“Perhaps, but I’ve yet to see anyone turn down a life of leisure and luxury,” he said peevishly. “Why won’t you just let me take care of you?”
“Because I don’t like your brand of care,” I replied, straining really hard now to stay calm. To make him hear me. “I’m not so spoiled that I can complain about your generosity. You were always an excellent provider. You and Mom gave me everything I asked for, and I’m grateful for that, but there’s more to life than things. You want me to act like all your other humans, to do and say and be exactly what you want all the time, but I’m not like them. They left their old lives voluntarily to come and serve you. I didn’t get that choice.”
“I don’t see how there’s a choice to be made,” Yong said. “There is no better life than what I provide.”
“I’m sure you don’t think so. But has it ever occurred to you that what you want for me and what I want for me are two different things?”
“That is because you are young,” he said dismissively. “When you’re older, you’ll understand I was right.”
It took a heroic effort not to roll my eyes. “Dad, I’m twenty-six. I have two college degrees. I’ve survived four years in the DFZ on my own. I’m not some fourteen-year-old runaway going through a phase.”
“Then why do you act like one?” he snapped. “If you’re so grown-up and self-sufficient, why are you still so reckless?”
“Probably because someone keeps putting me in horrible situations!” I yelled, then I stopped and forced myself to take a breath. No, Opal. Anger bad. I was a calm and rational adult, dammit. I could do this.
“I know I don’t always make perfect decisions,” I continued a moment later in the most mature voice I could manage. “But who does? As you love to remind me, I’m human. Humans make mistakes.”
“And it is my job as your father to stop you,” Yong replied sternly. “Doubly so because I am a dragon. I am older and wiser and more experienced than you could ever be. What is all that knowledge for if I don’t use it to help you?”
“Helping doesn’t mean living my life for me,” I argued. Calmly. “If I turn to you for all my decisions, that’s not living. It’s just following instructions, and what kind of life is that?”
“A long, happy, safe one,” he replied without a trace of irony.
I took a steadying breath as I struggled to think of how I was going to deal with this one. “Would you want that?” I asked at last. “If there was a bigger, older, more experienced dragon ruling your life, would you like it?”
My father’s jaw tightened. “I would listen to and value his advice.”
“Now who’s side-tracking the issue?” I taunted. “I didn’t ask if you would listen. I asked if you would enjoy being in my shoes, and I don’t think you would. You wanted to rule on your own so bad, you killed your father.”
“My father was a tyrant and mad. He also has nothing to do with this. I see perfectly well what you are trying to do, but it won’t work. You are not a dragon, Opal. You’re a little girl, and you have no idea what you want. I know what is best for you, and if you’d stop being stubborn for one second, you’d see that.”
I closed my eyes with a frustrated sigh. And here we were again. I’d thought I was making real headway this time, but no matter what I said, no matter what I did, we always ended up back in the exact same place.
“Do you think so little of me?”
My father jerked back. “Of course not,” he said. “I treasure you. But you are—”
“Do you think I am weak?” I demanded, rising up on the balls of my feet to bring myself closer to his towering height. “I figured out how to defeat your curse. I saved you from White Snake. I faced two gods to bring you back to life, and I am currently the only thing keeping you that way. I was good enough to do all of that without your help, and you still claim I don’t know what I want or how to get it? You think I need you to tell me what to do? Do you really think I’m that stupid and helpless?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But it is,” I argued. Angrily, admittedly, but not in the usual way I was when we fought. I wasn’t mad at my father. I was righteous for my own sake. I was insulted. I’d survived so much these last few months, more than even I thought I could, and I’d still come out on top. I’d climbed over every damn mountain he threw at me, and he had the gall to say I wasn’t good enough to think for myself?
“You can’t have it both ways,” I told him. “Either I’m the mage who convinced a living city to save you from your enemies, or I’m a foolish little girl who can’t be trusted to live on her own. One or the other, Dad, because I can’t be both. You don’t get to lean on my strength one second and scold me like a misbehaving dog the next. You say you want me to come home because I’m too reckless to live outside your watch, but I built a life of my own in this city that was so successful, you had to curse my luck to stop it! In fact, all of my problems since I left home have been of your creation, so I don’t think the problem is me. I think it’s you.”
My own words left me shocked. I’d always blamed my dad for everything, but I hadn’t put the whole picture into perspective until this moment. Now that I had it laid out in front of me, though, I
