Free Beauty by Sarah Pinborough

and with the sky slowly lightening a flurry of leaves danced around Rumplestiltskin while he tore at the wall, focused entirely on his task. Behind him the huntsman came closer, slowly and steadily, no sudden movements to alert his prey, until, with only two or three feet separating them, he lunged forward, fluid and agile.
    It happened so quickly that Petra barely had time to gasp before the huntsman had spun Rumplestiltskin around and in his moment of shock, taken the axe from him. The man let out a low moan and slumped against the forest wall. Petra stepped out from her hiding place.
    ‘You,’ Rumplestiltskin said, his voice clear in the still dawn as he looked from the huntsman to her and back again. His eyes glistened and shone with despair. ‘What did you do? Why did you wake her?’
    ‘We need to take you back to the castle,’ the huntsman said. ‘This is not our business. You and your peers can resolve it.’ Petra was surprised by the kindness of his tone.
    ‘You’ve made it your business,’ Rumplestiltskin wailed. ‘ You woke her. It was so close. After all this time, so long a time, a hundred years of waiting. It was so close. And then you woke her.’
    Petra kept her distance. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting but this complete emotional desolation wasn’t it. Not after what she’d seen of the other ministers. But then, this man had been awake for the hundred years they’d all slept. What would that do to a person?
    ‘After everything I lost,’ he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Everything I foolishly gave up. And then you woke her. And now everything is just as it was before.’ He looked up at the huntsman. ‘You stupid, stupid strangers.’
    And then he broke. His shoulders slumped further and as he wept a low moan erupted from him carrying in it a hundred years of loneliness and despair. It was a terrible sight. She’d thought he would beg them to let him go, plead for his life, ask to be saved from whatever punishment awaited him at the castle, but instead he was resigned to it. Looking at the small axe he’d brought with him, that was now tucked into the huntsman’s belt, perhaps he had never truly believed he could cut his way free.
    The huntsman, clearly moved by the man’s plight, stepped forward to put an arm around his shoulders, and Petra was so focused on the scene in front of her she didn’t hear the footsteps rushing up behind her until it was too late.
    Suddenly, she was jerked backwards by her red coat, and as strong arms roughly held her she felt cold, sharp steel against her throat. She let out a short yelp and the huntsman turned, Rumplestiltskin forgotten.
    ‘You’ll give him to me now.’ The voice was gruff and the breath that hit her cheek was stale. She could feel a metal breastplate against her back and she wriggled slightly to try and break free but his arms were strong. He stank of sweat.
    ‘Why don’t you release the girl then, soldier?’ the huntsman said. ‘We’re all on the same side here. We were bringing him back as instructed.’
    ‘He’s not going anywhere. I’ve got my orders. There are more men behind me.’ His grip on Petra tightened and she struggled to breathe. ‘Kill him now and we might let you both live.’
    ‘Let the girl go. She’s done nothing.’ The huntsman took a small step forward and held up his hands. ‘You do what you have to. But I’m not killing a man in cold blood.’
    ‘Stay back.’ The soldier – Petra guessed from the tension in his body that he was young and nervous under his bluster – pressed the knife harder against her neck. Too hard. A sharp pain upon her skin and she yelped again, knowing the knife had nicked her. Warmth trickled down her neck. Blood.
    The huntsman froze. And then, from nowhere, it came, bounding over the huntsman and leaping towards Petra with a terrifying, angry growl.
    The wolf.
    It filled her vision. Thick blue-grey fur over a vast, muscular frame. This was no