Page 20 of The Frog Prince

His heart raced as he watched her swallow, drop by drop until not even residue was left in the bottle.

“That doesn’t taste as awful as your usual tinctures and tonics,” she said, before another coughing fit stormed through her body.

Otto stared at her, searching desperately for any sign that it had worked. Any inkling that all of his efforts hadn’t been for nothing. But she was still just as sallow. Frail and weak and barely audible, despite her attempt at a joke.

Had it not worked?

Was she supposed to miraculously spring from the bed, healthy and ready to return to life as she knew it before all of this? Was that what he was hoping for?

She sank back into her pillows and covered his hand with her own. It was cool and damp to the touch, just like before.

“I think I’m going to sleep for a bit longer,” she said, and he nodded, giving her tiny hand a gentle squeeze as his eyes stung.

“I’ll let you rest.” He went to leave, but she shook her head, tugging weakly at his hand.

“No, stay,” she said. “You’ve been away so long. I’d like you to stay.”

“Always,” he said to her as he ran this thumb over her weak pulse point, wishing it would grow stronger. Wishing he could will it into pumping life through her, even if it meant draining his own. He’d give anything—everything to see her healthy again.

He leaned forward when she finally sank into sleep, resting his head next to her elbow and closing his eyes.

He was uncomfortable and bone-tired, but he wouldn’t move. Not until she told him he could.

“Please,” he whispered into the stuffy air in the tiny room as a fitful sleep took him over. He didn’t know quite who he was pleading with, but he hoped whoever it was heard him.

Just this once.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to find a thick canopy of crooked branches and gloomy leaves overhead blocking all light.

Bursting upright, he looked around in panic, but saw nothing but endless forest stretching in all directions.

It came for me.

He scrambled to his knees and then to his feet, terror building, his heart pounding so loudly he could hear nothing but that sound.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned, nothing was there. He felt eyes on him though, bulbous and unblinking. He began to back away slowly, feeling like cornered prey, and he screamed when his back hit a tree.

It was enough to send him running, heedless of the direction.

The way out. Which way is the way out?

He crashed through the underbrush, swiping branches away from his face, shrugging out of their grip on his clothes as they ripped holes into them. He whimpered and stumbled, desperate, terrified, but his feet seemed harder to move, sucking him down.

He looked and saw water up to his ankles and thick mud holding him in place. He’d run straight to the glen at the river.

The Frog Prince’s home.

Crying out, he did his best to free himself, caked in mud all over as he freed his feet from his boots and fell, catching himself on the edge of something hard.

Panting he pulled back and came face to face with the well he’d tossed the golden ball into. A single drop of sweat fell from his brow and hit the bottom, the sound of it echoing up.

“Otto.” It called to him like an old friend.

“No,” he whispered to it.

“Otto,” it said again, a wheedling croak.