Page 4 of The Frog Prince

He’d walked them to their very deaths.

Despair rose, holding hands with a rage that crept along the edges of Alwin’s tear-filled vision until he was springing back to his feet and reaching for Jurgen’s sword.

It came free with a sharp, dangerousschwingand he pointed it straight at the queen’s throat. He bared his teeth, a single tear streaking down his cheek. “You murdered them!”

The queen didn’t flinch. In fact, she stepped closer to the tip of his blade, hands folded in front of her regally. “I didn’t lay a finger on them.”

The shadow he kept seeing in his periphery moved again. Dangerous. Threatening. “Whatever that thing is it’s under your command!”

She scoffed. “What’s a group of mice to a cat if not to play with and kill when she gets bored?”

Alwin’s fingers started to shake with barely repressed rage. As the red veil of anger and grief descended, he tried to remember that he was a prince with his kingdom’s fate in his own hands. His hand was his kingdom’s hand, his decisions their own. If he harmed her, it could mean war.

Her smirk at his hesitation was as sharp as his blade, and she ran a nail over the sword’s edge as she proceeded forward.

The metal turned suddenly limp in his grasp, wilting over his knuckles like a plucked flower. He looked down in shock, her laughter echoing in his head and reverberating through the trees. Birds scattered, their sharp cries sending a warning he could not heed himself.

“Your punishment,” she whispered, just a step away from him. “For daring.”

Wicked nails dug into the back of his neck as a crimson mouth slammed into his.

Pain followed like a drumbeat, pounding through his veins. It felt like she was feeding him poison through her mouth, hot and acidic. He struggled against her, pushing away only for his legs to fold underneath him, his strength suddenly sapped.

He hit the sodden ground with a gasp, his circlet flying from his head and rolling through the water and mud. Agony built and he cried out as his very bones and muscles seemed to twist and turn on themselves.

She stood above him as he writhed, observing cooly like he was a fly caught in her web. The lipstick on her mouth wasn’t even smudged.

He clawed at the wet dirt, trying to drag himself away, but his eyes widened in horror when he saw his flesh turning green and his fingers blunting and transforming into something hideous and unnatural right in front of him.

Thunderous croaks began to echo in his ears, the rushing of water and the echoes from the well deafening him and matching every frantic beat of his heart. His vision began to narrow and change, warping strangely.

“What is wrong, Prince? Do you not think a frog a fitting creature?”

A frog?

No, a monster.

He screamed in horror as his body continued to move and change against his will. Until there was nothing left of him and something else was filling up the spaces where he’d once been, until he was choking on it.

She laughed until he was lying limp on the ground, reality fading in and out from the pain and horror, something else at home inside his skin with him.

“Please,” he whispered, the word distorted by a tongue that was too large, his voice a croak he didn’t recognize.

“Pathetic,” she said at last, circling him. “But now, now, I am not so terribly cruel. I will offer you a way to break this curse. If you can find a stranger who will love you as you are with all of their heart, your curse will be lifted.”

She bent at the waist and sneered at him.

“Offer them whatever they yearn for. Money. Power. Good health. You’ll have the power to grant them their hearts’ desires. But be warned, this magic only works at a cost. An exchange must be made. If the conditions are met, the magic bubbling in the well will let you make it be.”

Alwin could feel the echo of it in his head, a steady drip that called for a request.

“If they can look upon your monstrous visage and not feel disgust, revulsion, and fear, then you will be free. From the curse and the well.”

She straightened and walked leisurely over to where his circlet lay. She picked it up. Her shadow flanked her, a hazy figure Alwin couldn’t make out.

“See? I am not completely heartless. In fact, my heart will be full to bursting watching you squirm in the filth and muck for the rest of time.”

Alwin’s eyes sprang open, the mud and silt of the murky depths dislodging from his eyes and floating in front of him.