The night passed, surprisingly uneventful. It was the first time Wren hadn't needed to scold them all continuously for making too much noise. Evander was the only one causing a problem. The wound in his leg had led to a limp that slowed their pace considerably. He'd stumbled a bit in the beginning and scared off every animal in the vicinity. It made everything eerily quiet.

They broke for lunch and Evanora leaned over Wren's shoulder to go over the map with him. She'd climbed onto the boulder he sat on so she could be at his height. Between what he knew of the forest and what she'd seen from Isra's back, they narrowed down the route even further.

Haelyn pulled Evander to the side and had him lift his pant leg so she could check on his cut. "This is definitely going to scar."

"Wouldn't be my first, your highness," he said.

"I told you not to call me that," she snapped, tightening the bandage around his leg. "It's bad enough that the Cathian's thought kidnapping me would do anything for their cause." She could almost feel Kris's breath on her neck. He was out there somewhere, following them. It made her back stiffen.

Evander placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. "Hey, you can relax. They won't be taking you anywhere with us around."

"Well what about after? Am I just supposed to wait for someone to try again?" Haelyn kicked her foot and fell back to sit on her heels.

"Have you ever considered traveling the high seas? I could take you to far off lands, where no one has ever heard of you or your family," he offered. "Once we finish this and we're set free, I'm going to buy myself a new ship and get back to where I belong."

For a moment, Haelyn looked intrigued. "How far have you gone?"

Evander sat back with his legs crossed. "Not far enough. One day I'll be able to say I've touched every shore, seen every land, traveled every sea. My father had the same dream."

"Did he do it?" She was hanging on his every word now. Just his voice conjured up the smell of the salt water and the spray that would cascade over her skin. Her stomach seemed to flip as if she were being rocked by the waves. Something in Evander's eyes crashed like a storm that could sink even the massive trade ships she'd seen leaving the docks.

"He must have," he answered. The storm in his eyes died away. "Only a man who found his dream could abandon his son and leave him to pirates. He was quite the determined adventurer."

Haelyn recovered his leg and wiped her hands clean. "Do you think he's still out there?"

The storm returned to Evander's eyes for a moment. "That would be something, wouldn't it?" He pulled himself to his feet with some difficulty. The smile he gave her was nothing like the coldness that had been in his words. "Looks like they've picked a direction for us to go."

Sure enough, Wren and Eva had rolled the map back up and were trying to help devise a way to help Evander move more quietly. The limp would be a hindrance if they couldn't solve it. "If only he was small enough to ride on Isra," Evan whined.

"Or if we'd brought one of the horses," Yophiel said with an accusing glance at Wren.

"Couldn't we just drag him in a litter?" Weylyn suggested, sizing the sailor up with his hands. "He's not so big that we couldn't fashion something at least to get him through the rest of the day. Maybe Evanora can do something tonight to help."

They began to go back and forth, each idea becoming more ridiculous and less helpful than the last. The options ranged from leaving him behind to cutting off the whole leg and being done with it. Naturally, Evander was strongly opposed to any further damage to his person.

"I could numb you to the pain, for a time," Eva said thoughtfully.

"Why didn't you start with that?" Wren snapped.

"Because it's dangerous. The body is meant to feel pain to know that something is wrong. If I had, who knows if he would have kept walking beyond his capabilities and made it worse beyond repair?" Eva explained. Though her tone was calm, the wide stance of her legs gave a small hint to the anger that boiled just under the surface. "Even now I'm extremely reluctant given how much trouble he's been having. We'll have to stop every hour so the wound can be checked and tended to."

The calm hush of their voices had encouraged the return of some of the wildlife. Even the dracontix lazily curled up nearby wasn't driving them off. The ever present tension began to ease and Evander considered the options. This truly wasn't the worst wound he'd been forced to endure and if the map stayed true they wouldn't have much further to go. His eyes flickered between Eva and Haelyn.

"If I lose my leg, you'll owe me a fake one," he bargained with them.

"If you lose your leg I will carve you one myself from the strongest tree in the forest" Wren promised.

It was finally decided to numb Evander's leg for an hour at a time. By the time they stopped to make camp, both pirate and mage were shaking with exhaustion. Isra had been kind enough to carry Eva where she could to give her time to recover her stamina.

They set up for the night, further from their end goal than they'd hoped to be. Moving any closer to the wyvern's nest in the dark would be disastrous even without an injured party member. Though the wound looked better after another round of care from Haelyn it would still be some time before the nimble pirate was back to his usual sure-footed self.

Weylyn took up a reclined position by Evander and Evanora while they slept. His eyes were closed and his breathing even but his hand kept a tight grip on his dagger.

"Where are you running off to?" Wren asked Haelyn after catching her walking out of the campfire's glow. Like Weylyn, his weapon was at the ready. The only thing that kept him from keeping an arrow across the string was Isra's calm snoring nearby. As long as the dracontix remained calm, so did he.

Haelyn paused and shook an empty leather bag at him. "I'm nearly out of herbs for Weylyn' leg, I wanted to restock on a few before tomorrow," she explained.

"You shouldn't be wandering out there alone," he chided.

"I'm not wandering and I won't go far," she promised. The herbalist had done her best to gather supplies in their walk. Several of her herbs were common enough that they grew between the roots of nearly every tree or sprouted up beside streams and the shallow puddles they passed. Then there were others she'd kept locked away in her storeroom where the sunlight wouldn't touch them and dwindle their potency. Those were the ones she knew would be in bloom now under the moonlight.

Wren pushed himself to his feet and nodded to both Isra and Weylyn when they looked over at him. "I'll go with you then, princess."

The lines around Haelyn's eyes deepened when she frowned. Despite her personal feelings of animosity towards the ranger she agreed and set out to a nearby group of trees they'd passed just before stopping to camp. They grew closer together and their twisted roots rose and fell from the ground like waves in a storm. The pair were careful to pick their way over them.

Haelyn dropped to her knees so suddenly, Wren assumed she'd fallen and grabbed for her shoulder. She shooed him off with an irritated huff. "Stop rushing me," she snapped.

Beneath one of the larger roots, pale green petals spread open under the soft silver light. They grew on thick green vines that looped around the roots. The flowers appeared only on the underside and Haelyn made quick work of removing them and wrapping them in a thick black velvet cloth.

"Aren't those poisonous?" Wren asked as he crouched down beside her. He took her bag and held it open for her to stack the herbs inside.

"Only when they've been exposed to sunlight," Haelyn corrected. She flipped over one of the blossoms and traced the silver veins running along the backside of each petal. "Argentum dolosus turns pure silver when the sun touches it and if ground into a powder can cause terrible lesions to appear on the skin. Ingesting it will have the same effect on the internal organs. It's not fatal in low doses but it can cause lifelong scars and the other effects aren't easily stopped."

The vine was soon depleted of flowers and they stood. Haelyn took one of the blossoms and quickly tore both its petals and stamen to pieces before pushing it into a small glass vial. "But harvested under moonlight it provides incredible pain relief and the dried powder fights off infection. I only have a thimbleful of the powder left though so I'll have to make do with the calendula I found."

"You know quite a bit about two-faced herbs," Wren said. The bag swung from his shoulder as he followed her to the next destination. The bright green bush in front of them was heavily laden with ripe blackberries and he picked a handful while she collected the leaves.

"Just about everything has two sides to it, the trouble is knowing which is good and which is bad." Haelyn tucked the second full pouch into the bag and pointed to a nearby stream. It was barely two feet across but the water was swift and clear. "Just one more."

The stream was easy to find thanks to the sound of the water running over the dips and bends. It was a little over a foot deep, an easy place for Haelyn to reach under and pull up thick wet leaves that grew along the bottom. "They're greenhand leaves, to help hide our scent from the wyverns," she said in answer to Wren's silent question. A thick pile of the sodden leaves went into a basket that she left to drip beside her.

"I've never used them for that," Wren muttered. He eyed the leaves with curiosity and lifted one to his nose. The lack of smell confuses him. "I've always used them for burns."

"They're good for that too, but when you mash them they are a sort of barrier over the skin." Haelyn gasped and darted her hand back into the water. A purple flower was cracked carefully in her hand when she brought it back up. The dark purple inner petals folded in on themselves as the moonlight hit them, now unfiltered by the water. Their dark black outer side seemed to pulse before they completely sealed the delicate purple within.

"That's a stelloxa blossom, isn't it?" Wren fished a second out of the water and watched it close as well.

"My dad used to bring them home for my mother," Haelyn told him. "They were her favorite." After a moment of thought she threw the blossom back into the water and grabbed the basket of dripping greenhands. "We should get back so I can mash these."