Page 42 of The Frog Prince

Something ugly curdled in Otto’s chest watching him retreat. He didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t want the darkness to be the only thing watching over him as he slept.

“I’m not tired,” Otto said, voice coming out in an uncontrolled huff.

The prince turned back around and tilted his head at him. “Don’t be contrary, Otto. It’s beneath you.”

Otto huffed again and looked around for a moment, trying to think of something he could do to…what? Stop the prince from leaving? Did he want him to stay? He had nothing. No answers and no plans.

So he lay down stiffly, fists clenched and throat constricting.

Stiff as a board, he lowered his head to the pillow, legs stretched toward the end of the bed, his entire body confined to the thinnest line along the edge of the mattress.

He could hear his heart screaming in his chest. Could almost feel his blood rushing through his veins.

It was so loud, so maddeningly loud. He counted his own breaths, finding them irregular and staggered. He was sweating, despite the chill.

“Otto?” The prince’s voice croaked through darkness, making his skin draw tighter around his flesh. “Would you like me to tell you a story to get you to relax?”

“No,” he said but it didn’t sound convincing.

“Yes,” he said instead, not bothering to clarify.

Footsteps sounded along the floor as he came closer. He didn’t sit back down on the bed, instead he lowered himself to the floor, back resting against the bed frame. “You remember Farwin, do you not? The little frog you saved on your way to find me.”

Otto nodded into the darkness. He didn’t truly care if the prince could see him or not. Could frogs see in the dark? Was the prince even a frog? He had no idea. He was as similar to a frog as he was to a human. Meaning too much and too little at the same time.

“Well, when I met him, he was in trouble too,” the prince continued, clearly perfectly in tune with Otto’s silent mode of communication. It was as unnerving as it was relieving.

The prince launched into an elaborate story of the little frog’s misfortunes.

He was a good storyteller, Otto caught himself thinking once or twice. Particularly when something especially dry or flouncy he said nearly got Otto to chuckle. He’d bitten his lip to stifle it, but it had been close.

His mind went fuzzy around the part of the story where the prince was trying to negotiate for Farwin’s life with a particularlynasty stork. The words grew muffled and the sentences ran together like spilled honey, slow and sticky.

Otto zoned out.

His last conscious thought was that the prince’s voice sounded almost soothing once you got used to it. He didn’t know what that meant, and he couldn’t contemplate it because sleep took him over once more, and he succumbed to it right when Farwin was trying to convince his liege that marrying a goat he had met a village over would be a very beneficial union for the glen.

Eight

Otto

The rest of the night passed in a pleasant, dreamy hum, allowing him to float until morning light was peeking through the curtains and a faint buzz at his ear was dragging him to wakefulness.

He blinked his eyes open, realizing he was curled on his side, his numb arm hanging off the edge of the bed as if he was reaching for something.

He groaned, pulling the heavy appendage back with some effort, only noticing the curled figure on the floor at the last moment.

The prince.

The sight of him didn’t make him recoil as he once had, especially with sleep still clinging to him. Instead, the position the prince was in made him look vulnerable, and Otto found himself feeling sorry he had made him sleep on the floor like that.

He was in a half-seated position, legs bent out in a way no human could sustain, his head resting against the side of the bed Otto was sleeping in. His long, thin arms lay in between his legs; fingers curled into loose fists, one cradling something round in his palm that Otto couldn’t make out.

He was still fully clothed in his shirt and outer tailcoat, the collars high and digging into the flesh of his chin. Otto wondered at his comfort and how he could stand them.

Maybe he couldn't.

There was a soft scrunch to the unfamiliar features, and a crease on his green forehead left by the wooden bed frame he was slumped against.