Page 45 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

Twenty

Alwin

“ I s this how the entire trip will be?” Gisela asked from her side of the modest, rickety carriage.

The villagers had jointly gifted it as a thank-you for being healed by Otto, taking the time to repair it after it had sat gathering dust for years. No one had a need for a carriage or the money to pay for its upkeep when you could barely afford to eat.

Alwin had been uncomfortable accepting it and had tried reasoning with them until Liesel and Brigit unified into a terrifying maternal force and shoved all three of them inside, slamming the door and telling Otto to “get it together.”

So…together, he got it. And they were on their way, Otto seated on one side with Alwin stretched out along the seat with his head in his lap and Otto’s hands in his hair, playing with the soft black strands.

“Yes.” Alwin nodded, cracking an eye open to look at Gisela on the other seat, laughing at Farwin trying to imitate Otto’s movements in her own hair, making it tangle and stick up every which way.

“I believe I preferred you two skulking about the forest.” She huffed, but the smile at the corners of her lips gave her away.

“Lies,” Otto said.

She rolled her eyes at them, moving her foot to let Jurgen waddle over to the other end of the carriage. He had been doing that since they started their journey—trying to find the best bit of the floor to rest on while refusing to be lifted up to sit on the benches with them.

The road between Otto’s village and Hallin was a long, bumpy one, and each mile they covered made Alwin feel less and less relaxed.

No matter the outcome, he would get to see his home again.

The hallways he had spent his childhood haunting like their staff’s biggest nightmare.

The rooms he had learned, played, and grown up in.

The people who had spent their lives keeping him safe and fed and warm and, in the cases of some of his more outrageous ideas, alive.

He’d see his mother and father. Feel their arms around him and their voices telling him they had missed him. And he’d see Lorenz, who was an adult now. Happy and thriving and in love with his own sunshine.

That was the dream. The fantasy that had kept Alwin warm in his years of solitude…

“What if they don’t want me?” he whispered without preamble, voicing the fear that festered inside of him.

Otto’s hand stilled. “Alwin…”

“What if they take one look at me and decide they have shaped their lives around the empty space I left and they don’t need me to fill it anymore?”

Otto smoothed his hair back and pulled until Alwin was sitting up and facing him.

“They shaped their lives around a gaping chasm where you used to be and learned how to move around it so it wouldn’t swallow them.

But they want it filled. They want you back so their steps don’t have to be careful anymore.

So their eyes don’t land on darkness when they turn to look for you.

So that silence isn’t what replies when they call out for you.

They want you back, Alwin, because they miss you. ”

Alwin’s fragile heart was in his throat. “Promise?”

Otto leaned in to kiss his forehead. “I promise.”

Alwin begged his brain to be soothed by the words. Calmed by his sunshine. Nobody could settle his worries like Otto, but there was still that lurking doubt that would never leave him, ready to pounce on his insecurities as soon as he lowered a wall.

He sighed and relaxed into Otto’s embrace, closing his eyes and continuing to dream of home. His kingdom. His palace. His people. And his family. All with Otto by his side. Alwin felt like he finally had everything he had yearned for all those lonely winters at the glen.

It felt too good to be true.

“Your thinking is so loud, my prince,” Otto whispered an indeterminate amount of time later.

Alwin opened his eyes to find Gisela asleep, her head resting against the side of the carriage, and Farwin with his eyes closed, still tangled in her hair.

“I can’t really help it,” he murmured, not wanting to wake her. He raised his own head from Otto’s shoulder and gave him his best attempt at a smile. “My mind won’t stop spinning every mile we draw closer. I’m finally going home.”

“Long overdue—”

Otto’s words were interrupted by their carriage screeching to a halt and a cacophony of sounds coming from outside. Alwin tensed, shifting over and peeking through the gap in the curtain of the small window.

People were gathering around the carriage, dirty riding cloaks over their shoulders. Alwin thought he glimpsed a familiar flash of green and gold before he pulled back.

Gisela startled from her sleep, dislodging Farwin, who looked incredibly displeased about it. Jurgen had not even stirred. “What is happening?”

“We are stopping for some reason.” Otto parted the curtain slightly and leaned out to see what was going on.

“Kurt? Albert?” he called out to one of the older farm boys from the village who had been tasked with getting them to Hallin. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“We’re being stopped by a group of people under the Hallin flag,” Kurt said, appearing on foot. Alwin froze in place. Green and gold. Hallin. “They seem to be saying it’s a routine inspection of the merchant cart ahead. They’re looking for someone.”

“A criminal?” Gisela asked.

It seemed neither of them knew, but Alwin couldn’t hear anything anymore. His mind was full again.

“Couldn’t catch too much,” Albert said, still holding the reins. “But I am sure we will have this sorted in a second. Looks like they’re just checking faces—”

“No!” Alwin’s legs stiffened with the need to spring from the carriage and into the forest.

He wasn’t ready yet. He wanted this so much, and yet he wasn’t ready. To be turned down, to be rejected when all he wanted was to go home.

“Alwin,” Otto called gently, leaning back into the carriage and touching his hand as if he would break.

Alwin knew his eyes were wild when he faced him, trying to speak without words.

“Who do you have in there?” A voice came from behind Kurt and he startled, turning his back to the carriage window and trying to block Alwin from view. Loyal without even knowing why. Alwin wished he could whisk the entire village away to a better life.

“Just a few people from my village going to Hallin,” Kurt said.

“For what purpose?” the person asked, and something about the voice sounded so familiar to Alwin as he hid. He had heard it before. He was certain.

“Healer’s apprentice hoping to learn from Hallin’s healers,” Albert said casually—the story they had agreed upon should someone ask where they were heading.

“And this healer’s apprentice, can he not speak for himself?”

Alwin felt Otto stiffen at his side before he shuffled over to lean back out, further blocking Alwin from view with his large frame.

“He can,” he said. “I was asleep and only just woke up. What seems to be the problem?”

There was a tense moment of silence as Otto’s words were assessed.

“We are looking for someone. We have reason to believe he will be traveling this road today.”

“Ah,” Otto said. “Well unless it is me you’re looking for, I am afraid I can’t help you.”

“Is it just you in there?”

“And my sister. She does sleep like the dead. Little wakes her. If you want—”

“No need,” the voice said, sounding frustrated and tired.

Otto nodded, pulling himself back inside. He was about to close the curtain when Alwin finally glimpsed over his shoulder.

His eyes widened, his breath froze in his lungs, and his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. He knew that face. He knew that golden hair and those red lips.

Cin.

And if he was here, then…

“Lorenz,” Alwin whispered. His hands shook as he placed them on Otto’s shoulders to keep himself from falling apart.

He stared at Cin as he talked to a group of men and women behind him, and then watched as if time had slowed down as he turned back toward their carriage. Setting his eyes on Otto’s face. Then his neck. And finally his shoulder where Alwin’s decidedly non-human hand lay.

“Frog Prince.”

The words echoed through the forest—a whisper in actuality, but in Alwin’s head, a shout from the mountaintop.

Cinder rushed toward their carriage. “I knew my flock led me here for a reason. Do you know where…”

He stopped, frozen in his tracks. Eyes wide. Mouth slack. And looking right at Alwin. At his face. His pink skin and the same green eyes he saw on his lover’s face each time he looked at him.

“Prince Adalwin?” Cin said, voice shaking as realization settled. “It’s you. You’re… How?”

Alwin swallowed against the panic rising in his throat and nodded, trying to speak. Trying to say anything. Explain things.

“Is he here?” was the only thing he managed to push past his lips. The only thing his mind would allow him to focus on.

“Yes.” Cinder looked to his side and nodded to someone. The men and women shuffled around, making space to let someone through.

Someone who came running.

Alwin had a distinct vision of a child bursting through his door searching for him to play. Wayward hair and a smile so big it threatened to fall off his face. Always running from here to there, never wanting to stop.

This person ran straight through it, shattering the image into a thousand pieces and leaving behind someone Alwin wasn’t fully familiar with anymore.

“Cinder? What did you find?” the man asked, hope weaving through the words. “Is it him? Is it…”

“Lorenz,” Alwin whispered, rushing to turn his collar up over his marks and tuck his hands into his pockets out of sight.

“Do you want privacy?” Otto whispered.

Alwin shook his head. “Stay, please.”

He needed him there. He would need someone who knew him to remind him that he was worthy if Lorenz shunned him.

“I might go introduce myself to the handsome men of Hallin,” Gisela said tactfully, slipping out of the carriage on the other side and disappearing from view before either of them could say anything.