, playing with the soft black strands.

“Yes.” Alwin nodded, cracking an eye open to look at Gisela on the other seat, laughing at Farwin trying to imitate Otto’s movements in her own hair, making it tangle and stick up every which way.

“I believe I preferred you two skulking about the forest.” She huffed, but the smile at the corners of her lips gave her away.

“Lies,” Otto said.

She rolled her eyes at them, moving her foot to let Jurgen waddle over to the other end of the carriage. He had been doing that since they started their journey—trying to find the best bit of the floor to rest on while refusing to be lifted up to sit on the benches with them.

The road between Otto’s village and Hallin was a long, bumpy one, and each mile they covered made Alwin feel less and less relaxed.

No matter the outcome, he would get to see his home again. The hallways he had spent his childhood haunting like their staff’s biggest nightmare. The rooms he had learned, played, and grown up in. The people who had spent their lives keeping him safe and fed and warm and, in the cases of some of his more outrageous ideas, alive.

He’d see his mother and father. Feel their arms around him and their voices telling him they had missed him. And he’d see Lorenz, who was an adult now. Happy and thriving and in love with his own sunshine.

That was the dream. The fantasy that had kept Alwin warm in his years of solitude…

“What if they don’t want me?” he whispered without preamble, voicing the fear that festered inside of him.

Otto’s hand stilled. “Alwin…”

“What if they take one look at me and decide they have shaped their lives around the empty space I left and they don’t need me to fill it anymore?”

Otto smoothed his hair back and pulled until Alwin was sitting up and facing him.

“They shaped their lives around a gaping chasm where you used to be and learned how to move around it so it wouldn’t swallow them. But they want it filled. They want you back so their steps don’t have to be careful anymore. So their eyes don’t land on darkness when they turn to look for you. So that silence isn’t what replies when they call out for you. They want you back, Alwin, because they miss you.”

Alwin’s fragile heart was in his throat. “Promise?”

Otto leaned in to kiss his forehead. “I promise.”

Alwin begged his brain to be soothed by the words. Calmed by his sunshine. Nobody could settle his worries like Otto, but there was still that lurking doubt that would never leave him, ready to pounce on his insecurities as soon as he lowered a wall.

He sighed and relaxed into Otto’s embrace, closing his eyes and continuing to dream of home. His kingdom. His palace. His people. And his family. All with Otto by his side. Alwin felt like he finally had everything he had yearned for all those lonely winters at the glen.