Page 11 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

He held a finger to his lips. Standing up slowly, he crept toward the open window, making sure his footsteps couldn’t be heard.

He gripped the windowsill so hard his fingers ached, turning white with the force of it as he leaned out and looked around.

The ground beneath the window was damp and overgrown with weeds he needed to cull.

He could see bugs crawling beneath the leathery leaves, rustling softly. But nothing more than that.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“I thought I heard something,” he muttered. “I must have imagined it.”

“Maybe those mysterious herbs you used to make my cure drove you mad.”

He gave her a flat look before pushing himself away from the window and heading back to the table. The dread was still there, in the pit of his stomach.

It made him want to search every corner. Tuned into his surroundings. Seeing figures in shadows. Listening to silence and begging it not to take shape.

Anxiety turned his stomach.

“I have to go now,” he said.

She frowned. “Your breakfast.”

“Take my portion. You need it more than me.” He gave her a strained smile.

“An ox needs to eat more than a rabbit.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I should be offended by that.”

“By the truth?” She smiled before growing serious again. “We’ve never kept secrets between us, Otto. Secrets keep us sick.”

Otto closed his eyes and nodded. “I know…just…not today, Gisela. Please?”

“I’ll ask again tomorrow,” she warned him.

“I would expect nothing else, Sister.” He smiled and walked over to kiss her forehead. Her skin was warm and vibrant under his lips. He pulled back and looked down at her. “Please don’t go wandering around the village. I don’t want to spend my day worrying about you.”

“I will stay here,” she promised. “The house is a mess.”

“I did my best,” he said, walking toward the door, picking up his satchel, and slinging it over his shoulder.

“I know, Brother. Sadly, when it comes to household chores your best is…questionable.”

“Insolent little brat.”

She grinned at him the way she’d done when she was a little girl. It sent a flood of memories through his mind, and his heart ached as he looked at her.

He’d almost lost her.

“I’m so happy you’re well,” he whispered.

“Me too,” she said, softening in return. For all her bite, she was still so young, and he knew she had been terrified. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you.” The words held more weight than she knew. “Promise you won’t leave the house?”

She frowned at the repeated request but nodded. “Promise.”

“And don’t let anyone inside.”

“Who would be coming to our house, Otto?” she asked, worry etched into her face. “Nobody but us has crossed that threshold in years. Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Best to be safe, that’s all.” He ignored her pointed look as he opened the front door and left the house.

He turned to look back at his home several times as he walked down the path leading deeper into the village. It got smaller and smaller in his view the farther he got, and he realized each step felt like a stab to the heart.

He didn’t want to leave Gisela alone. Not right now. Not when everything around him seemed so precarious.

Something swiped at his feet—a long, dark shape that brushed against his ankles.

He gasped and hopped to avoid tripping and falling, spinning on the balls of his feet to see what it was.

The path beneath his feet was void of anything he could stumble over. Just dirt turned to a sticky paste with moisture. Footsteps were branded into it, coming and going in all directions. Boots and shoes and bare feet had left tracks everywhere, but nothing out of the ordinary.

He drew the attention of several passersby, and he quickly stared at the ground, trying to avoid their eyes.

He couldn’t look at the shadows around them, at the paleness of their skin or the way they winced from the pain in their bones as they moved.

He couldn’t look at them and face the fact that they were still dying and he couldn’t help.

Didn’t know how. That ultimately, he’d chosen his sister over them.

Someone called his name, pointed and eager, and he made the mistake of looking up to see Gunther’s mom looking at him, a silent plea on her lips.

Her son was sick. Their farm, already decimated by the famine, suffered further without his strength, their lives upended because there was no solution. And Otto had nothing to tell her. Nothing to offer to comfort her.

He gave her a silent shake of his head and quickened his steps, desperate to get inside again. Away from so much open space where he was a target—of his own guilt, of the consequences of his selfishness, of his mind playing tricks on him.

So far, none of the things he had seen had been real. The noises and the shadows and the dreams. The long fingers reaching for him, touching him in ways that should have repulsed him. That monstrous face grinning at him in satisfaction as he writhed and pleaded for more.

None of it was real.

He just had to remember that, and it would all be all right. He’d get back to normal in no time.

Squaring his shoulders, he closed himself away inside his mentor’s home, mentally listing the tasks he would have to complete before going back home to his sister.

His resolution faltered several times throughout the day.

When he caught footprints that didn’t belong to a human just beneath his own. Webbed and wide.

When he caught hopping shapes out the corners of his eyes as he crushed dried herbs and bottled tinctures for Henne.

When the wind whistled through the cracks in the worn-down house, whispering his name.

It made the knife he was holding wobble in his hold, nicking the skin and making him hiss. He pulled his hand toward his chest, and for a split second felt a phantom of a damp touch on wounded skin before he forced himself to remember.

He was alone.

He was safe.

He bandaged his finger and finished his work as quickly as he could, glad Henne was out on house calls and not around to leer and prod at Otto.

The old man wouldn’t have been Otto’s first choice for a mentor, but the pickings were slim.

It was Henne or a woman three villages over.

Apprenticing under her would have required him moving, and that was never an option.

So he was stuck for another two years until he could practice independently.

Two years until he had learned what there was to learn.

Not that Henne actually taught him much of anything. Everything Otto knew, he had learned on his own. Henne treated him like unpaid help, pushing all of the dumb, easy tasks onto Otto so he could dedicate himself to the high-paying jobs.

Otto accepted it all without fuss, hoping that he was making a difference. That in the end he would be able to give the people of this village another option.

The day grew late, the sky dark, and the moon high as he organized his finished tasks on the wooden desk, knowing Gisela would be worrying herself sick at home. Hopefully she was already in bed. He left a note for Henne to let him know he had been around and would be back tomorrow as usual.

The sheet of paper looked damp in one corner, and Otto brushed his fingers over it and found it strangely warm. As if someone had been holding it just before he took it. Someone whose hands…

He forced the line of thought away forcefully and packed his things, heading for the door.

He winced when it slammed open and there was Henne, looking angry as usual, thin lips pulled into a condescending sneer.

Grey hair was slicked back over bald spots, and he wore clothes too expensive for someone who could barely afford to eat.

It was all about appearances with Henne.

If he looked more expensive, he could trick people into thinking he was worth more.

“Ah, he returns,” Henne said, voice grating.

“Henne. I apologize, I couldn't send you word straight away. I have completed all the leftover tasks and prescriptions you’d left, all of it is on the desk and labeled. I will return tomorrow.”

He tried walking around Henne, but a thin hand gripped his wrist. “Not so fast, Otto. I let you leave for days and this is all the respect you afford me? Not even a passing conversation?”

Otto bristled. He didn’t want to be touched. He couldn’t be touched when his skin still prickled from the Frog Prince’s caresses, but he couldn't pull away either.

“I apologize,” he said, lowering his head in deference. He had learned that it was the only way Henne would be appeased. “I simply have pressing matters at home.”

“Ah yes. I have heard the rumors.”

“What rumors?” Otto asked, chest constricting.

“People saw Gisela walking around with you yesterday.” Henne’s dark eyes were sharp. “When she was barely alive just the day before. Care to explain such a miraculous recovery?”

“I told you I was looking for a cure,” Otto said, trying not to sound defensive but failing.

“That excursion was futile and we both know it,” Henne snapped, tightening his grip on him. “So how did you do it?”

“I found herbs in the forest,” Otto lied.

“And just happened to know which ones to give her to cure her?” Henne sneered, scoffing in his face.

Otto bit his lip. Henne wasn’t stupid. He was reprehensible and unworthy of the title of healer, but he was intelligent and insightful.

“I took a gamble with her life. She was already dying and she wouldn’t have seen the morning. I gave her a mix of things I hadn’t tried before and prayed.”

It was a half-truth, but it had a foundation to it.

“You aren’t a believer,” Henne said.

“No, I am not. But maybe there is someone out there who heard it.”

Henne stared at him for a moment, mouth pinched into a thin line.

“Maybe,” he said finally, releasing Otto’s hand but very clearly not satisfied with his answers.

“Be prepared to explain yourself to everyone else who’s sick in this place.

I won’t be making excuses for your little…

miraculous breakthrough. In fact, you can get started on recreating such a cure.

I want a list of ingredients or you can find another mentor. ”

“I-I have no idea what they were,” Otto stuttered. “I simply found them. Henne, please—”

Henne walked past, dismissing him.

Otto clenched his fists futilely, staring at his back.

He had wanted to try and find the ingredients to the cure on his own to make it up to the town if he could. This ultimatum was forcing his hand. He didn’t want to hand anything over to Henne, someone who would hold the cure for ransom for coins people did not have.

He closed his eyes over the frustrated tears forming.

Nothing to be done. He walked out of the house and began his journey back home, the dark path and chill air forcing him to move quickly.

He looked straight ahead, the hairs on his neck standing up and each rustle around him feeling like a threat.

He felt like he was being watched.

Followed.

He sped up, breath catching in his lungs as he recited to himself, Not real. Not real. Not real.

He burst through the door of his house, slamming it shut behind him and leaning against it.

“Otto?” Gisela called from her room. “Is that you?”

“Yes.” His voice sounded clipped and breathy. He locked the door and walked toward her room, leaning against the doorframe and looking at her as she lay in her bed in her nightgown by the light of a single candle, book in hand. “You’re still up? It’s well past midnight.”

“I could say the same to you,” she said. “There is stew for you in the kitchen.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Good,” she said quickly, fiddling with her book. “I was feeling a bit tired, so I turned in early.”

He frowned hearing that, but it wasn’t unusual for a person who had been bedridden for so long. “Did you eat?”

“I did.” Her gaze moved over him in turn. “You look awful.”

“Thank you,” he said jokingly, desperate to hide his true feelings from her keen eyes.

Luckily she chuckled. “Eat and get to bed. We need to see what we can find for food tomorrow; there’s hardly anything left in the pantry.”

The words left a sick feeling in his stomach. There wasn’t enough to go around as it was.

“I’ll handle it,” he told her, pushing off the doorframe. “Sleep tight.”

“You too,” she said, setting her book aside now that he was home.

He closed her door and walked back downstairs to the kitchen, dishing out a few spoonfuls of stew and sitting down at the table to force himself to eat. They couldn't afford to waste any.

The night settled around them, and Otto tried thinking about anything and everything to drown out the noises coming from outside.

It felt worse now.

The wind was howling, but it sounded like a choir of frogs outside his window. He could swear he heard drops of water tinkling to the floor.

The squelch of mud.

The crinkle of fallen leaves.

The snap of twigs under heavy feet.

Not real.

Not real.

Not real.

A shadow grew fingers, long and thin and wrong. Four where there should have been five. They reached for him. Brushed against his side.

Not real.

He heard someone calling his name.

Not real.

He saw a flash of green vanishing under one of the cupboards in the kitchen.

Not real.

A knock at the door.

Not real.

Another one.

Not real.

A louder one.

“Otto,” Gisela called. “Will you get the door?”

His eyes snapped open, spoon clattering from his hands and into his bowl, splattering stew everywhere.

The knocking continued.

He pushed the chair away from the table slowly, the scrape of it against the wooden floor echoing in the small space, then stood on shaky legs, wiping his damp palms on his wrinkled breeches.

“Young master,” a familiar voice called. “Open the door, young master.”

Real.