A smile ghosted over my father’s lips. “That would be a pleasant change.”
“It would,” I agreed. “I don’t like fighting you all the time, either, but I can’t be the only one who moves on this. I already grew up, but if this is going to work, then you have to grow up too. If I’m your daughter, you have to treat me like a daughter. That means treating me like family, not a ‘puppy’ or a ‘treasure’ or anything else you own.”
My father frowned. “Are you sure you want that? My history with family is not a happy one.”
“Family is what you make it,” I countered, looking him in the eyes. “I don’t care about White Snake or whatever patricidal nastiness you pulled a thousand years ago. I care about us, right here, right now. Me and Mom, we’re the family you chose. But if you’re going to call yourself my father, then I need you to act like a father. Not a dragon throwing a fit over his missing gem.”
I expected him to get pissy over that last comment, but my dad was full of surprises today, because he smiled. “Never thought I would need a lecture about adapting,” he said wryly. “Though I suppose one is overdue. After all that has happened, I’d have to be an idiot not to see that you’re no longer the same girl who ran from Korea, but that’s what I am, apparently. An idiot. I made myself blind because I needed to believe that nothing had changed. That we could still go back to how we were if I could only rein you in. But there was no going back, and in my foolish attempts to keep you with me in the past, I just pushed you further away.”
“But not out of reach,” I said, scooting closer. “Just because we can’t go back to how things were when I was a kid doesn’t mean everything’s lost. Look at us right now! We’re talking like normal people. That’s a good start, and if we keep it up, it could get even better. I’m sure it won’t actually be that simple, but I’m ready to try if you are.”
He looked at me in wonder. “You would try?”
“Of course,” I said, punching him lightly on the arm. “You’re a royal pain in the ass, but you’re the only dad I’ve got.”
Now he looked insulted. “Glad you consider me worth the effort.”
I smirked at him. “Come on, you know how much I like refurbishing things. You can be my grime-covered painting everyone else thought was trash until I dug you out, cleaned you up, and auctioned you off for millions.”
My father glowered at the unflattering comparison. Then, suddenly, he started to laugh. Not an ironic chuckle or a superior smirk, but actual double-over, shoulders shaking, “that’s hilarious” laughter. The sight left me dumbstruck. My father was always so proud and formal, always a proper dragon. It had never even occurred to me that he could laugh in a way that wasn’t sardonic evil-overlord chuckling before this moment, which was proof that Yong wasn’t the only one who needed to update their worldview.
If I was going to demand he treat me as a daughter rather than an opal, then it was only fair that I stopped treating everything he did as draconic manipulation. Just as I wasn’t a pet, he wasn’t actually the monolith I remembered from my childhood. If I was going to get to know the real Yong, I needed to stop knee-jerk reacting to everything he did and start paying attention to what was actually in front of my eyes. And right now, what I saw wasn’t so bad. I mean, this whole mess was still his fault, but at least now we both understood that his attempts to control me were wrong. That was a huge change, and while there was no way twenty-four hours’ worth of positive interactions could outweigh decades of horrible behavior, for the first time in my adult life, I felt as if we could be all right again.
Stupid assumption, I know, but I’ve always been an optimist. Trusting my dad not to be terrible was a big gamble, but if we could actually keep this up, the payoff—getting back the kind father I’d loved instead of the controlling one I’d feared—was too good not to go for.
“You know, I think we just had a breakthrough,” I said, rising to my feet. “Unfortunately, I need to get back to work before my god-slash-teacher catches me slacking.”
“I understand,” my father said, standing up as well. “Would you like some help?”
I stared at him, not comprehending. “You mean with the garden?”
“I know great dragons don’t usually stoop to manual labor, but it has been a humbling few months,” he said, looking around the yard. “What would you like me to do?”
And that’s how I ended up pulling weeds with the Dragon of Korea. For all his grousing about manual labor, he was astonishingly good at it. While I dug around and mangled things, my dad pulled the little errant shoots out of the packed soil with a lifelong farmer’s skill. When I teased him about it, he told me how, at the age of thirty—which was apparently a baby by dragon standards—he’d protected his favorite mortal village by living among them as a farmhand and telling his father he was practicing maintaining a human form to aid in hunting. The previous Yong, pleased that his son was showing initiative, agreed to spare the village for as long as he needed it for practice, which was how my father wound up “practicing” being a human farmer for the next ninety-seven years.
“Really?” I said, gaping at him. “You were a Stone Age farmer for ninety-seven years?”
“It wasn’t the Stone Age,” he said dryly. “We had iron tools. But yes, I was a farmer, and it wasn’t so bad. The land
