Page 15 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

Until the hedges fell and revealed a forest around them that sang softly.

“Otto…” the trees whispered in a lilting lullaby.

He pushed deeper into those arms around him, turning his head into threadbare fabric and inhaling the scent of grass and water.

“Otto, wake up,” the trees called again.

He shook his head, reaching out to grip the material under his cheek between his fingers. His hand was his own again, large and blunt and rough, all traces of youth chased away.

“No,” he mumbled, body relishing the closeness of whoever had their arms around him.

Deep down, he knew who it was. He could sense him there. The green hue behind his lids wasn’t the green of the forest. The fingers dancing over his arms and back weren’t human. Too long. Too spindly. And only eight of them.

He knew.

And he wanted to stay despite that knowledge.

He pushed closer.

“Otto!” the voice called again. Not the trees, or the wind. It had a croak to it—a gentle rasp that Otto could recognize now. “You need to wake up!”

He jumped up, his eyes flying open, scrambling across the bed before he even knew where he was going.

He couldn’t go far, and his back hit the windowed wall the bed was pressed against. His brain surfaced enough to realize the Frog Prince was crouching on the floor next to Gisela’s bed, watching him with a pinched expression on his face.

A single candle was lit in the room, and a glance outside showed it was still the middle of the night.

“What?” he asked cleverly, confusion still making him dizzy.

The prince from his dream wasn’t the same one he was looking at now. The one in his dream cared for Otto, was gentle and kind.

This one, he reminded himself, he didn’t know.

“You were having a nightmare. I could hear you through the walls, crying out. I couldn’t help but come and check on you.”

“Why?” Otto asked, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. A barrier between himself and the prince, however flimsy.

“I do not enjoy the sounds of people suffering needlessly,” the prince said quietly, face half obscured by shadows before he stood up and perched himself on the edge of Gisela’s bed, sitting sideways.

Otto flinched.

It was barely noticeable, but the prince saw it. He sighed deeply and shook his head.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, and the voice inside Otto whispered that he already knew that. He was coming to see it with every passing moment.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said, fighting against it.

“Have I given you any reason to believe I would cause you harm?”

Otto felt a surge of something hot simmering in the pit of his stomach.

“You mean other than bargaining with my sister’s life?” he asked, looking down at his crossed arms.

“I did no such thing,” the prince said, and Otto whipped his head up to look at him.

He found him with his thin arms resting against bony knees, the four fingers crossed loosely between his thighs.

His head was hung low, eyes focused on the floor.

“I offered you the option, which you took. The magic did the rest.”

“Magic you control,” Otto argued.

“Magic I direct ,” he said. “Nobody controls it. I simply facilitate the bargain if someone offers enough to trade with it. Nobody tells it what to do with no consequence. Why do you think the price is so steep? Some things you are not even able to bargain with magic for.”

Otto snapped his mouth shut as the truth of that sank in.

“Gisela got sick again because you didn’t uphold your end of our agreement, Otto. There was nothing I could have done to stop that,” Alwin said quietly.

“Well it worked out in your favor, didn’t it?” Otto didn’t want to stop bickering. He didn’t want the guilt to work its way to the surface. He was at fault, but blaming the monster was easier than admitting he was behaving like one too.

“Ah, yes,” the prince said. “Being housed by someone so opposed to me being there is truly a dream come true.”

“You can leave then.”

The prince stood up and Otto felt a cold flash run through him.

“I can, indeed. Would you like me to? Would you like me to consider our agreement unfulfilled and just let whatever should happen, happen?”

Otto clicked his mouth shut, because Gisela’s life was on the line. He knew that.

“Why?” Otto asked.

“Hm?”

“Why these conditions? Why ask these things of perfect strangers?”

“I have my reasons.” The prince looked away.

“And you won’t share them?”

“Like you said, we’re perfect strangers. It’s not something I’m comfortable sharing with strangers.”

“But you’re comfortable staying in my house?”

“I’m hoping staying close will get us to a point where I can give you the answers you require,” the prince said cryptically. “Now…it’s late and we’re both tired. Maybe we should go back to bed.”

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 particularly nasty 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.