Twenty-One
C in swallowed against the fear gathering at the back of his throat.
He glanced from the gaps in the castle’s crumbling walls to its hollow windows and the long gash of its front entrance, to the dark water surrounding it on all sides but the one he’d come down, yet he could find nothing in the shadows: no menacing silhouette or sparkle of magic that might give him a hint as to who he was speaking with.
Worse, he couldn’t tell where the voice had even come from.
Keeping his flock-creature at his back, he decided to hope for the best; his birds would not have brought him here had they thought this swamp creature would be the death of him.
Carefully, Cin answered, “I can leave, if you wish.”
“Would you really?” It was hard to tell from the way the voice creaked and echoed—so inhuman—but Cin thought he was being laughed at. Mocked. “And here I’d thought you’d come for a reason.”
Cin pushed back the flood of shame that accusation birthed.
He had not wasted all this time, left his family to fend for themselves, only to leave at the first sign of struggle.
If he was going to be here, then he was going to be here for himself.
He would have what he’d come for, whatever the cost.
For once, his sacrifices were going toward something selfish.
Cin felt every hope for his body blooming beneath his too-present breasts. Tears pricked at his eyes. He cleared his throat, trying not to look as though he was still a heartbeat and a half away from fleeing, and stated, “I have. I seek your magic.”
The swamp creature seemed to scoff at him, the sound echoing like a flurry of bullfrog croaks. “What do you have to offer me in return?”
It was the same question the elves had asked him, but as with them, he still had very little he could give. His flock’s humble offerings had been enough for kind-hearted Elias. Cin wasn’t so certain they would work on such a creature as this shadowy king of the swamps.
But he had to try.
“I have magic of my own—my flock, who brought me here, to you. Our services are at your disposal.”
“At my disposal, are they?” The growl rumbled through the space, everywhere and nowhere at once. “What good are birds to a lonely prince such as myself? There are creatures small and large aplenty here, and many are already mine.”
As the swamp dweller spoke, the water around them swelled.
Cin took an instinctive step further up the stairs as a hundred eyes pressed out of the dark water—frogs, staring up at him.
They leaped along the side of the well below and the empty brick sills of windows above, their eyes as sharp as Cin’s pigeons’.
Not the mythical Herr Candy, not a sorcerer, not even a demon—Cin should have guessed from the swamp alone, but the hundreds of frogs finally slid the last of the puzzle into place.
This was the realm of the one they called the Frog Prince, the elusive, young monster born in the last decade. He was said to spy through every pond, his powerful magic requiring an equally powerful sacrifice.
Cin had to find something he desired. Something worth the magic Cin wanted more than air—had wanted since the day he first cut the binding around his chest.
“My blade, then?” he shouted, glancing from one of the crumbling castle’s many gaps to the next, wishing he might catch a glimpse of the creature he was bargaining with through the foliage and the shadows. “If you have enemies, I can do my best to deal with them.”
“What enemies of mine do you think can catch me here?” The frog prince seemed bored by the very thought.
“Please, I came all this way.” Cin tried not to sound as desperate as he felt.
“There must be something you can take from me in trade.” They were dangerous words, but now that he was here, now that he’d admitted to himself what he wanted, even if the creature of the swamp didn’t yet know, he found he couldn’t leave without giving it his all.
Even if his all turned out to be everything.
“And some have come farther for more,” the frog prince replied.
Something within the castle’s main entrance shifted, a glint of green and then a sliding shadow, before the gloomy interior settled again.
When the voice came again it still echoed from everywhere.
“What are you here for, Pigeon Prince? Wealth? Power?”
“What would I do with either of those?” Cin asked.
His family had been wealthy once, and squandered that perfectly fine the first time.
They’d been powerful once too, and now they were all but forgotten.
Even princes—the regular, mortal ones—like Adalwin could be vanished or killed in an instant despite everything they had, or sometimes because of it.
Still, the frog prince made a sound of disbelief. “Easier said than lived.”
“The whole of the eligible kingdom is fighting for the prince’s hand like he’s worth nothing more than his privileges,” Cin replied. “I have sought neither from him, even if he might have offered them to me.”
A moment of silence stretched, even the frogs hushing as though with an intake of breath, and Cin worried he’d said something wrong. When the monster of the swamp spoke again, it was softer, a bristling hush to his voice. “What do you know of the Hallinisch Prince?”
Cin could feel a sparkle of magic in the air, like the tension before a great storm. It felt like a test. One he could not risk losing.
Yet, he could not lie to the Frog Prince either.
“I know that Prince Lorenz is kinder than he appears, as thoughtful as he is witty and as empathetic as he is flirtatious. He is so much more sensitive than his persona would imply. Where others are concerned, he is far braver than anyone notices, yet he’s not selfish enough to stand up for what he deserves,” Cin said, hoping with every word that Lorenz knew it.
“He’s worth more than any of those power-hungry bastards vying for his hand.
He should be able to choose a partner in his own time, and not one right for the kingdom, but one right for him. ”
Just as quiet and strained as before, the frog prince asked, “And you think that should be you?”
The thought was a spear between Cin’s ribs, running deeper and more miserable than any physical pain his own chest could produce. “He wouldn’t—”
The frog prince cut him short. “So, you’re not here for power or wealth. You’re here for love.”
“I would never force him to love me.” Cin shook his head, a shudder crawling up his spine.
“I know he won’t care for me as more than a friend, but I wouldn’t ask him to feel anything that isn’t in his nature.
He deserves better than to be bound by magic into something he’s not. I would never ask that of him.”
“You are truly his friend.” The strain seemed to break partway through the frog prince’s statement, turning gentle with a croak and a snap. A shadow swayed within the castle’s main entrance.
For a moment, Cin imagined he could see the swamp’s monster, rotting away in this dying place. Alone. Whatever happened, Cin prayed that never became the case for him. “I am,” he said, and wished it could always be the truth.
“What, then, do you want, Pigeon Prince?” It sounded less like a demand now, and more a question, simple and solid.
“I wish for my body to feel like a home, instead of a house.” Cin took a breath, dwelling in the unwanted weight of his breasts, the pain between his ribs, the wrongness of it all.
“Have you ever felt that? That there’s some part of you that isn’t right for you to inhabit?
But you’re forced to bear it anyway, by some ruthless twist of fate, to be reminded every minute of every day that you are a foreigner to your own flesh? ”
The shadow moved again, and this time, Cin could make out a silhouette against the darkness: long, gangly legs and spindly fingers, his head and torso hidden by the foliage. The frog prince’s voice, as inhuman as it was, sounded pained as he spoke. “How do you know this new you will feel right?”
Cin closed his eyes, and imagined everything he wanted coming to pass.
He felt, as always, so many, many things.
And as always, one of them was fear. Fear he didn’t want to admit to; fear that regardless of what he did, nothing could make this right.
That it was an affliction trapped deep in his bones and it would just come back again.
He knew this present, its pains and its flaws, and there was comfort in that.
But not enough comfort.
“I don’t know whether it will be right for me,” Cin said, finally, and the fear drained with each word. “But it can’t be more wrong than this. So I have to try.”
He had to try—to try for a better him, a better future, one he wanted. If it was a sin to be selfish in this, then damn him. Cin would find what was right for himself, one way or another.
“Then take this.” The shadow shifted once more, and from within the castle a small, round object rolled forth. Dirt and moss slipped from its sides as Cin hesitantly retrieved it. Beneath the grime, he was met with a shimmer of golden magic.
Another test?
“Drop it into the well,” the frog prince commanded.
A test, or a trick. Cin had little hope for anything else.
But that little hope was bright in his chest, pulled taut between his own wants and the way this mysterious monster had reacted to them, as he too knew what it was like to be something he was not, and Cin clung to that. “What will I owe you?”
The shadow of the swamp’s monster shifted again. “From you, I will ask only that you continue to care for that prince of yours,” he said. “Prove that he is worth all that you say.”
Cin’s body for... his continued befriending of the prince?
Cin wasn’t sure he could parse out the why of it, but he was too afraid that if he asked, the kind offer would be revoked.
He’d touched something inside this lonely swamp monster, and that monster had responded in turn.
Cin’s throat caught at the thought of it: everything he’d wanted, but saw no way to take, in exchange for everything else he needed.
To continue his relationship with Prince Lorenz would be so easy, so perfectly, terribly easy, and yet so very very hard at the same time.
Whether he knew it or not, the monster of the swamp was asking Cin to abandon his family—little by little, over months and years—and trade his time with them for that with the prince. They would hate him for it, question him, demand things of him that he couldn’t give. And yet…
The more Cin allowed himself to imagine it, laughing with Prince Lorenz, lying in the grass beside him, watching his face as he teased and flirted and cursed in the heat of passion, taking care of him when he hurt and listening to him the way he’d done for Cin that night—that seemed worth any pain his family could inflict.
And besides, he’d have a body that didn’t pain him for it.
He had come all this way.
Cin carefully unbound Perdition from his chest, and Rags and Lacey carried her sling back to the safety of his mount.
They all waited there, watching him. He gripped the magic orb tighter as he stepped back down the steps and leaned over the side of the well.
With one last, deep, pained breath, he dropped it in.
No sound came—no sign that it had slid into the dark water below—but a shimmer of light burst forth, pushing Cin back. Stars swarmed his vision. His limbs went numb, then tingled back to life as the world swayed back into place around him.
He could barely breathe—could barely think. His body—it felt wrong, and that—
That felt right, somehow.
Cin crept his hands around his chest, expecting still, despite everything, to be wrong.
But his chest was flat beneath his palms, as flat as it had ever been with the tightened bindings that took his breath away, only now he was coming to himself enough to open his lungs.
.. and open they did. Cin inhaled, deep and strong, meeting no pain, no resistance, just the soft pressure of his lighter chest.
A sob slipped out of him, but unlike all the other tears that day, this held only joy. He could feel himself smiling, his cheeks pinched and the edges of his eyes pressed together, but he couldn’t help himself. This was real. This was him.
And somehow, the monster from the swamps had given it to him.
Cin scrambled back to the base of the steps, grinning into the shadows as he clutched at his chest, just to prove to himself it was still right, still so perfect. “Thank you!”
“Remember your end of the bargain.” The frog prince’s voice grew distant as he spoke, and Cin caught only the glint of green eyes before he vanished into the ruins.
He knew the monster was gone, could feel it, somehow. The deal was done. Cin had a new task to be completed, a new price to be paid.
And all that it entailed was everything he’d always wanted. It was equal in cost; Cin could spend his life caring for Prince Lorenz, and never have it be enough. But the problem was, Cin didn’t know how to have a life with Prince Lorenz.
Right now, all he knew he could claim with confidence was a week.