You are my stars, Laira, he thought. You are my sky. You are the light that guides my flight.

He did not need to speak those words; she knew and she felt the same, and Jeid swore to never part from her again.

Dawn rose around them, a dawn of some hope, some life. The other Vir Requis joined them, and they flew—perhaps the last dragons in the world—far from the mountains and across the plains. They hunted bison from a roaming herd, and they drank from a river, and they built campfires and tended to their wounds. They huddled together in the wilderness, ragged and famished and hurt, but ready to heal, ready to fight.

"We slew many sphinxes," Jeid said at length as the others gathered around him. "With Bryn's sacrifice, Requiem defeated the beasts who followed us north. But many of the Widejaws, perhaps hundreds, might still be living in Requiem. We survivors, only fifty Vir Requis, might be all that remains of our nation. Now the time has come to decide our path. Do we flee into the distance to find a new home? Or do we fly back to Requiem and fight?"

"Fight!" Dorvin leaped up and swung a bison rib like a sword. "I'm done hiding. We fly to war. Fifty dragons?" He blew out breath, fluttering his lips. "More than enough. We'll slay the lot of them."

Laira rose to her feet too. The young woman, clad in a shaggy fur cloak, stood no taller than Dorvin's shoulders, but she spoke with the authority of a great queen.

"We return to Requiem," Laira said. "Not with dragonfire and claws, but with a gift of meat . . . and a gift of herbs." She reached into her cloak and pulled out a rolled-up ball of vines. "Tillvine. Dragonfire won't save Requiem. These leaves will."

TANIN

 
TANIN

When dawn rose, he found her changed.

Tanin woke with her in his arms, but she was a different Issari, more fragile, stronger, paler, colder, warmer. Hurt.

"Issari?" he whispered.

She rose from the bed and stood before him, only a sheet draped across her body. Two lights gleamed upon her hands—her amulet of the south and a new light, brighter, softer, the glow of a star. She had been transfigured, grown mightier overnight, yet her eyes seemed haunted, filled with more pain than he'd ever seen in them. She placed a hand upon her belly and whispered softly, but he could not hear the words.

"Issari, what's wrong?" He rose and stood before her, then gasped to see blood on her sheet. It dripped between her legs.

"We must find more dragons," she whispered.

He touched her cheek. Her skin was burning hot. "Issari! What happened? Your hand . . ."

"Please." She looked away. "Never ask me. Never speak to me of what happened this night. Just . . . be with me."