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At length, the dragon opened its auntleted hands into the heated maw to retrieve the mould He thrust it into some other chamber with an oven-like door and set a tion settled back into the still, silent lines of a creature of metal

“Olaf, what the fuck,to his feet and offering a hand to Sophie

The dwarf smiled, his teeth very white in the black of his close-cropped beard “Not a dragon,” he corrected “A drakyn forge Iic”

“Where the hell did you get your hands on one of those? The drakyn haven’t been seen in more than a century”

“Exactly,” said Olaf “And they left all kinds of fun stuff behind in their lairs”

“Sodid it work?” asked Sophie

“We’ll know in about half an hour For noait Anybody want a beer?”

Chapter 6

“—and the pointy eared bastard didn’t realize what he had in his hands was a fake!”

Sophie studiously pretended she wasn’t hearing blatant ad and pulled the phone out of her pocket to check the signal for the tenth tiiven up on her own phone after the latest irate text from her handler The likelihood that she’d still have a job after this—assu the sinking of the Titanic Miniscule

The kidnapper hadn’t called yet, and the counterfeit Eye wasn’t done in the, well, whatever contraption it was in The whole forging process had taken two hours so far, and the waiting was killing her They were running out of time

Tap, tap, tap the phone against her leg

“So Sophie,” said Olaf, turning his attention toward her “What is it you do?”

Tap, tap, tap She grient”

The dwarf’s srabbed a fistful of Mick’s shirt “You bring me a mole, Guidry?”