Elara Silverleaf's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The thief was gone, and with him the last easy reason to stay silent. Elara sat at the tea counter the next morning, watching her daughter arrange cups on a shelf. Sophia had crossed three nights of forest alone to find her father. She had asked for the truth for years. Now the safe held the gems, and nothing dangerous stood between them anymore. Only the question Sophia had never stopped asking. "You met him," Elara said. "But you don't really know him. Not as your father." Sophia set down a cup. "He said he was my father. In front of everyone." She kept her eyes on the shelf. "That's not the same as him wanting to be." Elara went still. Her daughter had named the fear before she could soften it. "Then we'll ask him," she said. "Straight. No hiding." He came at midday. Prince Charming ducked under the striped awning and stopped inside the door. He was the man who had recognized Sophia's face in the market and claimed her before the whole village. Now he stood in the tea shop with his hands loose at his sides, careful, like a guest unsure of his welcome. "Sophia has something to ask you," Elara said. Sophia turned. She looked at him a long moment. "You're my father," she said. "But do you want to be? For real. Not just because people saw my ears." Elara held her breath. She had feared this question her whole life, and now her ten-year-old had thrown it flat on the counter. Charming crouched down to Sophia's height. He did not rush. "I found out you existed three days ago," he said. "I missed ten years I can't get back. That's on me, kind of. I didn't know." He paused. "But knowing now? Yeah. I want to be your father. Officially. However you'll have me." Sophia studied his face the way Elara had seen him study others. Reading for the tell. "You mean it," she said. It was not a question. "I do." Sophia stepped forward and put her arms around his neck. Charming held her. Over her shoulder, he looked at Elara, and something old passed between them, eleven years old. "So it's settled," Sophia said, pulling back. "You're both here now. In the same village." She glanced around the little shop, the cups, the flowers in the window boxes. "But you don't live here. You live in a castle. And Mother's shop is here." Elara felt the ground shift. Her daughter had said aloud the thing she'd been avoiding. "Where do I live?" Sophia asked. "With you? Or with her?" Nobody answered. The question sat there, plain and hard, between a father with a crown and a mother with a dream she had traded a diamond to build. Elara had wanted her tea shop to be the place where two worlds finally met. Now the two worlds had a name, and it was her daughter, and she needed a home.