As she spoke, her forked tongue flicked from her mouth.

“And your tongue,” the prince said. “That’s part of what’s . . . wrong with you?”

“And this,” the princess said, and she slipped an arm from her dress and showed him the scales across her back.

“I see,” said the prince, his voice sorrowful again. “I should’ve known this was too good to be true.”

As a tear rolled down his cheek, his arms began to disappear, joining again with his torso in a wobbly mass of slug flesh.

“Why are you sad?” the princess said. “We’re a perfect match! Together we could show our parents that we’re not unmarriageable, and we’re not trash. We can unite our kingdoms, and one day, perhaps, take our rightful place on the throne!”

“You must be mad!” the prince shouted. “How could I ever love you? You’re a disgusting freak!”

The princess was speechless. She couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“Oh, this is so humiliating!” the slug prince bawled, and then antennae sprung from his forehead, his face disappeared, and he became a slug from head to toe, quivering and moaning as he struggled to cry without a mouth.

The princess and the handmaiden turned away, stomachs heaving, and left the ungrateful prince to rot in his dungeon.

“I believe I’m done with princes forever,” the princess said, “peculiar or otherwise.”

They crossed the Great Cataract and the Pitiless Waste once again, and returned to Frankenbourg to find it at war with both Galatia and Frisia, which had united against it. The king had been overthrown and jailed, and the Frisians had installed a duke to govern Frankenbourg. The duke was a bachelor, and once his rule had been established and the country pacified, he began searching for a bride. The duke’s emissary discovered the princess working in an inn.

“You there!” he shouted, calling her away from a table she was cleaning. “The duke is looking for a bride.”

“Good luck to him,” she replied. “I’m not interested.”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter,” the emissary replied. “Come with me at once.”

“But I’m not royal!” she lied.

“That doesn’t matter, either. The duke merely wants to find the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and that may well be you.”

The princess was beginning to regard her beauty as something of a curse.

She was given a nice dress to wear and brought before the duke. When she saw his face, a cold chill spread through her. This Frisian duke had been one of the assassins who had come to kill her; he was the lone assassin who had fled.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” the duke said. “You look familiar.”

The princess was tired of hiding and tired of lying, so she told the truth. “You tried to kill me once, and my father. I was once the princess of Frankenbourg.”

“I thought you were dead!” said the duke.

“No,” she replied, “that was a lie my father made up.”