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Company was good because I felt helpless if I had any free time awake. I tried to plan a way to rescue Lynn, but I just didn’t know enough about Drake and the way he operated to think of a way in. If he was too upset to even deal with us now we were at an impasse I didn’t know how to cross.
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAOTIC NEUTRAL
The problem solved itself a few trips back from the darkness later.
Or I should say Lynn solved it. Typical Lynn. We’d given her the tools—aka eyeballs—and she’d rescued herself.
Rumor was she appeared inside the casino like nothing had happened, Drake on her arm like he was her beautiful, harmless eye candy.
Ha.
More like her seeing eye dragon.
I didn’t witness that part, just heard about it later from Sloan, but I was fortunately awake when Lynn came to my room to see me.
Her hair was its natural color now, a silver blond a full shade lighter than mine; true platinum.
Her eyes were still healing, but unless Drake was willing to take them out himself and keep them (Which he hadn’t done yet, so I was hopeful he didn’t have that in him.), they were no longer an effective bargaining chip for him. It had been enough to tip the scales in her favor, and she was more or less free to wander the earth again.
I couldn’t hide a thing from Lynn, not even from her reforming, unseeing eyes.
She sat beside the bed and patted my hand. “You’ll be okay,” she told me.
“I know.” I said, trying to mean it. “So you’re free now?”
“More or less. Drake’s agreed to stay in the States, and I told him I would keep considering his proposal if we live together for a few years first and I get to stay close to you.”
“A little easier to get him to negotiate with your eyes back?”
“Well, yeah. He fights dirty, but don’t we all? I’m not sure I’d know what to do with someone that didn’t. A clean fight is an oxymoron to me. What would even be the point? At least I understand him.”
“Fair enough. So no war with the Chinese dragons?”
“Not as of now. Tianlong is not happy. He has a half-human daughter, a young girl, that’s chosen to stay with the druids rather than follow him home, and he struck out with you, which shook him to his core, but he’s retreated back into his lair for now. Being ancient breeds a special sort of patience. And arrogance.”
I connected the dots. The little girl I’d found before I left. The one Conan was so attached to, was Tianlong’s daughter. “Yinlong,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Tianlong’s daughter is Yinlong.”
“You’re mixed up in that? Of course you are.” She sounded a perfect combination of vexed and amused.
“She and Conan are very close.”
“Of course they are.”
“I thought they didn’t believe in diluting their bloodline. Isn’t that the whole reason they were looking for us?”
“Someone like Tianlong doesn’t make rules because he plans to follow them himself.”
Figured.
“But Drake isn’t like him?” I asked hopefully. “He’s not, ya know, totally evil?”
“They’re not good or evil. They’re kind of like nature. Often benign but also capable of terrible, wondrous, and unpredictable things.”
