The blooms were dying, and Lyria Silverwing could not sing them well. She hovered at the top of the canopy, silver-veined wings catching the light. Below her, the great flowers curled brown at their edges. Those flowers hid the sleeping queen, the ancient dragon Lyria had spent her whole life trying to wake. If the blooms withered, the queen's cradle would rot, and Lyria's one chance would rot with it. She pressed her palm to a dying petal. A grey stain crept along its veins like frost. She had seen this stain spread three flowers wide since dawn. Her fingers came away dusted with grey ash. Lyria knew only one thing that could carry water and heat to the whole canopy fast enough. She had never dared summon them all at once. Her voice could call one, maybe two. The full flight had not answered any singer in a hundred years. She filled her lungs and sang. The note started low, then climbed. It was not a pretty song. She poured every scrap of fear into it, every year of waiting. Her throat burned. She sang until her wings shook and the sound cracked. Nothing came. The grey stain reached the flower beneath her feet. Lyria watched it swallow the petal's color. She thought of the queen sleeping under all that rot, and she sang again, louder, uglier, past the point where her voice wanted to break. Then the air moved. One came first. Its scales flashed teal and rose as it rose through the leaves, wings veined in silver like her own. Then another burst up beside it, then six, then more than she could count. The butterfly dragons filled the sky above the canopy. Their wings threw colored light across the dying blooms. Lyria kept singing, and she pointed at the grey stain. The dragons understood. They dove. The first breathed a fine mist over the browning flowers. Where the mist touched, the grey faltered. A second dragon breathed warm air behind the mist, and the petals lifted. Flower by flower, the flight worked across the canopy. Lyria flew among them, her song steering the swarm. The stain shrank. Green crept back into the curled leaves. By the time her voice finally gave out, the canopy blooms stood open and whole. The queen's hiding place was saved. Lyria dropped onto a broad, healed leaf, gasping, her throat raw. The dragons circled once, then settled around her. They did not scatter as they always had before. They watched her, waiting. She understood then what her song had truly done. She had not just called them. She had bound them to her. And below, in the deep roots she had just spent everything to protect, something enormous shifted in its sleep. A single low note rose up through the leaves in answer to her broken voice. The queen had heard her. And now the queen was stirring.

The queen's low note faded, but the canopy did not settle. Lyria pushed off the healed leaf and rose above the swarm. Below her, a wall of thick vines split apart with a wet tearing sound. That part of the canopy had stayed shut for as long as she could remember. Now a dark gap opened in it, right above the queen's cradle. Something moved behind the gap, and Lyria could not see what. She hovered closer. The dragons followed, uneasy, their wings dimming. The gap breathed cold air at her face. Whatever waited inside would reach the cradle before she could stop it, and she was flying blind. She needed eyes in that dark. She needed a way to make the dark answer. A cluster of orchids grew at the gap's edge. Their petals glowed with a soft inner light, pink and white, and they trembled like they were about to speak. Lyria remembered a thing her mother once told her. Some blooms sing back to a singer. Push a note into them, and they carry it further than any voice. Lyria filled her sore lungs. Her throat still burned from the last song. She sang one clean note straight into the glowing orchids. The orchids caught the note and threw it back, louder and brighter. Their light flared and poured into the gap. The dark lit up. Lyria saw what stirred there. A second flight of butterfly dragons filled the sealed hollow. They were larger than her own, their scales grey and dull, their eyes shut. The queen's waking pulse had roused them. They pressed toward the light, drawn to the orchid song, hundreds of them packed in the dark. They were not attacking. They were lost. And they were pouring straight toward the cradle in a blind, crushing wave. Lyria had wanted to see. Now she saw too much. Her own flight could not fight that many. But the orchids still held her note, still glowed. She sang again, harder, and shaped the sound into a call, the same call that had bound her first flight. The grey dragons turned their shut eyes toward her. The nearest ones opened their wings and drifted up out of the hollow, following the light and the voice. They did not crash the cradle. They rose to her. Lyria kept singing until the last of them cleared the gap. When her voice gave out, two flights circled her instead of one. Both were hers now, bound by the same song. Far more dragons than she could ever hope to feed or lead. The cradle was safe. But the queen's pulse had opened more than one sealed place, and Lyria felt the canopy shudder again beneath her. Somewhere below, another gap was tearing.