by Rachel Aaron
The moment he appeared in the doorway, I heard all the breath leave Nik’s body. In hindsight, I should have expected something like that. I’d grown up with my father, so I was used to his presence, but this was the first time Nik had seen him. The resulting shock hit him full force, sending him gasping to his knees.
I thought no less of him for it. Mortal terror is a unique experience. It’s not like being spooked by something in the dark or even having someone shoot at you. This was a primal malfunction, the same deeply wired fatal flaw in judgment that makes a mouse seize up when it hears the hawk instead of running. Every human had it, but just like any sensation, it lost its edge the more you were exposed. Before I had come to the DFZ, I’d felt it almost every day of my life, which was how I was able to stay on my feet, looking my father in the face as he stepped into the room.
That turned out to be a mistake. This was the longest I’d ever been apart from him. The distance hadn’t lessened my resistance to his terror, but his beauty was another matter entirely. There was no earthly parallel to how my father looked. On the surface, he resembled a tall Korean man wearing an immaculately fitted business suit that cost more than most cars. He didn’t look young, but he wasn’t old either. He was timeless: a cold, perfect marble statue that the centuries couldn’t touch. His face was such that men and women had written poetry about it, comparing his pale skin to the moon and his long black hair to a waterfall of night. All of that was accurate enough, I supposed, but the bit I always got stuck on was his eyes. They were the same color as the Hwanghae Sea, a mix of deep blue and yellow-green so beautiful, you couldn’t help but love it even as it drowned you.
There was nothing human in those eyes. The rest of him might fool idiots who didn’t want to see past what was in front of their face, but even if you were foolish enough to ignore the scent of the fire that clung to his clothes, no one could look my father in the eyes and not know what he was. Nik did. I could see it on his face, read it in the shape of his lips as he mouthed the obvious at me with increasing panic.
Dragon, he said silently. Dragon!
I nodded and gave him a stern look that I hoped he’d interpret as stay down. My father hadn’t said anything yet, but he didn’t have to. I could feel his silent demand that I bow, cry, beg his forgiveness, all the usual things humans did in his presence.
“How did you find me?” I said instead.
The girl he’d brought with him—probably so she could get shot instead and thus avoid putting a bullet hole in his expensive suit—gasped at my disobedience. Proof that she was new.
“How dare you?” she cried. “You speak to the sublime Yong! The dragon of all Korea, master of a thousand—”
My father twitched his fingers, and the girl snapped her mouth shut, dropping her eyes at once.
I rolled mine. “How did you find me?” I demanded again.
My father blew out a long line of smoke. “What does it matter?”
His voice was the essence of apex predator, deep and menacing enough that even Nik trembled. I shook too, but for a different reason. I could hear the anger hidden beneath the deadly, iron calm. A smarter mortal would have heeded that, but I’ve never been smart when it came to my family, and I barged right ahead.
“It matters because you don’t belong here!” I yelled at him. “My own apartment I could understand. I’ve lived there for over a year, I’m sure I made mistakes. But this place was hidden, and you just barged right in! I want to know how.”
Because it was certain to be my fault. I was the only reason the great and snooty Yong would deign to set foot in a place like this. He didn’t enter the DFZ unless forced to, and even then he stuck to the luxury hotels near Dragon Consulate. If he’d come all the way down to Nik’s doorstep at the bottom corner of the Underground, it was because I’d screwed up, and dammit, I was going to know how.
“Actually,” said a sheepish, computerized voice from behind me. “It’s my fault.”
I whirled around, grabbing my bag off the floor. Sure enough, the phone I’d switched off last night was back on and blinking, its screen displaying a detailed map with our location clearly marked.
“Sibyl,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “How? You’re my AI. I bought you! How did this happen?”
“Sorry, Opal,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice. I got hacked last December during that big security update fiasco. The guy who got in set your dad as the parental control, giving him admin power over all your accounts. He’s been forcing me to hand over your info for months.”
By the time she finished, my hands were shaking so badly I dropped my phone on the cement floor. “You hacked my AI?”
“Of course I hacked your AI,” my father said, his sea-green eyes narrowing. “I promised I’d let you attempt to pay the loan back. I didn’t say I’d let you scamper about without supervision.”
“I don’t need supervision!” I shouted at him. “I’m an adult! You don’t get to run my life!”
“Someone needs to,” he said, eyes flicking to Nik. “Look at the mess you’ve made of it.”
He waved his hand, and my bank balance appeared on the cracked screen of my phone. It happened so fast, I could have easily believed it was magic, but the answer was far more mundane. The bastard had an AI of his own, and it was running my Sibyl like a puppet.
“You’re out of money,” Yong said scornfully. “You’ve got a bounty on your head that’s drawing every lowlife in this disaster of a city to you like flies to honey. You almost died yesterday because of it, and now you’re squatting in the home of a man who answers his door with a gun. It’s obvious that your life here is a failure. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t care how your actions reflect on my name, but even selfish creatures care for their own futures. Have a care for yours. It’s time to stop being stubborn and come home.”
I clenched my fists. “No.”
His jaw tightened. “Opal—”
“No!” I yelled at him. “So long as I pay my debt, you leave me alone. That was our deal! You gave me your word.”
“And I keep my word,” he snarled. “It’s not my fault if you don’t pay attention to yours.”
For a terrifying moment, I had no idea what he was talking about, which was catastrophically bad. If you let a dragon get you in a trap, you were lost. I was still scrambling to figure out how screwed I was when Sibyl cleared her nonexistent throat.
“I, um, might have entered the wrong payment date for the debt on your calendar.”
I snatched my broken phone off the ground. “What?”
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “He ordered me to do it! I didn’t want to lie!”
I was so furious I couldn’t see straight, but there was no time for that. “When’s the real deadline?” I demanded.
“Today,” Sibyl whispered.
I closed my eyes with a hiss as I realized just how hard I’d been set up. How long I’d been played. “Is this why you tried to get me to call my dad last night?”
“No, that was legitimate concern for your welfare,” Sibyl said earnestly. “You were seriously considering wandering around homeless while there were thugs trying to kidnap you. Of course I told you to stop! And if you weren’t so crazy about this debt thing, you’d see I was right! I refuse to apologize for trying to help you.”
That was almost enough to make me feel bad. Almost. “But you still wanted me to go home to my dad even after he had you hacked so he could keep secret tabs on my life? You thought that was a better alternative?!”
“Well, yeah,” Sibyl said. “It’s not the healthiest relationship, but he only had me hacked because he wanted to protect you.”
Bullshit. He wanted to control me. I could see it in his smug smile. He already thought he’d won. That was all he’d ever cared about: winning, dominating, crushing anyone who opposed him. I couldn’t even blame him for it. It was draconic nature to demand obedience, but that didn’t mean I had to give it.
“You played your
hand too early,” I said, shoving my broken phone into my pocket as I turned on my father. “If you’d waited until tomorrow, you’d have had me hook, line, and sinker, but now I know my debt isn’t due until midnight. That means I still have time.”
“Given your current trajectory, if I’d waited until tomorrow, you’d be dead,” my father said flatly. “You’re no use to me picked apart by Underground dwellers. This isn’t some childish treasure hunt. Even if you do find whatever it is your dead mage made, you still have to turn it into a form of currency I’ll accept. You know how long it takes to auction anything really valuable. If this ritual is worth as much as you seem to think, it could take weeks to find a buyer. Even if you slashed the price to the bone to find a buyer tonight, it still takes twenty-four hours to transfer that much money. You could sell it right now, and you’d still be too late.” He smiled at me and switched to Korean. “Face it, little dog-girl, you’ve lost. There’s no shame in being defeated by a greater opponent, but it’s time to stop running and come back to your kennel.”
If I’d been mad before, I was seeing red now. The old bastard even had the audacity to pat his leg, literally calling me like a dog, and I clenched my fists so hard I drew blood.
“Get out.”
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Opal—”
“Get. Out.” I said again, forcing the words through my bared teeth. “You gave your word. I’m not beaten until tonight. Honor that, or the whole world will know the Sublime Yong is an oath breaker.”
“No one would listen,” he said, but I knew I’d gotten him. There was nothing my father cared about more than his pride. Attacking it now was a low blow, but he was the one who’d brought me this far down. He could live with it.
“Everyone,” I said, repeating the word in every language I knew. “You do anything before midnight, and I swear, I will spend the rest of my life making sure everyone knows that the Dragon of Korea is a liar and a cheat.”
His chest expanded, and I knew I’d gone too far. I could already smell his fire building, the carbon reek of his magic filling the air. I stared back defiantly, daring him to burn me. The pain would almost be a relief after everything else he’d done. In the end, though, my father was an old dragon. An old, honorable dragon, famous the world over for his self-control. He got himself back together in the space of a single breath, but his eyes were still terrifying when he looked down on me again.
“Have it your way,” he said idly. “Enjoy your day of running wild. It will be the last you ever get.”
“We’ll see,” I growled back, lifting my chin high. “Now get out of Nik’s apartment.”
He would have left faster if I hadn’t challenged him. He’d clearly been ready to storm out on his own, but I wanted to make him leave on my terms. It was the same stupid power game I was always accusing him of playing, but power was the only language dragons understood, so I spoke it loud and clear, planting my feet as if Nik’s cement floor was the hill I’d chosen to die on. For a moment, I thought the Great Yong was actually going to take my challenge, but it must have been too far beneath his vaunted dignity, because in the end, he stepped back into the stairwell, leaving his accessory mortal to close the door behind them.
The moment the lock clicked shut, Nik collapsed on the ground. “Christ, Opal,” he gasped, sucking in air like he’d been waiting all this time to breathe. “You didn’t tell me your dad was a dragon!”
“I told you he was an ass,” I said. “Same thing.”
“Not the same,” he insisted, turning to stare up at me. “Are you a dragon?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. I’m human. I’ve done human magic in front of you.”
“How do I know it’s human?” he said, suddenly suspicious. “I’ve never seen dragon magic.”
“Trust me, you’d know,” I replied, reaching down to help him up. “Dragon magic involves a lot more fire.”
“If you aren’t a dragon, how is your dad one?” Nik demanded, taking my hand. Then his eyes went wide. “Are you a half dragon?”
“Humans and dragons can’t interbreed,” I informed him, determined to nip this in the bud before he got any other wild ideas. “The Dragon of Korea isn’t my actual father. We all just pretend that he is. It’s part of his fantasy of playing head to a respectable family.” A fantasy I still—still—couldn’t seem to shake myself free of, even in my own mind.
“I’m one of his mortals,” I continued. “Every big dragon has some, but Yong is a collector. He was up to almost two hundred when I left home.”
“Two hundred?” Nik repeated, shocked. “You mean there are two hundred people willing to be owned by a dragon?”
“There’s a lot more than that,” I said. “Those two hundred are the choicest specimens selected from thousands of applicants from all over the world. And you’re not safe once you get in, either. My father is constantly switching humans out as they get too old or lose his favor. You can imagine the competition that creates. They’re crawling over each other for his attention, backstabbing and fawning at his feet in their desperate attempts to curry his favor. It’s disgusting.”
Absolutely disgusting. Something I knew for a fact because, before I’d gotten old enough to know better, I’d been the same.
“He must really like you, though,” Nik said. “He wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if he didn’t.”
I shook my head. “He likes my mother. She’s the queen of his menagerie. She’s been First Mortal for thirty years now, and she’s still going strong. Her only flaw is that she’s not a mage. Yong couldn’t stand the lack, so he made a breeding agreement with one of the European dragons to fix the problem.”
“Wait wait wait,” Nik said, putting up his hands. “A breeding agreement? He bred your mother with another human?”
“Not actual sex,” I said quickly. “My mother belongs to Yong, and the first thing to know about dragons is they don’t share. It was all done by mail, the way you breed expensive cattle. He got samples from the best specimens he could find and then hired a lab to blend all the genetics into the best possible combination. The goal was to recreate my mother, except even better and with magic, but the reality was me.” I chuckled. “Huge disappointment, as you can see.”
Nik looked legitimately confused. “How are you a disappointment? You’re a hell of a mage.”
“I’m a terrible mage,” I corrected. “As for the rest, well, you’ve seen the caliber of human beauty my father runs around with.” I pointed at my face. “Even the best genetics don’t actually guarantee results. Mom was praying for puberty to work a miracle, but it never panned out. There’s a reason Dad’s nickname for me is ‘dog girl.’”
“You’re not a dog-girl!” Nik said fiercely. “You’re—” He stopped suddenly, gritting his teeth. “You’re not ugly,” he said at last.
I shrugged. “Maybe not by human standards, but that’s not what I’m judged by. That’s okay, though. I don’t have to live up to the Great Yong’s expectations anymore, because I’m done being his pet.”
It was what I’d always been to him: a puppy, a toy, something he paid attention to when it gave him joy. We were all his playthings, but unlike everyone else in Yong’s household, I wasn’t okay with that. I refused to worship the ground he walked on, which was why Yong refused to let me go. It didn’t matter that I was a dog-faced girl who couldn’t dance or sing or master the magic he’d paid so much for me to be born with. I was the one human who didn’t act as if he was my moon, sun, and stars, and that stung his pride. He wouldn’t stop until he’d put me back in my place, which was why I had to win no matter what. I’d risked everything to get into this game. If I couldn’t play as dirty as he did, I’d never be free.
“We need to get moving,” I said grimly, checking the time on my cracked phone. It was ten minutes past nine a.m., just over the eight hours Rena had said she’d need to crack the security on Dr. Lyle’s hand, and fifteen hours away from my father’s midnight deadline.
“It is midnight DFZ time, right?” I asked Sibyl, digging into my bag for my goggles, which had also turned themselves back on just like my phone. “You’re not screwing me over again, are you?”
“I didn’t mean to screw you over at all,” my AI said, her voice hurt. “I can’t help it if I’m hacked! And it wasn’t as though I did anything really bad. I put the wrong dates in your calendar, sure, but your father was only trying to get you to come back before you did something you’d really regret. He just wants what’s best for you, you know.”
I made a disgusted sound, and Nik shook his head. “I told you AIs were a liability. She’s totally compromised. You’ll have to do a factory reset.”
“That’ll take all day,” I said. “And it’ll completely wipe her personality.”
“Better than carrying a mole around with you.”
I looked down at the goggles in my hands. I knew Nik was right, but I’d had Sibyl for three years now. Even compromised, she was the closest thing I had to a best friend. I was fully aware of how pathetic that sounded, but it didn’t change the way I felt. No matter how cold and practical I tried to be, resetting Sibyl felt like killing a sister, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Thank you, Opal,” Sibyl whispered. “You’re a good person.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “But you are going into the shop for a full security reset the moment I get some spare cash.”
“I can’t believe you’re still going to trust that thing,” Nik said as I slid the goggles onto my head.
“I don’t trust her,” I said, smiling in relief when my AR heads-up display appeared in front of my eyes again. “But I need her. She’s still my second brain, and it’s not like she can make things any worse. I’ve already been hung out to dry. What else is my dad going to do? Follow me around all day and trip me?”
From the sour look on his face, it was clear Nik thought that was exactly what was going to happen and I was being an idiot for enabling it, which, to be fair, I was. To my relief, though, he didn’t keep arguing. He just shoved his dripping hair out of his face and turned around. “Your funeral,” he said, walking back to his room. “You do what you want. I’m going to go finish my shower. Since you’ve got a hard deadline now, I’m guessing you want to leave as soon as possible?”