"My father wasted twenty years on lead," Odin interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Twenty years proving what you already know. Stable metals cannot be persuaded to become something else."
I almost laughed.
Of course they couldn't. That was exactly what I'd told Ignatius. Odin was chasing an impossible fantasy.
Then Odin smiled.
"The breakthrough came when I stopped looking at stable metals altogether."
Something in his tone made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
"What metal?" My mind was doing calculations and rejecting them instantly. Not even Odin was that insane.
For a moment, Odin looked almost reverent.
"Enriched Uranium."
I met Dante’s horrified look. The sheer madness of it stole the breath from my lungs.
Uranium?
My dragon recoiled so violently it was almost painful.
No forge dragon would even consider it.
Nosaneforge dragon.
Ancient dragons spoke of certain heavy metals the way sailors spoke of storms and whirlpools—things best avoided because the cost of exploring them was too high. Unstable metals. Dangerous metals. Metals that behaved in ways no forge dragon could reliably predict.
Uranium sat at the very top of that list. And all the knowledge we had amassed about Odin slammed in to me at once. The defense contracts. The weapons. It was the only way he’d possibly been able to get his hands on something so toxic, and I knew in that instant what he wanted me to do.
I stared at Odin.
Not because I believed him.
Because for the first time, I realized he might actually believe himself.
And that was far more terrifying.
The smile never left his face.
"My father discovered that stability is the problem," he said softly. "You cannot force a finished metal to become something else. But a metal already changing? Already releasing energy?"
A chill spread through my chest.
No.
No, no, no.
The fragments of old stories I'd dismissed centuries ago suddenly surfaced with horrifying clarity.
Not myths.
Warnings. Fabricating enriched uranium was worth an empire.
And in that moment, I stopped seeing a greedy businessman chasing a multi-billion dream.
I saw a man standing on the edge of a cliff, convinced he could teach himself to fly.
