I'd highly recommend this to anyone who loves fairytales with dark and twisted endings. I wouldn't have been disappointed if I'd paid for this short story so the fact that it has been posted online for free is an extra bonus.

The story has all the major elements you'd expect from a fairytale - the evil stepmother, a wicked witch, a child lost and alone in the dark and scary woods - but I guarantee that you won't be expecting the outcome! There is such a fantastic twist at the end I had to read part of the story twice to believe it. Leigh Bardugo has created a perfect, dark fairytale that the Grimm brothers would have been proud of. When Karina forces Nadya to go into the woods on her own after dark she finds something very unexpected. To make matters worse the village is currently suffering from famine and young girls are disappearing making the villagers believe there is a monster in the forest. Her brother is enlisted into the army and her father quickly gets remarried to Karina, a woman who very obviously hates her. Our heroine is a young girl called Nadya who loses everything after the death of her mother. In fact this story is actually a fairytale that is told by people who live in Ravka to their children.

The Witch of Duva is a free short story set in the same world as Leigh Bardugo's novel The Gathering Dark (called Shadow and Bone if you're in the US) but can be read entirely separately to the book because there is no cross over of characters. Visit Leigh Bardugo's website for more information (spin off series set in the same world but featuring different characters) The Language of Thorns (anthology of fairytales set in the Grishaverse)

Little Knife (Short Story) (Can be read online on the Tor website here) The Too-Clever Fox (Short Story) (Can be read online on the Tor website here) The Tailor (Short Story) (Can be read online on Leigh Bardugo's Facebook page here) Shadow and Bone (Originally published in the UK as The Gathering Dark but now re-released as Shadow and Bone as per the US) The Witch of Duva (Short Story) (Can be read online on the Tor website here)

This free short story can be read online at the Tor website here. This story is a companion folk tale to Leigh Bardugo’s debut novel, Shadow and Bone. But it’s just possible that the danger may be a little bit closer to home. There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls… or so the story goes.

The Witch of Duva by Leigh Bardugo