in the crook of her left arm. She continued to shuffle through them deftly before she answered, “Not with this. Can you pick out some two inch steel bolts, though? We’ll need several handfuls of those, I’m sure.”
My insides wiggled uncomfortably and I chanted ‘two inch steel bolts’ to myself silently as I returned to petition Rio’s help. He had dumped his collection of metal into a pile messier than the ones already surrounding us.
“Two inch steel bolts,” I said, my silent chant suddenly verbal.
“I beg your pardon?” The half-blood said.
“We need a bunch of two inch steel bolts, apparently,” I clarified, shrugging. At least I sort of knew what a bolt looked like.
“’A bunch’, huh? Rio mused. “You see any bolts when you were hunting for parts?” He asked Levent, whose nod was barely discernable.
“There,” he said, pointing to an area behind the most precariously stacked sharp, deadly pieces of metal.
“Aah,” I groaned. At least I was small enough to likely not get myself killed. “I’ll go look.”
“I’ll join you, m’lady,” Rio offered, following me as I ducked between two guillotine-like sheets and made my way in the direction Levent had pointed.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the metal yard. The kin ended up handing a stack of coins to the grungy metal workers who eyed him with suspicion and greed. By the time we returned to Aenlilea’s home it was completely dark and there were lamplighters out in Oenferia Town.
“We’re home,” Kewyn called to her father, walking into the shop with the heavy bag of metal parts.
“Good! I thought you’d surely have died by now. That’s a relief,” Aenlilea muttered to himself sarcastically. He smiled at his daughter, then, a manic glint in his eyes. “Well, bring it here. Let’s see what you got.”
The man began digging through the bag, pulling out parts and muttering to himself.
Kewyn turned to us, then, saying quite clearly, “We’d best get out of here. He’ll be uncontainable in a moment.”
We were shooed outside.
The blonde stood there in the doorway for a moment before she decided