Page 17 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

Otto slumped back against the door, his mind providing him with images of Gunther’s mother on an infinite loop.

Her calling out to him. Walking toward him.

Her eyes sunken and framed by dark circles.

Her cheeks hollow. Her shoulders hunched.

She had sought him out. She had come to him for help.

And Otto had been so wrapped up in his own life that he had just walked away.

Now it was too late. Gunther was gone. And more people would die soon.

“We need to tell people, Otto. What if people wish to ask him for a deal like you did? What if Gunther could have been saved?” Gisela said grasping his shirtsleeve. “We shouldn’t deny them the opportunity.”

Her words were like needles all over his skin, hurting more because they were correct.

Perhaps Gunther could have asked for a similar deal—he was no less deserving of life than Gisela or any of the others.

But…the idea of walking through the streets and announcing the Frog Prince to anyone who would listen made him feel nothing but pure panic.

“I do not know if that is how it works,” Otto said, thinking about the conversation from last night, clinging to some form of reason to justify his reticence. “Let them seek him out in the forest once all this is over.”

“They’re sick and starving, Otto, how will they make the journey?” she snapped. “I certainly couldn’t on my own.”

He winced, his stomach dropping as he turned his shamed face to the ground. “I know, Gisela…”

“Then why? Why keep him locked behind a door?”

“ I worry what might happen !” he revealed in a loud rush.

It rendered Gisela silent for a long moment.

“To whom?” Gisela asked eventually, eyes moving all over his face before widening. “To the prince?”

Otto looked away, his face heating as he searched for the source of this terrible anxiety.

“He helped me cure you. I owe him. And revealing him might put him in danger. Desperation can breed rash actions; I know that all too well. Look where it led me. And there will be those who only want selfish things. People like Henne and anyone like him, who will seek him out if word spreads from the village of everyone being miraculously cured of their ailments.”

It was a basic description of the things he was feeling, the calamitous and cloudy tangle in his heart, but not untruthful.

“People believe he is a monster, Gisela. There’s only one thing that happens to monsters in the end once they’ve served their purpose,” he murmured finally. “I can’t be the reason for that just because he…”

“Looks as he does?” Gisela finished for him.

Otto could only nod, unable to explain that he had seen hurt and shame and vulnerability in those strange features in such a short space of time. That there was softness there too, and intelligence that far outmatched his own.

Gisela sighed and closed her eyes, her face tightening before she nodded in acquiescence, her shoulders falling. “Very well. We’ll keep the secret for now, until we can figure something else out.”

“I’m working on a cure. I’m not giving up on the village.” Otto took her hand. “Gunther…” His voice cracked and he couldn’t finish.

“It’s not your fault,” Gisela said. “I’m sorry for using that against you. You didn’t make him sick, Otto, and you couldn’t have done anything to prevent his passing either.”

Otto nodded. He knew that, but he couldn’t help but feel responsible.

The Frog Prince wasn’t the answer though, he truly believed that.

“Curing them only until this sickness comes back won’t help anyone in the long run.

They’ll make their deals and still might fall ill again tomorrow.

You might fall ill again, or me. Something much bigger is going on here.

I need to find the cause of the illnesses and stop it at the source.

That’s the only way to fix this once and for all. ”

“Well if anyone can, it’s you,” Gisela said with full faith.

“I hope so,” Otto said, his own confidence flagging. “I owe it to them to try.”

Rustling from inside the house snapped them out of their conversation, and Gisela raised a brow at Otto.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, and Otto looked behind himself at the wood, picturing what was beyond before nodding.

“It is,” he said. “He was a decent houseguest last night.”

She shook her head. “This is so strange.”

Stranger than you know.

“Indeed.”

“Be careful, Brother,” she said. “Please.”

“I will. I promise you.”

She gave him one last searching look before she turned around and headed back into the village.

Otto stepped forward to watch her go, seeing the looks she was getting.

Jealousy, envy, surprise, happiness, and anger mixed on people’s faces as they watched her walk, healthy and confident, down the road. It solidified his decision to keep the prince hidden, even as his guilt doubled.

Otto sighed, only relaxing after he saw her enter Liesel’s house. He turned to return inside, only to startle. There at his feet were numerous frogs that were creeping toward the entrance of the house, trying to sneak within.

He stared down at them. They stared up at him.

“Look…this isn’t a frog boarding house,” he whispered.

A smaller one leaped over its neighbor toward the threshold, completely ignoring him.

Otto quickly moved his foot in the way. “I mean it!”

They continued to stare, nonplused.

“Did you learn that stare from him, by chance?”

A croak, chorused by another that was sure to carry up the stairs at any moment.

Otto threw a quick worried stare behind him before ducking down in haste. “I’m terribly sorry, but I have already filled my quota of green, weirdly well-spoken and alluring creatures.”

He blushed as the last part rolled off his tongue naturally.

“What am I even doing speaking to frogs?” he chastised himself, hurrying back inside and closing the door softly on the protesting amphibians, apologizing under his breath all the way. He leaned back against the door, sweating profusely and cheeks flaming.

Thankfully there was no sign of the prince, so he quickly finished off the stew from last night and then walked to his desk in the corner.

He sat down heavily and picked up the vial that had held the cure. It was empty, he knew that, but he’d kept it anyway, hoping it would provide some answers if he just looked hard enough.

He uncorked it carefully, bringing it up to his nose and inhaling deeply before putting the cork back in. He had vapors to work with, a phantom of the cure that used to be in there, and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it.

The scent gave nothing away. It was so subtle and soft, barely a scent at all. Otto closed his eyes, trying to block out unnecessary sensory input and focus only on the smell. There was a hint of something familiar beneath all the nothingness tickling his nostrils. Something almost sweet.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote it down, meager and pointless though the information seemed, solitary on the expanse of white.

“Hard at work?” The voice came from behind him, and he swiveled around in his chair to find the prince standing in the doorway, awkwardly gripping the wood with his fingers, hunched and shifty on his bare feet.

Otto hadn’t been prepared for what offering his clothes to the prince would actually do to him.

He was wearing Otto’s stiffest collared blue shirt, buttoned all the way up so that it hid his neck as his own did.

While decent in length, it swallowed the rest of him.

Otto was much stockier and wider, so the shirt billowed around him, making him look smaller.

The blue contrasted with the green tinge of his skin, making it appear deeper and richer in color, bringing out flecks of greens Otto hadn’t noticed before.

It was oddly…beautiful.

Otto swallowed, his eyes dropping to those long, gangly legs encased in the too-wide breeches he had chosen, held up by what looked like a scrap of his old shirt tied around his narrow hips.

A flash of those legs wrapped around Otto’s waist made him choke on his spit, and he coughed violently, doubling over in his seat.

“Otto?” the prince called, walking over and reaching out for him, hand hovering over his back.

“I’m okay,” he croaked out, eyes watering as he held a hand up to stop the prince from touching him.

He couldn’t trust what he would do.

What in the name of god was wrong with him?

“Are you sure?” the prince asked, scanning him.

Otto nodded, sitting up and covering his mouth against the last of the coughs that escaped him.

“I’m fine,” he said, turning back to his desk. “Just doing some…work.”

The prince leaned in over Otto’s desk, his eyes turning unnaturally to the side as he looked at Otto. “This is the vial I gave you. Are you trying to work out what was in it?”

He was standing close, so close. Otto could see every detail of his skin.

“Yes,” Otto said, breathing shallow, the hairs on his nape standing up. “I want to try, anyway.”

“But Gisela is healthy. And you are upholding your end of the bargain, so there is no reason to believe she will fall ill again.”

Otto pressed his lips into a thin line before nodding tersely. “That’s not a guarantee. And she isn’t the only one sick. The people in this village have been falling ill and dying for months now.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“None of them have the same symptoms, or the same progression of the ailment.” He pulled out a worn notebook that contained all of the information he had about the patients. “I have so much written down, and none of it makes any sense.”

The prince scanned the book. “What does your mentor have to say?”

Otto shrugged, a bitter laugh fighting its way to freedom. “Sadly, my mentor is not one for research.”