The pain swelled inside him, the pain of all those who had fallen. His wife, slain by the cruel Zerra. His father, Eranor, who had fallen defending the escarpment. His daughter, little Requiem, whose name now lived on in their kingdom. So many others, the people he was supposed to lead, the people he had brought here, the people he was so scared for.

Doubt might fill me, he thought, and too much fear for any man to bear, but for them I will be King Aeternum. For them I will be the leader they need.

The crowd parted, whispering and bowing their heads, and from the darkness she emerged—his bride.

When Laira had first come to him, she had been only half alive—starving, wounded, feverish, a fragile thing barely clinging to life after years of abuse. He had watched her grow into a warrior, then a chieftain, and now before him he saw a new Laira. He saw the woman he would forever fly with, the light he would join to his. She walked toward him, smiling softly, staring at her feet. She wore a fur cloak and a necklace of beads, attire as humble as his, but she was beautiful to Jeid. A garland of flowers crowned her head of raven hair; that hair, once sheared short, now grew down to her chin. When she reached him, she looked up at him, her eyes huge and green and lit with starlight. Her lips—slanted from an old injury—parted, and she whispered to him, her voice so low only he could hear.

"I have loved you since I first saw you, Jeid. I will love you forever. Always will we fly together."

He kissed those lips, and the people raised their lanterns around them, and the lights glowed like the stars.

The dragons of Requiem worked through the summer, flying to the mountains in the north, cutting out stones, carving, building. Around King's Column they laid down more tiles, and more columns rose, sisters to the first pillar of their kingdom. Porticoes rose among the birches, soaring hundreds of feet tall, forming the skeleton of what would become a palace, the heart of a nation.

As the palace grew from the forest, so did their number.

The first new dragons arrived on a clear summer night with no moon, a husband and wife from the eastern plains. Three days later, on a warm evening, seven dragons flew in from the distant, snowy north where no plants grew and ice formed the walls of homes. By the summer solstice, a hundred dragons flew above the halls of Requiem, a hundred souls no longer lost, blessed by their stars, joined together.