He looked at the scales. He looked at the chest. He reached out. His fingers found the seam between two of the massive scales. He gripped. He pulled.
The scale peeled back.
The skin beneath was dark red and steaming. He reached deeper. His arm went into the body. She heard the wet, interior sounds of a hand moving through organs. She looked away. Then she looked back. She was a warrior. She had field-dressed kills.
His arm emerged.
His hand was closed around the dragon's heart.
It was the size of his head. Dark red. It pulsed — still pulsing, even torn from the body, the massive muscle of it contracting in slow, powerful rhythm. The heat coming from it was not the ambient lava heat. It was its own heat. Internal. Alive.
"The dragon's heart," he said. He turned it in his hands. The surface was dense and layered, the tissue of it built for a creature that could breathe enough fire to melt stone walls. "I told you I would give you something."
Edda stared at the heart.
