Page 4 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

At the sound of the voice, the little frog in his front pocket kicked up a fuss, thin limbs flailing about as it tried to escape the confines of the cloth regardless of its injury.

He reached into his pocket hastily and took it out, crouching to set it down onto the damp ground. It limped away from him and disappeared from his sight between one blink and the next.

“You hurt one of mine,” the voice said in the next breath, making Otto’s heart stutter.

He shook his head as he straightened, his hand going to his breeches pocket and tightening around the small knife there as he looked around for the source.

“No,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I didn’t. I found it hurt and I helped it.”

“By taking it away from the home it knows on the ground?” the voice asked coldly.

“It couldn’t move! It was trapped under a rock.” Otto splashed through the water, finding a ruined tree trunk to press his back against, desperately trying to find a way to protect himself from whoever the voice belonged to. “It would have been eaten within hours.”

“You don’t have the gift of foresight.”

“But I do have the gift of common sense,” Otto said, some of his bite coming out through the blinding fear. A cornered animal snapping at a threat as if it stood a chance. Whatever it was, Otto knew it could end him in a second if it so chose.

“Do you?”

It sounded closer now, surrounding Otto instead of coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It made his skin itch and his muscles tense as his body prepared to fight or take him away to safety. He was shivering, his back covered in a cold sweat and his eyes wide.

The whisper of an echo was still lingering in the air when movement caught Otto’s attention. He snapped his head to the side.

Life as he knew it ceased to exist as the Frog Prince stepped into the dim light at the bottom of the staircase.

Children sang nursery rhymes about the monster in the water. Young girls and boys were warned about being snatched away to be the Frog Prince’s bride. The descriptions varied, but it was always something grotesque and terrifying. Otto had chased those stories into the forest.

Nothing could have truly prepared him, however. No words would have been adequate to explain what he was looking at.

Webbed feet and long, thin legs encased in ratty brown breeches that ended at the knee, stretching much too far above ground for it to be natural.

Narrow hips sat too high, a vine holding the waistband up.

A wide, puffed-out chest heaved with each breath, covered in a green waistcoat and a tailcoat that had traces of opulence hidden beneath the filth and destruction.

Every shade of green dappled his damp skin, patterns Otto couldn’t quite make out visible on the few areas where skin showed along his shins, hands, and feet. The rest of him was covered in a high-necked white shirt under the waistcoat and tailcoat.

His arms were just like his legs—elongated and unnatural, bent at the elbow and ending in four fingers with bulbous tips that cradled the frog Otto had saved. They looked spindly and delicate as they brushed over the frog’s body, but Otto feared the damage they could do would be enough to end him.

“You claim common sense,” the Frog Prince said slowly, “but come here alone, looking for a monster…”

Otto finally looked up and into his face for the first time.

An elongated oval-shaped head. A wide, dark-red mouth stretching to where ears would be if he had them. A flat, barely protruding nose, and huge, bulging, wide-set eyes in a shade of green Otto had never seen the equal of fixed on Otto’s face.

He was a trick of nature. A game magic had played and lost. Human enough not to be a frog, but frog enough to make everything human about him fade almost to nothing.

The prince took a step closer, holding Otto’s gaze now he had it, not allowing him to break free. Otto pressed himself back into the trunk, realizing his mistake too late. He’d trapped himself between two impenetrable obstacles.

The distance was closed in no more than a breath or two, leaving just enough room for the cloying air to move between them. Otto could taste his scent. Damp. Salty. Earthy.

“Have you looked your fill?” the Frog Prince asked, cold breath hitting Otto’s cheeks.

They were of a similar height, but the prince’s presence made him seem larger than life, weighted and imposing.

“I haven’t—”

“Seen anything like me before?” The Frog Prince leaned closer still, filling up his vision with green. Otto flinched, those sharp emerald eyes catching every moment of his panic. “Do I scare you, young master?”

Heat crawled into Otto’s cheeks, his heart thundering in his ears. He didn’t know if there was an answer he could give that would not end with him dead on the floor. “I…”

The Frog Prince watched him struggle, eyes still wandering over every inch of his face with unnerving languidness.

“I have kept these woods and the frogs here safe for many years.” He finally spoke again. “Do you think you can come here and hurt them?”

Otto swallowed the bile in his throat and shook his head once more. “I swear on the heavens I was helping,” he croaked. Bravery was much easier when your own doom wasn’t staring you right in the eye.

“The heavens have no place here. They turned their back on it long ago,” the Frog Prince whispered back.

Otto felt his knees shake, felt his eyes mist and his brain fog with the futility of it all. Was this it? Had he come all the way here just to be slain before he could even try? “I swear—”

The Frog Prince cut him off. “Have a seat.”

Otto sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Wh-what?”

“Sit,” he repeated, moving away and walking through the water toward the old well.

He didn’t touch it, only stared at it.

Otto’s knees gave out and he folded to the ground, sliding down the trunk he was leaning against. Dirty water seeped into his clothes and cape as he released a gust of air and tried to inhale again and again with little success.

“You can breathe,” the Frog Prince said with his back still turned, the tone flat and giving no indication as to his mood. “I have decided not to harm you. For now.”

Otto tried nodding, but realized his body was not cooperating with him. It was limp and unresponsive as he dry-heaved on the ground and curled around himself to try and settle his own nerves.

One breath.

Another.

One more.

Breathe.

He coached himself through it as he kept the creature in his peripheral vision.

He was sure he imagined the green glow that appeared and disappeared just as quickly before the prince was setting the small frog in his grasp onto the ground.

Otto watched in shock as it hopped merrily away, plopping into the water with not a single sign of injury.

“How…” he managed to get out over his panting.

The Frog Prince turned, wincing for a second as if in pain before he straightened up, making Otto sure he had imagined it entirely.

“I help my own,” he said simply.

A rush of hope flowed through Otto anew. If he could heal such an injury, then surely he could help him? He got back to his knees. “I need—”

“What is your name?” the prince asked.

Otto clicked his mouth shut. “What?”

“Your name?” His stare was unnerving and intense. “What did your parents name you?”

A name is a powerful thing that shouldn’t be given out so freely, for there are those who could use it against you. Otto could not recall where he had first heard that, but he had heeded it his whole life.

Here, he had no choice but to oblige.

“Otto.”

“Otto,” the Frog Prince said, like it meant something to say it out loud. Otto could not fathom why.

“Please, I need to—”

“Do you not wish to ask for my name in return?” He cut him off again, leaving Otto speechless once more.

“I know your name. Everyone does,” Otto said.

The prince smiled and looked away. “Of course. People call me the Frog Prince, do they not?”

“Yes.” Otto’s brow furrowed. “Is that not your name?”

“I know why you came,” the prince said instead of answering, taking a few steps to the side with his hands at his back. Had he always limped? “You are not the first, and I suspect you will not be the last.”

“My younger sister is sick,” Otto said, all thoughts of anything else wiped away.

The Frog Prince’s steps paused, and Otto was left holding his breath in suspense.

“What is it that you do for a living, Otto?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard what Otto had just told him. As if that piece of information meant little to him.

Otto felt his stomach churn and anger grow, but again, he contained himself. He had to get to the point where he could ask. He just had to rein himself in.

“I’m a healer.”

“A noble calling,” he said with another warped smile. “And you can’t help your sister?”

“I did everything I could.” Otto’s self-condemnation was threatening to eat him alive. “She’s always had a minor breathing condition, but now it’s progressed. She’s dying.”

He thought briefly of his other patients in the village and had to swallow more shame. He couldn’t risk asking for too much and being denied. He would live with the guilt and try harder for them if he returned. He just needed his sister safe first. Nothing mattered if she wasn’t around anymore.

“The loss of a young life is always tragic,” the Frog Prince said, voice void of any emotion.

“You can help!”

The Frog Prince leaned forward. “Can I?”

“People say you can,” Otto said desperately, shuffling closer on his knees through the mud and water. “They say you have magic that can make things happen.”

“I do have magic,” the Frog Prince said. “And I suppose you could say that magic can be used to…make things happen, as you so eloquently put it.”

“Will you, then?”

“Will I what?”

“Will you help her?”

The Frog Prince was quiet once again as he stared through him, leaving Otto in agony.

“I might,” he said eventually. “Or I might not. That would depend on you.”