Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

He studied Monster’s broad form, shaped so much like a man’s in the shoulders and back, undeniably animal in the tail and bent hind legs. The unhealed wounds showed angry and red in his otherwise impenetrable pelt. If Justus could get close enough to stab into the wounds Monster already had, perhaps he could ruin Monster’s guts.

But if he’d already been punctured there, and he was walking around with no apparent pain, Justus did not imagine it was much of a gap in the Greve’s armor.

Perhaps he could be poisoned, but then again, perhaps Monster would smell the impurity. Justus didn’t want to risk it. Perhaps while Monster was asleep . . . but Justus knew better. Any hunter avoided taking a predator in its lair. It was best to catch it during a routine, ? 249 ?

? Castle of Masks ?

when it was focused on drinking water or eating its kill—not when it had nothing better to do than wake up and savage you.

Justus was wondering if Monster would stop at a stream to drink, as his muzzle was unfit to suck at the nozzle of a water flask, when the clump of snow weighed too low and dragged the hem of his dress under his boot. Justus stumbled to the side, stepped on the hem again, and fell down the steep ravine.

He skidded over an expanse of decaying leaves and pine needles.

Snow-laden branches whipped Justus’s face and tangled in his hair, but every time his fingers closed on a clump of roots and leaves, his momentum ripped them free. Even after a stump knocked the wind out of him, Justus was most worried about being sliced by the hidden cutlass. He couldn’t untie it any more than he could slow his descent.

The ground disappeared from beneath him. He caught a sickening flash of a rocky embankment and a foaming stream. Everything stopped.

Justus’s head spun, but the grip on his ankle drew him back to safety. Monster clung to a gnarled pine with one hand, his hoof hooked behind a boulder.

Monster turned Justus rightside up before tucking him close.

Monster’s arm was as big around as Justus’s torso, comforting and solid. Justus finally drew a shuddering breath and inhaled the musky scent of his rescuer. Monster smelled cleaner than Justus had imagined, clean and warm.

As Monster inched his way up the incline, Justus shivered, his fingers desperately clinging to clumps of mismatched fur. Tears streaked down his face, hot terror evaporating into the careless winter cold. I almost died.

“Why didn’t you cry out?”

Justus just shook his head. Even if the rock hadn’t knocked the wind out of him, he’d still been more worried that Monster would realize he was male, which would be a much slower death than a simple fall. He was already afraid Monster would finally discover him now—after all, Justus must feel different than a woman, compact and spare where a real maiden would have been light curves. Monster ? 250 ?

? Cory Skerry ?

said nothing, though, and when they reached the top, he didn’t put Justus down. Instead, he wrapped his other arm around Justus’s back.

“It’s all right. I won’t let anything happen to you,” Monster whispered.

Justus might have laughed at the irony if he did not believe the Greve meant it. Monster wanted to choose when and how his sacrifices died. Besides, he was full—he’d just eaten a turkey.

After a time, Monster fidgeted, shifting Justus to his other shoulder—and then laughed. “My, Karin, what’s this?”

The cutlass. Justus tensed, waiting for Monster to squeeze him until his spine cracked and discard his broken body in the snow.

“A girl must protect her honor,” Justus croaked.

Monster laughed again, and Justus relaxed against Monster’s warmth. It pained him to know that he owed his life to this creature, and yet this same creature had taken Gudrun’s.

“Best you don’t sleep yet,” Monster said, and shook Justus, who realized he had been dozing.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve not told me what you enjoy besides hunting and being read to,” Monster prompted.

Justus’s skull felt like it was full of hot bees, but he understood that people with head injuries who went to sleep too soon didn’t always wake up.

He forced his mouth to work through an answer. “Carving. I carve wood.”