Chapter Text

Susanna was done. Her life was boring. She never got to do anything. And when she turned of legal age, her father the King would marry her off to some other boorheaded prince like all the ones she knew, just to keep perpetuating the boring. He never even let her fight in any of the battles! So, she packed her bags and left her stuffy princess life to find adventure.

It would only take about a month before treacherous thoughts that longed for a comfortable bed and good food crept into her mind again. However, she would not be swayed. Gathering up what little of her rations she had left, she strengthened her resolve and kept trekking through the woods. Luckily, she wouldn't have to travel much farther, as within a couple more days she came across a sea port with its own lord.

The port had been opened originally for humans to move cargo, but eventually became an icon in trade, whether it be from humans or monsters alike. Many found lifelong enemies and powerful friends there. Anyone could make it in Borgestad, if you had the right connections.

Susanna had no connections. However, what she lacked in street intelligence, she made up for in muscle power. Soon, disguised as a common boy, she had scored a small job loading and unloading the ships as they came through the piers. The other workers were astounded by her strength, and eventually her employer wrote her a recommendation to the Lord Raposo's Guard. Still disguised as a boy, she passed entrance with flying colors. Thus is how Sargon the Knight came to be.

But of course, that's all just padding for the main story.

It had been three years since Susanna had entered the Guard, and somehow she still had to struggle a little to keep up with the well-polished Knights that were her peers. Hopefully she never let it show, but every full moon she would sneak out to the freshwater river around the back end of the castle and quietly vent her frustrations out to passing fish, who all burbled happily until she felt better.

Was it girly? Yes. Would she be in trouble if she were caught doing so? Yes.

Did she care? Not a bit.

“...and then Reaper told me I should be guarding the chicken pens! Can you believe that?” Susanna perched her snout on her hands, pouting. “It's like none of them believe in me. Haven't I proven myself over and over that I'm ready for the bigger jobs?” She leaned over, picking up a frog sitting near the base of her foot. It was a cute frog, had a spot like a heart in the center of its forehead. “Hey, Frogface, do you have any answers? I'm a girl in plight and I'm desperate.”

“Well, I think--” the frog started.

Susanna choked out a scream, sliding backwards off the rock she was perched on with an Oof! Several nearby birds took to the air, startled.

“Ow! Well, then forget it if you're going to be like that!” The frog, looking somewhat affronted, turned and began to hop away.

Although still reeling from the initial shock, the girl lurched up and forward from her landing spot, reaching back out for the frog. “Wait, wait, wait, wait! I'm sorry, I just wasn't expecting you to answer! Are you alright?”

Cupped in her hand, the frog was still grumpy, but seemed to have at least calmed down a little bit. “I'm fine, thanks.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Susanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, now can you please inform me as to why the hell you're a talking frog?”

“I dunno, why the hell are you a girl in the military?”

“It's complicated!”

“Exactly!”

“I asked first, ass!”

“Alright! Persistent, huh? Not a trait I see too often.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing!” The frog drew itself up a little higher. “If you have to know, I'm a prince. From the Northern kingdoms.”

Surprisingly, Susanna found herself pulling on an old geography memory from when she was learning with her governess. “The Icy Mountains? Across the sea?”

“Them's the ones. We handle a lot of sea trade and fishing, all run by my father of the Dreemurr clan. I'm the middle child, Kristopher.”

“...What?”

“Yep! I was out exploring with my cousin when we ran across a witch frozen in a glacier. She couldn't move, but somehow she could still tell we were there, and an enchantment was hurling at Razz's face before either of us knew it. I took the hit, though, and fell into the water. Almost died before getting picked up in the drifts of a ship. I rested and warmed in the cellar, scrounged for food when I could, and when we docked, I got off at the port you've been guarding the lord of so diligently. Came to this stream, got grabbed, and now we're talking!”

“A witch in a...wait, this sounds ridiculous! How do I know you're not just lying to me and saying whatever so I'll like you more?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Why wouldn't you? You don't seriously expect me to believe you're an enchanted prince.”

“I have literally nothing to lose.”

Susanna considered that. “Fine. So...how are you supposed to get rid of this spell?”

Kristopher shrunk a little in her palm. “I don't know,” he mumbled.

“Excuse me?!”

“I don't know! My mother was trying to teach me about magic and stuff, but I always got bored and never paid any attention! Aw, man, all I wanted was a little adventure! Why did I leave the house?”

His bemoaning was sounding dangerously close to Susanna when she was still traveling, and something about it got to her a little despite her better judgement. “Well, if it means you get home faster and away from me, I could help you.”

The look on the little frog's face was as if a thousand rainbows had lit up all at once in the midnight sky. “Really?? You'd do that??”

“I mean, I'm pretty sure Lord Raposo keeps some old magic books in his library, so I could sneak in there during a break in shift and see if he has the answer to your problem.”

Kristopher smiled wide, then pulled himself into what might have been an elegant royal bow had he not been a frog. “It would be an honor to be assisted by a maiden as beautiful as you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” Her heart had picked up pace a little.

The young prince's smile never once slipped. “Well, since we're being so informal with each other, you can call me Kris. What's your name?”

“Sargon.”

“Your real name.”

She could have slapped herself. Reflex. “Susanna,” she finally answered. “But...you can call me Susie."

Three days. It was three days before castle shifts had rotated around to give Susie the optimal position to get into the library. Today, Kris had accompanied her, hidden in the folds of the red scarf she wore standard with her armor. “I need to be able to physically read the spell if I'm going to use it,” he had explained. “Playing Messenger with a spell won't work unless the caster uses it on me verbally first.”

“And how is it that you remember that?” she had inquired, to which she had gotten a noncommittal shrug.

Now, she really hoped she could pull off a feat like this in broad daylight without getting questioned or detained. Watching the pacing of the guards, Susie timed her approaches with what her fellow Guards could survey, occasionally hiding in a nook in the wall. Honestly, for as strong and agile as they were, her fellow day guards did not hold up to standard this time.

Eventually, she made it through the library doors, quietly shutting them behind her to the crack they were open. She had never been in there before, and the size surprised her. It was quite large, but the sheer amount of shelves made everything past the few first feet feel cramped. Books of all ages and sizes sat neatly in seemingly no real order all over the shelves. This was going to be harder than she had originally thought.

Kris, who had remained helpfully silent, now commented “Nice collection this man has.”

“Yeah, I never would have guessed he was the type to read. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't know anything about Raposo.”

“You've met him before, though, right?”

“...No.”

“But he's your employer!”

“I know! I don't think I've ever seen him before!”

“Does he even exist?”

“Considering how well I'm paid, he better be real.” Susie passed through another row of shelves, still not sure what she was looking for, and almost kicked a small dog in the middle of the aisle. “Shoot!”

“What?”

“It's Raposo's dog! I almost stepped on the little guy!” She frantically started looking around to see if anyone saw. “Oh, man, if this thing starts barking, we're dead!”

The dog, a fluffy white, sat patiently and gave a happy little yip.

“Wait,” Kris said.

“We just got in here, too! I'm gonna lose my job!”

“Susie, wait!”

“What??”

“That is Raposo!!”

She did a double take, staring in disbelief at her amphibian companion. His ruby eyes gave away no jokes. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“How do you know?”

“He said.”

The dog yipped an affirmative, wagging his tail.

“Is...is he enchanted, too?”

“Nope.”

“A monster?”

“No. He's just a dog.”

“So then--” Her brain was stuttering. “--how does he have a lordship? A castle? How does he have all these books?”

The dog gave a shake of his fur.

Kris gave a translation: “He says we should look near the back of the library for what we want. He won't say any more than that.”

Still unsure if maybe there were some bad mushrooms in her breakfast, Susie gave a low bow to the little dog. “Er, thank you...my lord.”

The dog yipped once more, rubbed against her leg until he was pet, then bounded away.

Numbly, the girl realized that Borgestad was a much stranger place than she had originally thought. Delving through the numerous shelves at the back of the library only deepened that notion, as she found books on subjects she had never even heard of. “'Applied Seismology, Fifth Edition'? What use does a dog have for these weird books? What is 'coding'?”

“You can read?” Kris called from several shelves above her.

Realizing too late that commoners normally couldn't read or write, Susie racked her brain for a quick excuse: “Don't tell me that's another trait you don't normally see in us lower-class girls.”

“Why did you have to say it like that? I was just surprised. Good on your family for teaching you.”

Okay, it had come out a bit defensive. “Yeah, I can read. I can write, too.”

He gave as good of an impressed whistle as weird frog lips could give. “And you decided to become a guard? You could have been a scholar! Or a really good con artist.”

“Please, I'm not that much of a bitch.”

Kris didn't respond.

“You know what, maybe I am, but I didn't want to do those things.”

“Ahh, so you just wanted to rebel a little.”

“...So what if I did? Are you saying I'm wrong?”

“I never said that.”

Again, needlessly defensive. Susie needed to calm down. “Sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you--”

“Holy crap!”

She looked up, concerned. “What is it? Kris?” When he didn't answer, she ran and grabbed the ladder from the side of the aisle, pulling it over as fast as she could and climbing up to meet the frog. When she reached his height, she found him trying his hardest to pull a thick volume out of its neat space on the shelf, which wasn't proving at all effective. “Here, I've got it.” She offered her shoulder, which he hopped safely onto, and she pulled the book and climbed back down, sitting down on the floor. “What is this?”

Kris jumped down next to her. “It's a book my mother always kept in her personal library. My brothers and I used to stare at them and try to guess what was inside. It was the only part of the house we never figured out how to break into.” He ran his webbed hand down the spine. “My brothers and I tried everything we knew. We said that we would find out what was in there someday.” He was trembling slightly now, his entire body slouched in misery.

Susie's heart sank seeing how much he clearly missed them. “Well, when we get you back, you can tell them all about what's inside, okay?”

That seemed to make him feel a little better, and he perked up a little. “Yeah. Yeah, that will be fun! Man, the looks on their faces when I tell them I've seen it...”

She was glad that he would be okay. “Then let's take a little break and look inside.” Carefully, she opened the leather cover, which creaked as if it hadn't been opened in a long time. “'Old Mystic Artes, their Uses, their Preventatives, and their Countermeasures', huh? What a mouthful. Sure, it's thorough, but you'd at least think they'd cut it back to--” Then, it hit her. Eyes wide, she glanced at the frog, who seemed to have had the same realization. Furiously, she began turning through pages and glancing at spells while Kris, unable to contain his excitement, started hopping around in anticipation.

Susie almost missed it. She had been looking for the word “frog”, like a fool, and skipped right past what she was looking for before immediately backtracking. “HA!” she exclaimed in victory.

Kris, who had hopped himself halfway down the aisle, came all the way back and perched on her kneeplate. “What does it say?! What's that look on your face?”

For while he had been making his way back, Susie had started reading the page on “Cursed Amphibious Metamorphosis”, and was currently feeling slightly sick. “So...this spell can only be performed perfectly, without complications, by a very powerful caster. Its cures are dubious at best, because no one has been able to perform it well enough to truly test whether or not they'll work.”

“But my transformation was practically perfect.”

“Exactly. That's scary.” She swallowed and continued. “This curse has two cures, one of which is medicinal and the other circumstantial, although the circumstantial one is far less reliable than the medicinal one.”

“What's the medicinal one?”

“Gross.”

“And?”

“Morally wrong.”

“Susie.”

“Ugh, fine! It's three moonblossoms, a bit of webbing from the toes of the frog in question, a pot of spring water, and...a bowl full of the guts of a maiden, all boiled into a single mixture for a fortnight nonstop.”

“What...” The frog prince had curled into himself in revulsion. “Who came up with this?”

“I guess we'll have to kill someone.”

He gave an angry squeak that was too adorable to be intimidating. “Hell no! No murder!”

“How long is a fortnight? Two days?”

“Two weeks.”

“Oh.” That made two weeks longer than she would have liked. “Yeah, this seems like a very bad idea.”

“What's our other option?”

“Laughable at best.”

“Go on.”

“It's...” At this one, Susie found she had to hold in her incredulous giggles. “It's a kiss from someone of royal lineage who loves the one that's been cursed in a romantic sense.”

Kris was silent for a moment. “It says romantic?”

“Yep.”

“No loopholes?”

“Your mother can't do it, Kris.”

“Well. I guess I'm doomed to be a frog forever.”

“Yeah, I-I guess.”

“Why are you laughing?”

At that, she burst out in the ugliest sound she had ever heard. “I'm sorry!” she gasped. “It's just—who wrote this? Who was being so serious when they were writing this down? A kiss from royalty, yeah, that'll fix you right up! Come back soon!”

He smiled. “It is kind of ridiculous.” The smile grew until he was laughing right along with her, another ugly sound that created a cacaphony when mixed with hers. This in turn made them laugh even harder, until it seemed like the entire library was alive with their amusement.

Sure, it seemed strange with what they had just found out. But, really, what else did they have left?

Kris decided he was going to stay with Susie because, as he put it, “nothing helps being cursed forever like having a friend”. When asked if he would return to his family soon, he didn't answer. Susie was beginning to learn that when he stayed quiet, he was upset.

That didn't mean that he ever forgot about them, though. Over the next few months, he told her all sorts of stories about the mischief he got into with his brothers, including the time he managed to make exotic flowers grow out of the castle walls in the middle of winter and make everyone sneeze so much that the healers had to work overtime for a week. Every one of his tales ended in his mother somehow finding out and at least two of the brothers being punished (albeit not severely), and they were so ridiculous at times that they would leave Susie in stitches. She returned with a few of her own stories from when she was little, although changing them in places to not sound like any more than a common girl, which was surprisingly easier than she thought it would be. Through this, they learned quite a lot about each other, like how, despite working on boats for close to six months, Susie was afraid of drowning, and how Kris had always loved chocolate but hated most other sweet things.

Without realizing, they became each other's closest friends and confidantes, with the exception of a couple things they each could tell they were hiding but were afraid to share. Those they left alone until they knew they were ready to share them. How silly they both found it, that a female knight and a cursed prince could be best friends!

However, it was during a routine shift one day at dusk that the strength of their bond would really show.

Susie's peers were sparring amongst themselves to pass the time. They were on a really boring shift on the outer perimeter, which meant no one would bother them. This was the only place any of the knights would train like this because they feared Lord Raposo a little, but after meeting the fluffy dog, Susie had lost that same sense of mystery. It made her a bit sad.

In any case, the two dueling it out currently were Reaper and Sting, a lanky crane monster and a giant wasp, respectively. The third, Danios, a human, was standing to the side and egging them on. As they watched, Reaper went to lunge, missed, and was swatted in the hand by Sting's hilt. The sword came clattering to the floor. Sting, elated, buzzed a couple of quick victory laps around everyone's heads. “Finally, I won!”

“Nice going, Sting!” Danios clapped enthusiastically.

Reaper, although he grumbled a little bit, was a good sport about it. “Alright, you two, it's your turn.”

Danios nodded and grabbed his sword, walked to the clearing, then turned and waited. And waited. “Sargon. SARGON!”

Susie jumped. “Right!” Admittedly, she hadn't been paying much attention to the fight; Kris had been whispering to her about the time his cousin came over and managed to turn around all of the pranks he and his brother had planned for him. “Cool, good job, Sting. Sorry. I'm coming.” She grabbed her sword and started to head over.

“Hey!” Reaper called. “Your frog should stay with us!”

“Oh, right!” A little embarrassed, she gently lifted Kris off her shoulder. As she placed him in Reaper's feathery hands, he winked, letting her know he would be alright. She smiled, heart satisfied. “Make sure he's okay,” she said to the other knight.

“Sure thing,” Reaper reassured her.

She nodded her thanks and turned back to join Danios. Once they faced each other, they bowed and took their stances. She was nervous, obviously. Danios was one of the better fighters of the rookie guard, and her fighting style still hadn't fully adjusted to the big sword in her hand. Her fingers itched for her hand axes, but they were carefully packed away with the rest of her few personal belongings. But, taking a deep breath, she told herself that if lords could be dogs and frogs could be princes, then she could beat one fellow knight in a fair fight.

The two opponents circled each other carefully. Both left-handed, both about the same height and age. One human, one monster. One boy, one girl.

But only one of them needed to know that last part.

Danios took the first lunge. Susie barely sidestepped it and tried to trip him, but he anticipated it, shifting his weight to jump backwards and clipping her in the leg. She stumbled, but managed to keep her balance. He came and pressed again, and this time she raised her sword to meet it, catching it with her hilt. It was a little awkward, and her arm jolted slightly, but she kept her ground. He gained a little, pressed, then pushed, finally getting her to slip. Shit. She had forgotten just how good he was. Before she hit the ground, he pulled her around by the arm and got her into a hold, not tight enough to really hurt, but enough for her to have to surrender.

Just as she was about to give, however, she caught movement by the wall in the corner of her eye and managed to look over. Reaper was trying to hold Kris out of the way of Sting, who was buzzing around attempting to grab the poor frog. As she watched, Sting snatched Kris out of the crane's hands, holding him roughly and shaking him.

Her vision went red with rage for a moment, and before she knew it, she had thrown poor Danios off her, pulled off her helmet, ran over to the other two knights, and punched Sting in the side so hard he flew straight into the stone wall and bounced onto the grass. Kris fell out of his hands at contact, and she picked him up with the utmost care while saying some quite vile things that she wouldn't remember later. Without even waiting for a response, she cupped her friend to her chest and sprinted as fast as she could to the river.

At her usual rock, she looked over the frog lying in her hands. He was awake, at least, and breathing alright. “I'll probably just have a little bruising for a while. I'm okay, Suse, I swear! Seriously, you don't have to check over every part of me!”

Susie stopped. “Okay. I'm sorry. I just...” She wiped her eyes, only then realizing that she was crying. “He had you so tightly, I thought you were really hurt...”

“Oh...” Kris pulled himself up and crawled up onto her wrist. “It's alright. I'm gonna be fine.”

“Okay.”

They sat like that for a moment, while she calmed herself down and his pain lessened even more as the shock went away. He was okay. He was going to be okay. Susie had to keep telling herself this for a good minute before her blood pressure would believe it. She had been so worried...what would she have done if he really was hurt? No one would have helped her care for a frog, she didn't know how to heal people...he could have died. He could have died, and then she'd be alone again. She'd have no one, just like before, except it would be so much harder, because for a while, she had let herself have a friend. Someone she knew better than anyone else. That she wanted with her. That she...that she loved.

But he was okay. He was okay, and that was all that mattered. Finally breathing a shaking sigh of relief, Susie gave her friend a warm smile. “I'm glad you're okay,” she whispered, and acting entirely on impulse, she lifted him up and kissed his forehead, right on the little heart mark.

He shivered and jumped a little under the unexpected touch. “What was that?”

“What did you think it was?”

“It felt like you burned me!”

“What??”

“Jeez, who knew you were gonna add on to my pain?” Kris rubbed his head, obviously miffed. Note to self: frog kisses burn, apparently. The little red heart mark was standing out a little bit, like he really had been burned. As Susie watched, though, it started to glow.

Glow??

Glow!!!

It got brighter and brighter, until the light wrapped entirely around the amphibian in her palm, becoming a twisting ball of light that grew and grew, and then it burst outwards like the petals of a flower, revealing, in the light of the setting sun...

A prince.

A human prince, with brown hair that grew unruly over his face, and a pale fur cloak and boots adorning a warm ice-blue traveling outfit. He was mischievous and handsome, and yet, when he opened his ruby eyes, Susie recognized the same person she knew and loved with all her heart.

They stared at each other for a moment, shocked. And then they both realized what had happened. Susie stood straight up, face absolutely candescent, and tried to say something to her equally flushed friend. Her equally flushed and very cute friend. She also noticed that she was a few inches taller than him, which somehow made everything so much better and so much worse. “Uh...” Neither was sure which had said it.

Finally, Kris managed to utter a “Thank you”. She just nodded in return.

Awkward silence.

Then, something seemed to hit him, and his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “Wait...so, if the book was right this entire time, does this mean that you're of royal lineage?”

...Well, there it was, wasn't it? “Um.”

“Susie.”

“Maybe...?”

“Susanna!”

“Okay, yes! I'm a princess! That's a...thing!”

“I have so many more questions now!”

“Look, I left home a few years ago, okay?” She felt suddenly ashamed. “I was bored. Decided I wanted to do my own thing. I told myself I didn't want to go back, but ever since I left, that's all that's been sitting there, in the back of my head. I...miss my parents. I miss everyone.”

“If you miss them, why did you stay away?”

“Because I'm ridiculously stubborn, especially to myself.”

Kris paused. “True. But...” He stepped forward and hugged her. “It somehow led to us meeting, so it can't have been all bad.”

It was real. He felt so real. Susie laughed, wrapping her arms around him in return, and then lifting him off the ground and spinning him about. When his feet touched the ground again, he surprised her by sweeping her off her feet and carrying her in his arms.

“I AM WEARING FIFTY POUNDS OF METAL,” she protested.

“Eh,” he said, spinning them deftly in a circle, “I've lifted heavier.”

If the situation hadn't already made it painfully obvious, this cemented that Susie was absolutely in love.