by Rachel Aaron
“I’ve tried that,” I said angrily. “I’ve tried and tried a hundred times, but he doesn’t listen! He just yells.”
The Peacemaker’s mouth twitched. “Do you yell back?”
I looked down at my hands. I…might have yelled at my dad a bit. Or a lot. But it wasn’t my fault! He was just so unreasonable, and it made me so mad. Before I could think of how to explain this to the Peacemaker in a way that didn’t make me sound like part of the problem, though, the dragon stood up from his desk.
“I can’t fix what’s broken between you and your father,” he said. “You’re the only ones who can build that bridge, but you’re going to have to find a way to do it soon. The whole dragon world is in uproar over the gold markets, and they’re blaming Yong for it. I’m sure you don’t have a lot of sympathy for him right now, but a weak dragon is a volatile thing. Yong has spent his magic nearly dry trying to keep you on a leash, but unlike you, he can’t just reach out and get more. All he’s got is the fire inside him. When that’s gone, so is he.”
“It won’t come to that,” I promised. “My dad’s stubborn as a pig, but he’s not going to kill himself over my curse.”
“Maybe not on purpose,” the Peacemaker said. “But even prudent dragons are capable of doing amazingly stupid, reckless things when they’re desperate to win.”
My eyes dropped. I knew all about that.
“Just talk to him,” the dragon said. “He’s going about it all wrong, but I’m certain that your father loves you. You’ve told me you don’t hate him, so that’s a good start. Yong’s old and set in his ways. He’s not going to be the first to come around, but you’re young and human. Your kind shapes the entire world. Surely you can make one stubborn old dragon see the light.”
I sighed. “It’s not going to work.”
The Peacemaker shrugged. “Maybe not, but I suggest you give it a try anyway, because no dragon under my command is going to remove that curse for you. I’m not kicking off a war because you two are too stubborn to work out your differences like civilized people.”
That was fair enough, I guessed, but “What do I do in the meantime? Talking to my dad is great and all, but I’m here because he’s trying to kidnap me. That doesn’t give me a lot of negotiating room.”
“You’re welcome to stay at the Consulate as long as you like,” the Peacemaker offered. “I can’t take your curse off, but I can offer you sanctuary, and I promise you’ll be safe here. No matter how hard he rages, your dad can’t break in past all of us, especially not in his current condition.”
The idea of another dragon knowing how weak my father was made me nervous, but I shook it off with a grimace. I was not responsible for what he’d done to himself or for keeping him safe. That was for his obedient mortals to worry about. I was free, and like hell was I cowering in here.
“You sure about that?” Sibyl whispered. “This place is really nice. They’ve got a pool and a cafeteria and everything.”
It’s a prison, I thought at her.
“You can’t have it both ways, you know,” my AI snapped. “Even if the Peacemaker was willing to snip the curse off you right now, it’s not as if your dad would stop. He’d still be chasing after you, trying to make you go home. Your choices are stay here and be safe in a cushy cage or go outside and take your chances. Whatever you decide, though, this isn’t going to end until you and your dad come to some kind of resolution.”
The truth of those words hit me like a train. I was trapped, wasn’t I? I’d been focused on the curse just like I’d been focused on the debt, but they were all false goalposts. Every time I crossed one, my dad would just create another. That was exactly what he’d done with the curse. I could cross all the arbitrary finish lines I wanted, but this was never going to be over until one of us gave up.
I desperately wanted to believe that wasn’t me. I liked to think I was stronger than that, but I was the mortal in this conflict, and he had my back against the wall harder than ever. Now that I knew how much my gold work-around was hurting him, I couldn’t even make money anymore. Not unless I wanted to risk killing my dad by accident. Even knowing it would be his own fault, I felt sick just thinking about it. But if he was willing to do whatever it took to win and I wasn’t, didn’t that mean I’d already lost?
That line of thought was too depressing to bear. “I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face.
“Take all the time you need,” the Peacemaker said, walking out from behind his desk. “I have to get going. There’s still a lot of panic over the gold situation. I have to go make sure no one’s doing anything they’re not supposed to, but you’re welcome to stay in my office for as long as you like. When you’re ready to move to a proper room, just call the—”
“No,” I said quickly. “You’ve been very kind, too kind, but I can’t stay here. I didn’t break out of one dragon’s prison just to go live in another, no matter how nice it is. I’ll manage on my own.”
“Are you sure?” he said, looking sincerely worried for my well-being, which was an expression I’d never seen on a dragon before. “We have off-site housing for our human staff if you’d be more comfortable—”
“No, really, I’m fine,” I assured him. “I’ve got somewhere to go.”
“Let me walk you down, at least,” he said, hurrying to get the door for me. “This place is a warren. I don’t want you to get lost.”
More likely he didn’t want the mortal of the dragon who was currently devaluing the wealth of every other dragon in the world wandering around by herself. The Peacemaker was far too tactful to say as much directly, though. He was a lot of things I hadn’t expected, actually, and horrible as I felt right now, that made me smile.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” I said as I followed him to the elevator. “But you’re the nicest dragon I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” the Peacemaker said with a beaming smile. “Skyways entrance or Underground?”
“Underground, please,” I said, holding his sunny, confident smile in my mind like a warming fire as the elevator whisked us down the building and back into the fray.
***
I went straight to Nik’s house.
It was a shitty thing to do. Now that I’d left the safety of the consulate, my dad would be on my trail again for sure. Bringing that disaster to Nik’s doorstep was a horrible way to treat the person who’d helped me the most, but I couldn’t let this blow up without seeing him one last time. I didn’t know what I was going to do about the months of wages I’d promised him in return for helping me these last three crazy weeks, but I was sure I’d come up with something. I was most likely about to go back to being a rich dragon’s possession, after all. Dad would probably slip him a few million to make sure Nik kept his mouth shut.
Just thinking about that sent me to a really bad place. My thoughts got so dark at one point, I actually had to switch Sibyl off to keep her from going into emergency intervention mode. I know that sounds like a terrible idea that defeats the entire purpose of a mental health AI, but I wasn’t actually suicidal. I was just defeated. More so than I’d ever been in my life.
It took me a solid five minutes after the cab dropped me off to actually make it down the stairs to Nik’s door. He must have been waiting for me to arrive, because I’d barely lifted my hand to knock before he opened the door.
“You’re back!” he said excitedly, his freshly shaven face grinning down at me. He’d showered and changed into fresh clothes, too, which meant he looked a million times better than I did. “Does that mean your dad let you go?”
I didn’t know if I had it in me to explain how wrong that was. I opened my mouth to try anyway, but nothing came out. Even the stuff I’d practiced in the car, all the “Thank you for everything” and “I’m so sorry” speeches I’d planned out so carefully, had vanished from my head. Staring up at Nik with his bright gray eyes and his freshly washed hair sticking up in every direction, all I could see was what I was about
to lose, the life that was being taken from me by a force I couldn’t fight, and I…I…
“Opal?”
I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. It was a horrible, childish, humiliating way to act, but my body wasn’t listening to reason. It was all over. Everything I’d worked for, everything I’d built. My life here hadn’t been much or pretty, but it had been mine. The only thing I’d ever been able to call my own in my entire existence. Now my dad was taking it just like he took everything else, and I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t do anything.
Nik swore under his breath, looking nervously down the hallway as he pulled me into his apartment and locked the door. This turned out to be a bad move, because the privacy gave me a false sense of security, which allowed me to cry even harder. I tried to apologize for being an idiot who always cried in front of him, but I was sobbing too hard to say anything intelligible. That was a real problem, because Nik was starting to look panicked.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, grabbing my shoulders. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Just please stop crying.”
I covered my face with my hands. That was simultaneously the most touching and most humiliating thing anyone had ever said to me. I hated myself for being the weak, weepy girl who needed that kind of support, but at the same time, I was desperate to take him up on it. I was so tired of losing. So tired of fighting and pushing and sacrificing only to have everything blow up in my face. Just tired. So, so tired down to my bones.
“Can I have a hug?”
The sad little question came out in a spasm of hiccups, but I knew Nik understood me, because he jumped. “Yeah,” he said, putting his arms around me awkwardly. “Of course.”
I closed my eyes guiltily as he pressed me into his chest. I had no right using him for comfort like this. I felt like I was always mooching off of Nik, but he’d said it was okay, and I’d had nothing left to say no with. Thankfully, Nik didn’t seem to mind. After the initial awkwardness, he got into the swing of things pretty quickly, pulling me into his chest as I cried and cried and cried.
We must have moved at some point, because when I finally stopped sobbing long enough to pay attention to my surroundings, we were sitting on the couch. I didn’t know how long it had gone on, but it must have been quite a while, because Nik’s black T-shirt was soaked.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“I don’t mind,” he said quietly, patting my hair. “You lie on me as long as you want.”
I nodded and buried my face in his neck, greedily taking all the comfort he was willing to give me, because who knew when I’d get another chance like this. Hell, I’d probably never see Nik again after today.
That thought started me crying all over again. I hadn’t thought I had anything left, but for once I was being an overachiever, because I got in another solid thirty minutes of weeping before I finally managed to pull it back together.
“So,” Nik said when my heaving finally faded back to sniffles. “I take it the payoff didn’t go well.”
I shook my head against his chest.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
Hell no. I didn’t even want to think about it, but I’d been selfish enough already. Nik needed to know what was chasing me. If I let him get caught flatfooted because I’d been too gutless to warn him about what I’d brought to his door, I was no better than all the other criminals who’d screwed him over.
“I paid my dad the money,” I said quietly, keeping my head against his chest so I wouldn’t have to watch his face when he heard how bad I’d let myself get cornered. “But he refused to remove the curse. When I tried to make him, he locked me up. He was going to drag me home right there, but I escaped and ran to the Peacemaker.”
Nik’s chest hitched beneath me. “You talked to the Dragon of Detroit?!”
I nodded. “He couldn’t help me, though. My dad already announced he’d declare war on any dragon who tries to take my curse off, which means I’m screwed. And it gets worse. I also found out that all the stuff we’ve been doing to get around the curse has been hurting him. Turns out forcing him to crash the gold markets over and over was burning up all his fire. He looked half dead when I saw him, and I…I…”
I trailed off with a shudder, and Nik scowled. “I don’t understand,” he said. “If crashing the market hurts him, can’t you just use that to make him let you go?”
I shook my head frantically. “I don’t want to kill him!”
“You don’t have to go that far,” Nik said. “Just push him a bit. You know, play chicken.”
That was the obvious tactic. It was what a real dragon would have done, but I shook my head again. “I don’t have the stomach for it,” I told him honestly. “I’m madder at him than I’ve ever been, but…”
“But he’s your dad.”
I nodded, so grateful he understood that I didn’t have words. “I’m not willing to torture him to get free, especially since I don’t know how much more he can take. What if I went too far and killed him?”
“He can stop at any time.”
“But I don’t trust him to,” I said frantically. “He’s already gone farther than I ever thought he would. I’m terrified to keep pushing him. I know that makes me a wuss and that I’m playing right into his hands, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t have the stomach for this. I’m not a dragon, and even though he’s being an ass and it would solve all my problems, I don’t want to kill my dad.”
There it was, the crux of all my problems. I knew what I had to do. I just couldn’t do it, and that was why I’d lost. I’d always taken a stubborn sort of pride in the idea that I could out-crazy anyone, but apparently I’d finally met my match. Just my luck it’d be the one dragon who could ruin my entire life.
“So what are you going to do?” Nik asked.
“I’m not,” I said bitterly, finally pushing myself off him. “Don’t you see? It’s over. I’m honestly surprised Dad hasn’t kicked down your door already and dragged me out by my hair. He already knows where you live.”
“Maybe he didn’t think you’d come back,” Nik said. “If I was him, I’d expect you to run for the airport or Canada. Not back into the Underground.”
“Well, he’ll figure it out eventually.” And when he did, I was toast.
“What if he didn’t, though?” Nik asked.
I frowned, not following, but Nik was grinning as if he’d just had a great idea. “This isn’t his city,” he said, leaning closer to me. “But it is mine. I’ve lived in the DFZ all my life. I know how to vanish here. I could take you with me.”
He looked so sure that my hopes actually rose for a moment. Then I came to my senses. “Come on,” I said, shaking my head. “The DFZ’s big, but it’s not infinite. He’s an ancient immortal dragon who already burned up his magic for this. He’s not going to let something little like not knowing where I am stop him. He’s got functionally infinite time and resources to spend hunting me down. We can’t beat that.”
“Not with that attitude,” Nik scolded. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to kill your dad. That shows you’re a better person than him. But losing one battle doesn’t mean you’ve lost the war. We’ve been working this whole time on the assumption that we needed money to win. We haven’t even tried running. Maybe it won’t last forever, but he’s the immortal, not you. You don’t need forever. You just have to beat him for as long as you’re alive, and that’s a game I think we can win.”
I stared at him in shock. “Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t,” Nik replied stubbornly.
I still couldn’t believe it. “I can’t ask you to do this. We can’t be Cleaners if we vanish!”
Nik shrugged. “There’s plenty of other ways of making money.”
“Ones you became a Cleaner to get away from!” I reminded him. “I don’t want you going back to that for me.”
“There’s lots of work between Cleaning and murder, you know,” Nik said, smirkin
g. “We could do repo, we could do renovations, we can clean stuff in the traditional sense of the word. There’s tons of jobs out there if we’re not too picky. It might not be the prettiest work, but you won’t be beholden to your dad, and you won’t have to do it alone. I’ll be with you every step of the way. It’ll be just like these last three weeks minus the crazy schedule, because seriously, you’re going to die if you keep that up.”
That was probably accurate, but I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “But…” I whispered. “Why?”
“Because even I can’t keep working eighteen hours a day.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I meant, why are you offering to do this? I know how hard you’ve worked to build your current life. Why would you give that up for me?”
Nik dropped his eyes. “You know why.”
I had my guesses. It was hard not to after what had happened in the parking lot, but that still didn’t explain this. “There are other girls,” I said quietly. “Less troublesome ones.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want them,” Nik said angrily, still refusing to look at me as he scrubbed his hands through his dark hair. “You’re…” He trailed off with a sigh, and then he turned to face me. “I got a couch for you. I loaned you money. I don’t do that. Ever. Or at least I didn’t used to, but you—” He cut off, searching for the words. “You make me want to have two plates,” he said at last. “I used to see that stuff as overhead, just more useless crap I had to move, but you make me want to have things so that I can share them with you. I get lonely when you’re not around. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve never had someone to miss or worry about, but you make me do those things. I’d thought I’d hate it, but I don’t. I like it. I like you. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who hasn’t screwed me over, so if you need to run, I’m coming with you, and I don’t care if that means I can’t Clean anymore. I can make money anywhere, but I can’t get another you.”
