These Deathless Bones

These Deathless Bones recasts the wicked-stepmother fairy tale from the stepmother's side. The Witch Bride, married into a kingdom for a love she could never return to her husband's son, watches the boy grow more cruel and more convinced that she means him harm.

He wounds himself to fuel the tales he tells his father, certain she will be burned as a witch before he ever has to answer for what he has done.

Cassandra Khaw's short horror story unwinds the marriage and the boy's true nature in alternating glimpses of past and present, building to a quietly devastating reckoning over whose bones will end up replacing whose.