Lucian crept through the shadows that swallowed the village entirely, for many nights to come after that. His presence was shared only with the passing squirrels darting through the trees, and the occasional flock that greeted him with the morning sunrises. He watched the flicker of silver inside the house through a distance. Every morning, she was there.

His heart ached with heaviness.

Every morning, he came to realize his brows were knit in confusion and anger due to the uneventful, long watches he took, every night. The moment he saw her frail figure creep quietly onto the streets was the moment he stumbled away; weary and eager for a morning of sleep somewhere.

As he walked along, threading through the trees, he would ask himself, "Why? Why haven't they come? Did they not take Maleah by dawn?"

He reflected upon the fact that perhaps Platina was a timid, shy soul that would not necessarily defy her fate and thereupon cause a ruckus at that crucial moment. In his heart though, Lucian knew that Maleah's capture was much different- she would have bitten back.

"Maleah was taken at night, she had to have been," Lucian told himself angrily, shaking his head. "Otherwise, someone would have seen or heard. Someone could have told me,"

With no other evidence to pursue, Lucian always slipped back to Platina's window at night, waiting for the black strangers, his mouth always parted and ready to just tell her, tell her that she was about to be stolen.

But after weeks of waiting by her bedside silently, they never came.

After weeks of waiting by her bedside, Platina always greeted the rising sun and would tread away from her house the same time every morning.

What had survived through the summer's relentless heat and droughts, was being harvested. As Lucian would walk on in the early evenings, villagers observed him with disdain. He made sure to steer clear of the household he once slept in, and more importantly, kept a sharp vigil for his parents.

He never saw them. He knew they were the ones avoiding him.

Sometimes, some of the few, kind villagers would invite him in for an evening, and it was those occasional, weekly occurrences in which Lucian used to bathe himself and eat as properly as he could. As it neared close to the beginning of autumn however, the elderly and soft hearted women chose to avert their gaze when he walked by. With the news of so many disappointing crops, the entire village knew it was time to start preparing for a harsh, cruel winter. Coriander was still reeling from the failed trek to Crell.

The wind was cool one day when Platina went to collect the last bunch of apples that laid sprawled on the grass beneath the few, bearing trees hidden behind her property. Her clear eyes were squinted towards the sky and she raised one little hand to her brow, as if to challenge the cold sun itself. As she walked away for the last time that year, the breeze ruffled her cloaks and Lucian saw her visibly shudder and hurry on to her home. Lucian was always shaking and wanting to reveal himself, but never did. As the end of the month came and went, and Platina turned fourteen, he could not bring himself to tell her that perhaps she was one day going really, really far away.

Warmth and light gave way to bitter, miserable skies, often peppered with the season's first bouts with flurries and frost. The chill in the air made him lose confidence in what he had heard nearly two months before. No matter how often Lucian watched her, Platina would always lay her pretty head down every night and awake unscathed the next morning.

It wasn't until Platina herself had inadvertently walked in upon the players pushing for her kidnapping, that Lucian knew it was time to get her away from the village instead of sticking around to convince her what to do.

"When Laia realized the coming winter would paralyse her household…she knew it was time," Lucian breathed in sharply, watching the evil woman's hand mar the pale complexion of Platina, who cradled the side of her face with crying eyes.

"She used her own daughter to work and support her until it was time to dispose of her,"

Lucian didn't have the strength to sob anymore, as he saw Platina unexplainably turn into the form of his little Mally.

He dashed off to line his pockets with the only supplies they would need in their getaway.