Though it’s been a few days, and the guard presence throughout the mansion had been heavy, the trembling just won’t stop. Even in the arms of her best friend, she shakes, not from the chill of the night air during their escape or the pain of the long jagged wounds down her side, but the reality that has finally crashed down around her: they’re gone. All of them.

She keeps her face buried against Camus’ neck as he steals her away, too exhausted to cry and her throat too tight to speak. The only family she has flies ahead of them in the form of an owl, feathers blending with the snow that covers the mountains below.