Page 502 of Once Upon a Fable

They’re not alone.

They have Jareth.

My hands balled.

They should have me too.

If I hadn’t made such a fucking idiot of myself tonight—if I’d hidden my issues and smiled like a puppet—I could’ve started something that would’ve been a safe space for survivors. I could’ve taught them through my own experiences of what it was like to step back into the light and still carry around the darkness inside you. To sometimes retreat into that darkness because you weren’t ready to be seen. Because you didn’t knowhowto be seen. Because every fucking thing made you doubt, crave, and question.

I sighed and raked both hands through my short hair, once again jolting at the lack of length.

The run had done me good.

I was calmer now.

I could think now.

And the sensations of Tony’s unwanted arms around me, his leg between mine, and the dampness of his tears on my shirt faded. He’d come at me too fast, too emotionally. If I’d only had some warning, some time to prepare, I would gladly have hugged him back.

He was Quell’s father, for fuck’s sake.

He was the one who’d lost his little girl, all while I did my best to keep his daughter with as few scars as possible.

Fuck.

I pinched the bridge of my nose as I kept walking.

Poor Quell...Isabella.

I’d been rather successful in protecting her at Fables. Sure, there were times I couldn’t prevent Storymaker from taking her, and some guests overlooked my offer to do whatever the hell they wanted to me if they stopped picking on her, but overall, I’d done what I could.

But the past eleven years?

The decade when I’d been wallowing in self-pity, she’d been serving.

She’d been chained, bruised, whipped, raped—

I choked.

Utter violence ran through my veins.

Thick, black, andmonstrousrage.

Grabbing a pine cone from the forest floor, I hurled it at the nearest tree. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”

The words sounded eerily familiar, granting a whisper of a memory when I’d taken Gem against her will and attacked the library wall until my knuckles bled.

I’d cursed Storymaker and everyone from Fables for my pain that night. But now, I cursed them for my family’s. I raged at them for all the days and all the nights I hadn’t been able to save my loved ones.

I wished I’d gone with them that night. I wished I’d left the guests to rot, stepped through the cave, and been caught with them all over again.

At least I could’ve held them. Cried with them. Served with them.

I might have been able to redeem myself for all the things I’d done wrong.

“FUCK!” I threw another pine cone.

It smashed against a trunk, skittering into the undergrowth.