Havok Publishing

Tag - fairy tales

Tangled in Knots

The end of the world was an inconvenient time to have eighty-foot-long hair.
Rapunzel bolted through the forest, trying to ignore the echoing moans that chased her. Her head snapped back when an unruly strand of hair tangled around a branch. She yanked it free, then pumped her legs as hard as

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The Frontier’s No Place for a Soft Gingerbread Man

Faced with great adversity, most gingerbread men will crumble. But not the gingerbread men of the Cloves family. No, they are tough cookies.
“You ready?” Samuel T. Cloves yelled to his friend Billy.
“I am, but I think this is crazy.” Billy’s frosty mouth quivered on his brown cookie face. He perched on

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A Matter of Pride

Being one of the Seven Deadly Sins wasn’t supposed to be easy, but Pride thought it would be a heck of a lot simpler than this.
It started when his sister, Envy, bet that she could find one person he couldn’t taint. Seemed like a straightforward win, considering most humans were corruptible beasts.
Until Cresella.

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Vein Beauty

Rumors said she went mad for beauty.
And while Briar’s search had begun with a desperate desire to keep the fairy-given beauty… it had evolved into so much more.
She hadn’t gone mad for beauty.
She’d transcended it.
A red horizon lit the battlefield and illuminated the corpses of those who had tried to

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Above Beauty

Today was yet another day her curse might lift—and Iris couldn’t let it.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as waves of Priam’s love reached out from his wing of her castle. His affection buffeted like a breeze, twining around her limbs—and tearing into her beast-curse, the curse that

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Red Hood, Red Legend

“Scarlet!”
I wince.
“Yes, ma’am?” I turn and bow to our loud neighbor.
“Are you going to drag your grandfather home?”
I bristle at her tone. He may drink too much, but only to forget his memories of the war. Everyone understands… except Lenora Cutter. She never has grace for anyone, not even

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Fairest Villain

Every predator, no matter how strong, can meet its end.

I stared into the ornate, gilded mirror. People whispered I was obsessed with my reflection, that perhaps the mirror held magic properties that caused my vanity to need constant satisfying. What a ridiculous notion.

But the truth was stranger than

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The Firebird Rose

The domed turrets of the Little Palace blazed a fierce rose-red. The color of magic. The color of a curse.

Mariya had to get there.

But a line of Rusakian soldiers blocked her road, their blood-red shields reminding her of all the lives lost during their occupation of her city.

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Zombies and Sloths

Six months into the sleep-zombie catastrophe, the survivors knew one thing: they were grateful for the winged, magic sloths.
One such survivor, Leesia, leaped over a crumbling stone wall marking an old boundary between fields. Gasping for breath, she dropped to her knees. Her brother-in-law Rayth joined her a moment later.

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A Taste of Grace

The crunchy bitterness of the riptalion leaf takes a slight edge off my craving. Grasping my swollen stomach, shoulders hunched, I glance back toward the castle, pushing strands of golden hair out of my face. Here in our private garden, my husband and I grow the dark green, large-leafed lettuce

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A Lesson in Apples

Jack tore into the roasted chicken thigh, the heat of his anger suffusing with the warm tingling of his mother’s herb blend. The flavors of rosemary and thyme soothed him, their homey familiarity pushing against the sting of resentment.
He crunched down on a bone and spat it onto the ground.

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The Spinning Wheel

Mia fluttered through the tower window, her fairy wings leaving a trail of sparkling lights as she circled the room. A spinning wheel stood in the center, surrounded by dirt and straw. Shaking her head, she snapped her fingers. In a flash of light, she became the size of a human.

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