Gold Weaver | ✓

achtzehn

ACHTZEHN

The King was pleased with the ballroom, so he let me go. Just like that. No Masks came running after me, no Jack followed my tail, no one coerced me down from jumping out of a window.

I knew he'd let me out even if it looked like absolute shit. He couldn't risk me and Almar getting it on under the palace roof, not when his fiancée was living in the same place.

The first thing I'd done when I left was visit my father. Maybe it was stupid. But I needed closure, even if I already knew the answers.

We were sat in my old lounge. "When your mother died," he said. "Fiction just seemed better than reality. It was a safe space. It made me feel like maybe everything wasn't going to cave in on me. That I wasn't screwing up the only thing I cared about. You."

I sighed. "Why did you do it?"

He shrugged, shoulders slumping afterward like the weight of the world lay on his shoulders. "I got bribed. I shouldn't have taken it, not when I knew what the King was capable of when enraged."

I put the newspaper I'd flicked through on the table. The front page glared at me.

ROYAL WEDDING CONFIRMED FOR 14TH MAY

I turned the paper over. I was happy for them, but that didn't mean I wanted to see it.

"Almar?" I asked, before realising maybe he didn't know his name. It rolled off my tongue like it'd belonged there all along. I tried again. "Rumpelstiltskin?"

He smiled, laughing slightly. "That's what he'd called himself." His grey hair moved as he shook his head. "I took the money because I thought it'd help pay for the school."

"Why did you really take it?"

He shrugged. "Because I could."

"You were never a father to me," I told him, but I figured he already knew that. "You were just there."

"Better than nothing, hey?"

"Sometimes it really wasn't," I said, remembering how alone I'd felt. Completely alone, even if my father was in the same house. He was so caught up in caring for his fanciful stories he'd forgotten to care for me. "I signed up to that school to get away from you."

"I figured."

Those ice eyes met mine. There really was nothing behind them, nothing at all. I didn't remember anything ever having been.

"I miss her too, you know?" I said. My gaze fluttered to the photo on the mantelpiece. Old and worn, it hadn't moved in the last ten odd years.

"I know," he said. "You look a lot like her. It made it hard to look at you sometimes."

"It made it hard to look at myself sometimes, too."

"I should never have been a father," he said, rubbing at his arthritic knee. "I was hardly a man. Not up here anyway." He pointed to his head. "Immature and reckless. Someone should have warned your mother, told her I couldn't give her what she really wanted."

"She wouldn't have listened anyway."

"No," he said, shaking his head with a fond smile. "She wouldn't have."