“Then go.Let the wind lift your feet.”
“Aye, Sir.”He leapt upon his horse’s back, and the two of them raced for the castle.
Riven watched them go for a moment, then resumed collecting garbage from the muck.It was hard work and physically taxing on his tiny frame.Frogs were simply not built for this type of labor.
A rusty pitchfork speared out of the mud, and try as he might, Riven could not wrest it free of the pond’s grip.He was in need of air, yet almost too tired to surface for it.He was a wastrel, just as his mother claimed.He had nothing to offer anyone.Bella was gone, hopefully safely at home, where one of her numerous suitors would win her heart and give her the life he never could.
Frogs did not marry.
Frogs could not bear human children.
Riven missed Bella tremendously.
She was everything he had ever hoped to find, everything he ever wanted in a woman.
But he was a frog.A frog who would be dead within a week.
He would not drag her into his quagmire and ruin her chance of happiness.
The thought did not reassure him.
Riven kicked his way upward, feeling the weight of failure crushing in on him as he surfaced and took a deep breath.
With or without the net, men, horses and carts, there was no way Riven would be able to fix this mess.
It would be better if he stopped trying.
Chapter 16
After making her fathera cup of healing tea, Bella lit a candlestick and headed into her corner of the house for bedtime.She pulled the privacy curtain closed along the overhead string and sat at her desk.She noticed her coin pouch had been moved a bit, and it looked a lot less full than when she had left the house to care for Nocturne, but Bellahadtold her father she had coins for him to use.It irked her he had taken so much without asking, but shehadoffered, so Bella elected to drop the matter.
After a long moment of staring into the dancing candleflame, Bella dipped her quill into the inkpot and pulled out a precious sheet of paper to use.She tapped the feather against her ticklish lips, trying to recall Riven’s curse.After mulling it over and recalling it rhymed by threes and not twos, she thought she had it down and wrote:
Lakes and ponds I govern
On hills and dales and fields
