WAKING up under the deep purple umbrella leaves was both disconcerting and oddly comforting after several days of traveling the Wilds. Leif breathed in the damp, earthy smell as he stared at the stunning magenta veins on the underside of the leaf for a sleepy moment. The loud calls of singing birds and screeches of the tree frogs pierced through the relative quiet. He hadn't wanted to be the one to wake the others, but he sat up with a sigh and kicked the rock off the tip of the leaf he slept under so it sprang back up.

The sun was high enough in the sky above the tree canopy that a bright green glow filtered down. They had slept too long. Or, it appeared, he had slept too long and no one had woken him. The horses were still tied, and drinking from a trough formed of a large, curled leaf. The others had woken and been busy, it seemed, collecting water and preparing some sort of meal that rested in wrapped bundles on a still-warm pile of ash. But no one was around.

Assuming they'd return soon with something else edible or of use, Leif occupied himself with caring for the horses. Kyden's birth-blessing, he'd found out, had to do with animals and an ability to communicate with them in some manner. It certainly would have made his life in the vlamhok-infested Faladrine mountains easier, as it had so far on their journey. Bored witless, Leif occupied his time with—according to Kyden—Tygo, Wella and Frix's tails. His fingers combed through, separating the coarse hair into sections that he twisted and knotted absently.

"Where are they, hmm, Tygo?" Leif patted the tall black horse's haunch and then flank. "Do you know where that friend of yours went?"

Tygo's only form of answer was his big head swinging to nudge Leif's cheek. It had been too long, and Leif worried now that something had befallen his companions. But without knowing which way they'd gone; he didn't know where to start looking. A bothersome thought halted his departure; a fear of leaving to find them, only to miss their return to camp and become lost himself.

As he pondered what to do, he noticed a broken branch of a tree, like the many that lay throughout the Wilds forming a carpet of fallen debris. It was no wider than the palm of his hand, and a section as long as his foot poked out from under one of the low leaning umbrella leaves. Leif could swear he saw a flash of silver at its side. Blinking, he glanced around the camp and noticed similar bits of wood; some leaning against trunks of trees and others laying unassumingly under the umbrella leaves that his friends had occupied that night.

Leif found it funny that the branch he'd seen first was now completely hidden, and he casually pushed the leaf up. At first glance, it was only a branch, but Leif knew better. Tiny eyes hid under closed lids, and arms and legs were held perfectly still as if bound together to the trunk of a body. As Leif suspected, a poorly concealed thumb-sized blade was tucked under an arm.

It wasn't often one got to witness such a creature, as they were usually glamoured to go unnoticed, but as Leif looked around, the glamour was broken by his knowledge of their presence. Pecks tittered and squealed all around him; little calls he hadn't noticed before were attempting to draw him away from camp.

A shiver ran up his spine as he realised why his friends had deserted. With a scowl, he yanked up the branch and tossed it away. "Begone Eeries!"

Giving up on luring him from his safe space, the pecks ran—likely to deal with those they'd already captured. There wasn't much to fear with them really; they were mischievous and troublesome, but rarely caused any great harm. Disorientation and exhaustion from running circles after them, yes, but no harm. Leif would likely find the others tied up or passed out, their clothes and anything shiny stolen as the sole manic fixation of pecks was collecting treasures.

But Leif realised with a shudder, this was the Wilds and he may not find them; humans were likely to be digested by larger eeries or even the plants themselves. With the Princess to save, and the others already possibly doomed, he didn't have time to waste on figuring out what to do.

"Flaming pecks!" he cursed and patted Wella and Frix's noses. "How are we going to get the others back, hmm, Frix?"

Frix's head tilted, and Leif smiled as he continued to rub the dappled-grey horse's face. There was only one way he could think of to get them back, short of convincing the pecks to release and return them—and that wasn't going to happen.

"There is one way, Frix, but I don't know..." It required using a gift he hadn't used in ages; something he'd sworn never to use.

The horses huffed at him, Tygo going so far as to stomp, and Leif chuckled. "I suppose you're right, Tygo. Their lives are worth more than my oath. You three will never speak of this, hear?"

Face pressed to Tygo's nose, Leif took a slow breath and opened his mouth.

Vines, thorny and thick, hung so low that Kyden had gotten wrapped in them somehow. Peering around, he searched out his travelling companions, but saw none of them. What he did see, curiously, was fire kindling running away from him. Kyden watched in stunned silence as the bits of wood tripped and shoved each other, as if each trying to win a race. Before he could question what he was seeing, the urge to get ahead of them took over his body and he began slicing his way out of the vines.

Stumbling after the running twigs, anger that they thought they could have what was his rose in his chest. A song, more beautiful than anything he'd heard in his twenty-three years of life, reverberated everywhere. The voice—loud and delicate at once—permeated his senses, caressing his skin with its rich tone and wiggling its way down into his chest where it thrummed cozily in his heart, pumping through every vessel in his body. It was his, and he needed to find it now. That voice was his, and he would get to it before any of the twigs could.

As he neared the source of the singing, now louder and more maddeningly gripping, he could hear others, larger than the twigs, moving through the jungle around him. Tightening his fist around the hilt of his sword, he swung it out; he would kill whoever tried to get in his way.

Crashing through the trees, Kyden fell into the small open space he'd spent the night sleeping in. There was the leaf he'd slept under, the fire that Killi had used to cook something that only slightly resembled food, and the horses still tied. Adrenaline still coursing, Kyden stood quickly but could not remember why he'd drawn his sword. Leif mirrored him on the other side of the small camp, and Killi and Tavis wrestled in a bush, thwacking each other with branches.

The voice. He'd been chasing the voice as if mad with desire, and now he heard nothing.

"The singing—what happened?" he asked.

"I don't know." Leif sheathed his sword and straightened. But he watched the bush that shook and swore and dropped his hand to his sword once more. Kyden tugged Killi out of the bush and held him away from Tavis who had benefited from Killi's disorientation; it was clear they had followed the voice too. As a bunch of branches and twigs jumped from the bush and ran in all directions, Kyden almost dropped Killi.

"What in all wishes?"

The branch in Killi's hand sneered at Kyden and struggled to free itself of its prison.

"Flames!" Tavis exclaimed as Leif helped him out of the bush. "I'm sorry, Killi, I can't explain it; I heard the maiden and I lost hold of my mind!"

"We all did." Killi shook off Kyden's hand. "But I ran here from somewhere else. Where were we?"

"Pecks," Leif said, taking the club out of Tavis' hand. He held it with one finger hooked into the bark around its neck, and it snarled at him as it wiggled to free itself.

"So the maiden saved us?" Tavis asked, staring at the peck he'd held a moment earlier.

"Odd that there's no maiden here then." Kyden looked to Leif for explanation as he'd been the first there. "And would you let that thing go?"

"Wherever she is, is of no matter to us. We are lucky that she aided us, and now we must move; we've lost much light," Leif said as he looked up trying to assess the time of day. "And no, we will not let the pecks go! Look at them—they're wearing Loricai crests!"