Chapter 850 — Father and Daughter

Then he frowned and said to Maggie, "Child, we have not seen each other for many years. Apart from these subjects, is there nothing else you wish to say to me? Do you... truly not wish to come home?"

Maggie was silent for a few seconds. Her enormous head dipped slightly, and she spoke the words Sir Gorosh had once believed he would never hear. "Father, what I did back then was rash."

The knight froze. For a full minute he stood there as still as a statue, an expression of astonishment on his face, until Asarena coughed nearby and the middle-aged dragonkin seemed to wake from a dream, instinctively beginning, "So then, you want to..."

Maggie shook her head gently. "Father, my leaving home back then was out of impulse, but my staying in the human world all these years was not impulse. Father, I am no longer a child. I have my own station and duties here; whether before His Majesty Gao Yang or before Grand Duchess Victoria, I cannot simply walk away. And... were I to return to the Holy Dragon Duchy now, I would face a very awkward position—you must know that. After all, unlike Lady Asarena, I am not a born Dragon-Marked Witch, and apart from being your daughter I have no more special bloodline."

"The Dragonblood Council will certainly pursue the matter of my transgression of the taboo back then."

As she spoke calmly, the memories of many past years flickered through Maggie's mind, scene by scene.

Many years ago, when she had leaped from Dragon Leap Cliff, she had still been far too young a child, sheltered by her family, sheltered by the mountains. Many of the ideas she held then now seemed faintly ridiculous—whether it was her longing for the sky or her pursuit of so-called "freedom," those pure and fierce notions that had once stirred a young dragonkin's heart could hardly help seeming naive and reckless after so many years.

Having weathered the storms of these years, she had come to feel more and more that the "great ambitions" she had held when she leaped from Dragon Leap Cliff were in truth very small in this complex and perilous world. In this unsafe world there was war, there was death, there were dark cults locked in desperate struggle with the gods, and there were the towering waves raised by the turning of an age. A dragonkin cradling a dream of the sky, leaping from a high cliff and plunging into this turbulent world, was as tiny as a flying insect, with no leisure left to spare for any dream at all.

The "world outside" was not, as she had imagined, all romance and epic. More often it was hunger and cold when she crashed at the foot of the northern mountains, despair and helplessness when she faced the Crystal Cluster Legion, and utter bewilderment when she confronted the rise and fall of alien dynasties.

Yet it was precisely these buffetings that had worn away the rashness of her youth; only so could the dragonkin who had once leaped from Dragon Leap Cliff now be unable to leave this "new home" as lightly as she had once left her old one.

"I am now the air force instructor of the Cecil Empire, senior advisor on several aircraft projects at the Imperial Arcanotechnology Research Institute, and at the same time deputy to Grand Chancellor Victoria and advisor to His Majesty Gao Yang. My position is comparable to yours before Grand Duke Bayang'er. I did leave home in haste back then, but by the time I came to my senses I had already put down roots too deep in the human world. I must stay here—whether out of duty or feeling, or for the honor of dragonkin, I must stay."

Sir Gorosh was silent for a long while, and in the end all his words became a single bitter smile. "I... understand. You are right.

"But Maggie, even with all these reasons, you could still come home to visit—just as I, a courtier, have had the chance to come here and see you.

"The Holy Dragon Duchy is establishing normal diplomatic relations with the Cecil Empire. The gates of the northern mountains are about to open. We will exchange ambassadors with the humans, open civilian channels, and begin long-term trade routes. Maggie, once these channels are open, the Duchy will no longer be a closed place, and you will no longer be reproached for the traditional taboos—even the Dragonblood Council will no longer pursue the old charge of your 'fleeing the country' from Dragon Leap Cliff, because you are the only dragonkin holding high office in the Cecil Empire, a precious bond between us."

Maggie looked quietly at her father, and only after a long while did she lower her head gently. "It is indeed as you say... Then when that time comes, I will go back to see you."