On the way to her wedding, brave and clever Princess Sabine falls into a Glass Mountain, where she is trapped with a crotchety, smelly man she calls “Old Rinkrank.” The two form a unique, unlikely friendship while working to escape. Alethea Kontis’s take on this classic Grimms’ fairy tale is a dark, yet optimistic novelette of magic, mystery, and love.

Once upon a time, a princess was born with hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow. After the huntsman and before the dwarfs—while she was all alone in that great forest—the princess met a demon. He was hunting unicorns. And what bait could better snare his prey than the fairest of them all? This is the secret tale that the princess never shared with the world. This is the true story.