Once Upon a Fairy tale: A Collection of 11 Fairy Tale Inspired Romances

by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney

  Leading the horse, he walked forward, Wolf at his side. When they reached the gate he looked down at Wolf. Wolf moved a shoulder in a lupine shrug.

  Drawing a breath, Ivan pushed the gate gently. It opened easily, swinging wide to allow them through. Again, the moment he broke the plane of the fence, the glamour crashed down, revealing the bones and the magical webs crossing between them.

  The hut stood in the center of the compound, facing away. Ivan led Gullfaxi to the fenced in area with the other horse.

  Ivan removed all the tack, then walked him to ensure he eased down. He watched the foreleg, but it was still perfect. He spent some time brushing the sweat and dust from the stallion’s golden hide. When he was satisfied, he put him up. Ivan used craft to bring the saddle bags and the chest to the hut.

  The hut turned, keeping its back to them. Huffing out a frustrated breath, Ivan recited the lines to turn the hut around. It really was a stupid spell.

  The hut turned and settled. Ivan and Wolf went to the door.

  “Do we knock?”

  Ivan shrugged. “It seems prudent.”

  They looked at each other for a moment before Ivan lifted his fist and rapped on the door.

  It opened, but Baba Yaga wasn’t there. She stood at the back table, working on something. She didn’t even look up.

  “I smell you both, Prince and Wolf. Have you the chest?”

  “Yes, Babushka,” Ivan replied. He might not trust her, but he had a wealth of respect for her age and her power.

  “Good.” She straightened and turned to face them. Oddly, she seemed to have filled out a bit. Her face was softer, her bones less visible. Ivan studied her, noting that the changes extended to her body, as well. She’d definitely gained some weight.

  It took him only a moment to realize why. Magic required fuel, and Baba Yaga was using a lot of magic all the time. The reason she was so thin was because the magic burned her reserves. Even with as much food as she was eating, her body couldn’t keep up with the demand. His blood had made the difference.

  If just the small amount of blood he’d given her made this much difference in her appearance, how much more would be made by regular infusions? How much by flesh?

  And how much more magic would she be able to channel if she had more reserves?

  It was abruptly difficult to breathe as he considered the possibilities. Baba Yaga didn’t hunt, but she took her toll in flesh for those who sought her and failed in her tasks. How powerful would she be if she hunted?

  Baba Yaga met his eyes, smiling. “Yes, indeed, little prince. That is a question.”

  He blinked. Had he said it aloud or was she reading his thoughts?

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “It showed. Few figure it out. You’re smarter than you look.”

  He narrowed his eyes, considering. “What would you promise for a steady supply of blood and flesh?”

  Baba Yaga laughed. “You are clever. That’s a discussion for another time. For now, you must finish your service to me. Give me the box.”

  Ivan tucked the possibilities of Baba Yaga away in a corner of his mind. She was right in saying he had other concerns right now.

  He let go of the craft holding all the items he’d brought in, including the box. They settled easily on the floor, and Ivan picked up the cloth-wrapped box. Carefully, he carried it to her.

  “Set it on the table,” she directed.

  As soon as he’d pulled his hands away, Baba Yaga untied the cloth, unwrapping the box.

  “Aaaah. Tell me about where you found it.”

  “It was as you said, under the only oak tree on the island.”

  “And did you dig it up?”

  “No, Babushka. I summoned it out of the ground.”

  “Did you? How interesting of you. It’s probably just as well you didn’t dig under that tree.”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to do this. Turning, he looked at Wolf.

  “Will you step outside?”

  “What?” Wolf stared incredulously.

  “I must convey a message to Babushka. It is a private message.”

  Wolf turned to leave. “I will go check the horse. It will take me only a moment.”

  Ivan nodded his appreciation, watching Wolf walk out. Once the door was firmly closed behind him, he returned his attention to Baba Yaga.

  “A message for me? What message could you have for me from that place?”

  Ivan blew out a breath. “I want to make it clear to you that no one else has heard this message, or any of its contents. I have no intention of revealing any piece of it to anyone, and would have been very grateful not to be chosen as this messenger. I have no desire to offend or upset you in any way, and I fear the message will do exactly that.”

  Baba Yaga leaned against the table, tapping her fingers against the wood. “Stop dancing, little prince. What is the message?”

  “The Bone Shaker charged me with bringing the box to you and telling you that he has true-named you and the geas is laid.”

  She jerked back as if struck. Her magic flared wildly, stinging his skin.

  “Did he tell you the message just that way?”

  He knew what she was asking. He didn’t want her to know Bone Shaker had shared her true-name with him. There was wiggle room, since she hadn’t asked the question she actually meant. “Not exactly that way. He was speaking, so it was framed differently, but the meaning is the same.”

  She stared into his face. “You know what I mean, Prince Ivan. Can you true-name me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you have not done so.”

  “Babushka, I meant what I said. I have no desire to give you offense, and true-naming you would be presumptuous and insulting. I have not earned your trust nor gained your true name from your lips. To use it is to attempt to exercise power over you, and I do not have any interest in doing so.”

  “At this time.”

  He shrugged. “I cannot say what the future holds, but I see no reason we should be at odds.”

  After a long moment, she relaxed. He felt their relationship shift. His fear receded. It wasn’t that she wasn’t powerful or intimidating. He was still quite sure she could kill him and strip the flesh from his bones without batting an eyelash. It was more that they had reached an accord. He understood her, at least a little, and she tolerated him. Maybe even more than tolerated.

  “You are such an interesting one, little prince.”

  She was back to calling him little prince. It was oddly reassuring. Two days ago, he’d found it insulting. It made his lips quirk.

  “Will you tell me why you smile?”

  “When I arrived here, I had an idea of what to expect. When you called me ‘little prince’ I heard it as an insult. Now I hear it as an endearment.”

  She barked out a laugh. “An endearment?”

  “Yes. Like you would call a pet.”

  She laughed again, this time a full laugh that cut off abruptly when the door opened and Wolf re-entered the hut.

  “Whatever the message, Prince Ivan, you do not appear harmed.”

  “In this case I will not be eating the messenger,” Baba Yaga told him.

  Ivan swallowed a laugh of his own. “I appreciate that. Will you tell me what it means?”

  “Gamayune laid a geas with her prophecy. Her prophecies carry weight, not just magical foretelling, but also a binding. Once she speaks the prophecy, it is truth and must be obeyed. The prophecy said ‘the old ones will aid the young’ did it not?”

  “It did. Bone Shaker said the same. I didn’t realize it applied to you, as well.”

  “In this matter, I am the old, you are the young. I am bound to aid you. Because of the wording, anyone older than you is bound. To what extent I aid you depends on you. If you had not tried to steal the horse, we would have come to easier terms.”

  Wolf shot Ivan a speaking look. “I told him not to do that.”

  “Yes, Wolf, but the pri
nce makes his own decisions, for good or ill.”

  “Have I fulfilled the terms of service?”

  “Not yet, little prince. You’ve a few hours yet before your term is up.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Help me with these spells. Maybe you’ll learn something. I am getting to like you.”

  “I grow on you,” he quipped, smiling.

  “Like slime mold,” she muttered. But he heard the amusement underlying her tone.

  They spent the next few hours working through spells. Ivan did learn from her. Interestingly, her magic was closer to his than he expected. His magic didn’t like organic matter. Cold and ice were inimical to growth and life. Hers was death magic based in the destruction of life and growth. They were different approaches which accomplished the same thing. Different mechanisms with similar outcomes.

  When she wove spells, she wove them into small objects. The difference was that Baba Yaga wove her spells into chunks of bone.

  “Do you have to use bone?”

  “No. I like bone because it is both life and death, so it carries the magic well. Blood or flesh works the same way. Some things are more closely tied to life. Trees or plants, for example, don’t take my magic well. That’s why you got to sort the grain. If I try to use craft on the grain, it often goes awry.”

  “If I had more time, Babushka, I would enjoy learning more from you.”

  “Charmer,” she said, showing her teeth.

  “I’m not trying to charm you. Frost magic is close to death magic, and there are none in my court who practice death magic. My father’s magic is brutal, and I don’t think he’s ever learned finesse with it. You have a subtle approach that I think would be a good complement to my father’s teaching.”

  She paused, her hands stilling over the bone shard on the table.

  “You were serious.”

  “About what?”

  “When you asked about providing a steady supply of blood.”

  “Yes, I was serious. I would provide you with blood to eat on a regular basis in exchange for your teaching. Under the same terms regarding the use of my blood. I should warn you, though, that I extended an offer of hospitality to Bone Shaker.”

  “Little prick,” she murmured. Ivan thought she meant Bone Shaker. She might mean him.

  “He was helpful, but I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”

  “He doesn’t have a good side,” Baba Yaga said sourly. “Do you know his story?”

  “No. He didn’t volunteer it and I didn’t ask.”

  “Smart of you. Suffice it to say that he enjoys making bargains that can’t be met for punishing terms, but he is a sexist prick. Continually underestimates women. And he is a sore loser. I made bargain with him once. He underestimated me and was very angry when I met the terms of the bargain and he had to fulfill his part.”

  “He dealt honestly with me on the island.”

  “I suspect that was more the doing of the geas than any real change in him.”

  There was no good answer to that, so Ivan kept quiet and they resumed working on the spells.

  After another hour, Baba Yaga slapped a hand down on the table. “Time’s up, little prince.”

  Startled, it took a moment for Ivan to follow. His service time was at an end.

  They faced each other and formally closed the bargain. It didn’t take much, only the ritual words and acknowledgement, and the deal was done. Gullfaxi was his.

  He bowed low.

  “Tell me, little prince, have I aided you?”

  “Yes, Babushka. The horse will aid me both in getting to Deathless and in entering his palace.”

  “Hm. But that was not aid freely given. You traded service for the horse. It seems to me that the geas has not been satisfied.”

  Ivan frowned. “I am satisfied, Babushka.”

  “But I am not,” she snapped. “I will not have the Bone Shaker crying foul. You will have a gift. A fitting gift.”

  “A gift from you would be welcome.”

  “What else did they give you?”

  “Two spells I cannot form. A shielding spell and an explosion spell.”

  Baba Yaga nodded. “Good gifts. But neither will kill Deathless. Take the box you recovered. That is my gift to you.”

  “I am grateful for the gift,” Ivan said slowly. What was he going to do with an iron box?

  “You don’t know what it is. I’d wager even that little prick didn’t know what it was,” Baba Yaga sneered.

  “He did not tell me if he did know.”

  “Then he didn’t know. He loves to show off. That box,” Baba Yaga said, pointing, “is the box holding the life force of the Deathless.”

  Ivan stopped breathing. Could it be true? Was the answer to killing the sorcerer king in that box?

  “Babushka.”

  “Yes, I know. Shocking. Who do you think taught him to do this? It was a stupid thing for me to do, but it was the bargain for service. I didn’t know who he was. This seems like a fitting restitution.”

  Ivan stared at her for a moment.

  Baba Yaga shrugged. “The box contains an egg. In the egg is a rabbit. In the rabbit is a pearl. The life force is in the pearl. But there’s a catch.”

  He reached out toward the box, his fingers hovering over the iron. He didn’t dare touch it. A pearl. The heart of the sea.

  “What is the catch?”

  “Well, it’s in an iron box, so there’s that. The real trick, though, is that it can only be opened by Deathless himself.”

  Ivan cursed.

  “That covers it,” Baba Yaga said wryly. “But you are clever. I’m sure you can figure something out. Without the box, you have no chance. This is the only option available to you.”

  “Yes, Babushka. I understand that very well. This is a gift of greater value than anything I have to offer you.”

  She shook her head. “Gift, little prince. I expect nothing more. In truth, I want you to kill Deathless. I want him dead and gone.”

  “As do I, Babushka.”

  “He killed my daughter, you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “After the bargain was satisfied and he’d made himself Deathless. He hid the box and came back for her. My beautiful Anya. He killed her and consumed her. By eating her flesh he took her magic. It is her magic that allows him to break other fae and eat their magic without eating their bodies. It is her magic that allows him to use the magic of the other fae.”

  “I am sorry for your loss, Babushka. If I could return your daughter to you, I would.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “You would. You don’t know her, and you and I have little history, but you would save her if you could.”

  “Of course.”

  Baba Yaga smiled. “There is no ‘of course’ about that. But there is still something you can do. When you kill Deathless, and I believe you can, I ask you to split him open, spilling his organs from his body. Pierce his heart and take his head, and burn all of it to ash and gone. If you do this, you will release the bits of fae he holds within him. It will allow the ghosts he holds to move on.”

  “I will do this. Not only for your daughter, but also for all the fae who have lost kin to him.”

  She reached out, her palms framing his cheeks as she drew their faces together. “Thus have you spoken. Thus shall it be.”

  The words rang in the air, vibrating between them. Ivan knew in that moment that his fate was set.

  Chapter Nine

  ‡

  It was bad. Koschei took out more than Masha’s disappearance on Vasalisa’s flesh. He evidently didn’t like what he’d gotten from Berian. Or maybe he hadn’t gotten anything from him, and that’s what made him so angry. Either way, that anger translated into her pain.

  She’d managed to eat one of the apples, but the effort of chewing and swallowing exhausted her. Vasalisa knew she was burning energy she could use to heal. It didn’t matter. She wanted to connect with Ivan, wanted to warn him. A las
t ditch effort to wave him off.

  She wore a spidersilk sleeping shift which had belonged to some previous inhabitant. It was too large for her, but that was the point. The only places the shift actually touched were her shoulders and her arms. Her shoulders were undamaged and he’d left her arms mostly alone. Only the cut on her right forearm was significant, and it was scabbed over enough not to stick to the spidersilk.

  The same could not be said for her torso or her legs. She’d had to wrap herself from legs to armpits to keep things in place enough for them to heal. It would be a very long time before she forgot how her intestines felt spilling over her hands as she stuffed them back into her body.

  Breathing shallowly, Vasalisa tried to sink into a dream trance, but the pain and the roiling in her stomach made it difficult. She kept her body very still in the center of the bed.

  She couldn’t do it. Ivan was out of reach for now.

  She forced herself to eat another apple.

  *

  Ivan narrowed his eyes, studying the lay of the land.

  The space between the wood and the palace wall was a flat expanse ending at a dry moat at the base of the castle walls. The ground was burnt and blackened, a barren expanse a bit longer than an arrow’s flight. It was a good defensive perimeter, allowing good lines of sight and defenses. He knew from Hors that this was the site of the battle between the Rus and Koschei.

  Babushka had given him a roughly sketched map of the castle, which indicated that between the lower outer wall and the much taller walls of the castle itself they would find a carpet of thorns. When he’d asked how she knew the layout of the castle, Baba Yaga had cackled gleefully and ignored his question.

  He checked his sword, ensuring it was firmly strapped along his spine. They’d found that it rode better that way when Wolf rode before him on Gullfaxi. He checked the magical tether that held Koschei’s chest to him. It would allow him to fight and move, keeping the chest vanished but following along with him. It was a handy bit of craft Baba Yaga had shown him and one he’d be using often now that he knew it.

  “Ready?”

  Wolf chuffed his agreement.

  “We’ll do the shield spell first. Then we’ll mount up and I’ll put a cushion of air ahead of us. It should deflect any distance weapons and save the shielding for magic.”