Lyra Stormwing had hunted dragons since she was a child, and now she wanted the one no rider had ever caught. The last wild sky-dragon. Riders older and stronger than her had gone looking for it. Some came back empty-handed. Some never came back. She meant to be the one it finally let ride. But she had a problem no dagger could fix. She did not know where it nested. Without that, her hunt could not even start. She knelt at the edge of a stream and washed the dust from her face. Three deep claw marks scarred the left side of her leather armor. She had cut them herself, hoping a wild dragon might read them as another dragon's mark. She had cut them a year ago. She still had nothing to point her toward the beast. A glow moved across the water. Lyra went still. A butterfly settled on a wet stone beside her hand. Its wings held colors she had never seen on any moth. Blue, gold, and pink light shifted across them like scattered stars. She had studied dragons all her life, and dragons ate strange things. This was food only the rarest kind hunted. She had read about creatures like this once, in a dead rider's journal. The old man wrote that the wild sky-dragon fed on glowing moths that lived in one place only. High cold cliffs where the moths bred. He had drawn the moth's shape in the margin. He died before he found the dragon itself. The butterfly lifted off the stone. It did not fly at random. It climbed, steady and straight, toward the far ridge where the land rose into stone teeth and cold air. Lyra watched it shrink to a spark against the gray rock. She stood up fast. The journal had never named the place. The moth did better than a map. It flew home, and home was where the dragon hunted. Lyra memorized the line of its flight. Two peaks, split by a narrow pass. Snow on the higher one. She fixed the shape in her mind so she could not lose it. She pulled her pack onto her shoulders and checked her daggers. Her hands were steady now. For the first time since she left home, she knew which way to walk. The cliffs were a day's climb, maybe two. Cold, thin air. The kind of place riders went and did not return from. She thought of the men who had died looking for what she had just found in a butterfly's flight path. Lyra started toward the ridge. She had her lead at last. Now she had to reach a nest guarded by the one dragon that had killed everyone who came before her.

Lyra reached the base of the split cliffs by dusk. The two peaks rose above her, black against a cold sky. She found the first handholds and started to climb. Then she stopped. Climbing was the easy part. She had studied the bones of dead riders. Every one of them had reached the nest with empty hands. The dragon read empty hands as an enemy or as meat. She could not arrive with nothing. She hung on the rock and thought. What did the dragon want? Not daggers. Not fear. It wanted the one food no other beast could bring it. The glowing moths from the high cliffs. If she carried one, she would come not as prey, but as something that fed it. Lyra climbed to a shelf where cold air pooled. Faint light drifted through the dark. A single moth floated past her face. Its wings held blue, gold, and pink light, like scattered stars. She had seen its kind once, at the stream below. This was the dragon's prey, and it lived only here. She reached for it. The moth slipped sideways. She grabbed again and missed. Her boot skidded on ice. She caught the rock with two fingers and hung there, heart pounding. Snatching would kill her before it caught anything. Lyra went still and let the moth choose its path. It settled on a wet stem near her hand. She cupped both palms slow, the way she would gentle a spooked horse. She closed them soft. The moth beat against her fingers, then went calm. Warm light leaked between her knuckles. Now she had a new problem. A cupped hand cannot climb. She needed both hands for the rock above. She pulled a small pouch from her belt and eased the moth inside, loose enough to breathe. The light glowed faint through the cloth. She tied it to her chest, over the three claw marks she had cut herself. She climbed the last stretch with the pouch glowing at her heart. Wind tore at the leather. Her fingers went numb. But she did not stop. The offering was made. She would not arrive empty-handed like the men whose bones she had studied. Lyra pulled herself onto the high ledge. Ahead, the nest opened in the rock, wide and dark. Something breathed inside it, slow and huge. Two eyes caught the moth's light and opened. She had her offering. She had reached the nest alive. But the dragon was awake now, and it was looking at her.

The dragon's eyes held on Lyra. She stood on the ledge with the pouch glowing at her chest. Then the storm hit. Wind slammed into her from the side and shoved her toward the drop. Her boots slid on ice. She dropped to one knee and grabbed the rock. Below her, the ground fell away into black. One more gust like that would throw her off the cliff before the dragon ever chose. She could not stand. She could not run. If she reached for the nest, the wind would take her. If she froze, the dragon would read her as prey, like the men whose bones she had studied. She had to give it the offering now, from here, or die on the stone. Lyra pressed flat to the ledge and worked the pouch open with numb fingers. The moth crawled out onto her palm. Its wings held blue, gold, and pink light, bright against the dark. She lifted her hand as far as she dared. The wind fought her arm. She held it there, open, an offering the wind could not spill. The moth beat its wings once and lifted off her palm. The gust caught it. Lyra thought it was lost. But the small light did not fall. It rode the wind toward the nest, glowing like a star pulled loose. The dragon moved. Its huge head shot out of the dark and snapped the moth from the air. She heard the soft click of its jaws. Then it went still, tasting. Its eyes came back to her. Lyra waited for it to strike. Another gust ripped across the ledge and tore at her back. She dug her fingers into a crack and held. She had nothing left to give now. The pouch hung empty at her chest. The dragon lowered its head. It did not lunge. It stretched its neck out over the ledge and turned its body, slow, until its great flank stood between Lyra and the wind. The gust broke against its scales instead of her. The air behind it went calm. She stared up at the wall of warm scale. The dragon had shielded her. It had eaten from her hand, or near enough, and it had not killed her. No rider before her had gotten this far and lived. Lyra pushed up off the ice and stood in the still air behind the dragon's body. Her legs shook. She did not touch it. She only stood, close enough to feel its heat, and let it look at her. The dragon watched her with one dark eye. It had accepted the food. It had not accepted her. But it had chosen, for now, not to let the storm take her. That was a door, cracked open. She meant to walk through it.