*~Lilith’s POV~*
As soon as I handed Caspian the map, I watched him shift into motion his limbs tense, his mind already racing toward the children. The others followed like wolves on command. They would do anything to bring those babies back.
And that was exactly what I wanted.
Because while they ran off to play hero... I needed to prepare.
I wasn’t just planning a rescue. I was preparing a resurrection.
The original Crescent pack...my people, my blood, my legacy will walk again. And the key to their rebirth? That child’s blood. A single drop from the child born of crescent lineage, carrying the power of light and shadow in one fragile body.
Once I had it, nothing would stop me from reclaiming New Orleans. Not the High House, not the wolves, not even Hazel because she will be on my side.
I left before the dust settled behind them and made my way to the place where our dead were kept or what was left of them.
The doors creaked open on my arrival. The scent of ash still lingered. Not decay, not rot. Just... ash. Burned flesh. Crushed bones. The remains of warriors, not victims. I dropped to my knees and let my fingers run through them—through them. All of them.
My people...My Crescents.
Even in this form, I could still feel their presence humming through my veins like static. My skin prickled. My eyes burned. I didn’t cry. No. I hadn’t cried in a century. But a piece of my heart shattered anyway as my hands trembled through the sacred ruin of what once was ours.
"I’ll bring you back," I whispered. "Not just in memory. In body."
I got to work. Leaves. Salt. Bloodroot. Crushed serpent’s tongue. Moon herb. I drew the sigils in ash and bone. The sacred runes of return. The incantation must only be completed once I add the final piece: the baby’s blood.
That would be the most difficult. And yet... somehow, I knew I’d find a way.
Dawn was curling its golden fingers across the sky by the time I arrived at the High House. I wore my calmest face, my kindest expression, the one they’d learned to trust.
But the gates were shut...Shut...That place was never shut.
I tilted my head and listened. Screams. Wailing. The sound of a mother breaking. The sound of death. Again.
"Oh..." I murmured, blinking as the iron doors shivered and slowly parted.
Inside was chaos disguised in silence. A heavy, terrifying stillness. Eyes swollen with grief. Faces stained with disbelief. And at the center..there she was.
Hazel.
She was laughing but not the usual that comes from the heart.
A cold, cracked laugh. One that peeled straight from the void in her chest. Her hair was tangled. Her arms limp. And her eyes...
Her eyes looked empty...Just like the night she turned emotionless.
And worse..I knew that look. I crafted that look.
No.No, no, no.
She mustn’t go numb again. Not now. Not when I’m so close. I can’t lose access to her. If she turns off everything inside her again, there’ll be no convincing, no distracting, no opening to get near that baby’s blood.
I stepped further into the hall, and my eyes—my cursed, cursed eyes—landed on what she was holding.
Two dead babies..
A terrible chill kissed the back of my neck. And then it hit me. Oh, Gods. I felt it. I had felt it hours ago...a sudden gust of wind, the herbs on my altar scattering, the candles snuffing themselves out in protest. A silence in the spirit world that I hadn’t understood.
I had ignored it...Dismissed it....But it was a warning.
And now I saw the truth...my grandchildren... were gone. "No," I whispered. My throat burned as the word cracked out of me. "No, no, no, no, no."
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
They were my only chance. My only key. Their blood would’ve brought back the Crescent pack.
My Crescent. My family. Not just soldiers but mothers, children, brothers, sisters, history. Generations of power.
I wasn’t just going to raise the dead...I was going to resurrect my legacy.
This...this was supposed to be my homecoming.
Me, my grandchildren, my child, my Crescent, ruling over New Orleans once again. But now?
Now all I saw was ash slipping through my fingers.
"No," I choked again. I turned sharply, almost violently, toward the one man who had promised to bring them back alive. Caspian.
"You said you’d bring them back safe!" I hissed, my voice laced with venom. "Alive! You promised me, Caspian!"
His eyes were already red. Hollow. He looked like a shell of himself. "It wasn’t my fault," he muttered, his voice fraying. "The one who had them—he’s dead. Gone. You want to blame someone? Blame him."
He raised a shaking finger.
And I followed the gesture to the form on the floor beside him. A corpse, cloaked in blue. Cyrius. I blinked..Dead? He was the one?
The weight of it dropped like iron on my chest. Of course it was him. Of course he was desperate enough to steal them..foolish enough to fail.
"You’re pointing at the dead?" I spat. "You think that excuses you?"
"I’m not the one who killed them," he growled. "They were already gone when I found him."
I looked closed at the babies.
Their tiny bodies had no warmth. Their skin was faint, tinged in frosted blue, lips pale as moonlight. They didn’t look like they had simply died—they looked drained.
Hazel was already crashing..her body trembling, her eyes flickering like a candle fighting against the wind. Her breaths were shallow, uneven, like her lungs were at war with the grief inside her. She started coughing violently, blood spritzing from her mouth, and before I could react, she collapsed.
A pair of hands caught her before she hit the ground.
Hazel...Her eyes were wide with panic. Her breathing ragged.
"She can’t breathe!" Hazel cried, holding her tighter. "She can’t..she can’t—" And then she, too, began to fall.
The heartbreak swallowed her so deeply that it crushed the air from her lungs. Her knees buckled, and the others surged forward just in time to catch her before she crumbled to the floor beside Iso.
And I...I understood that pain. The tearing kind. The kind that never stops bleeding.
I, too, had once screamed at the heavens when they took my child from me the very moment she was born. I had carried that ache for decades, refused to let it rot me—but this? This was worse.
Hazel never even got the chance to see her babies smile.
Not even to hold them, to hear one cry, to kiss a forehead or whisper a name.
Just gone.
Ripped from her like a cruel joke from the gods.
"No," I whispered again, trembling. "Life cannot be this terrible." There had to be a way. There must be something.
A spell. A charm. A forbidden rite. Anything.
But deep down, I knew. There is no spell to raise the dead.
Not when they’ve been this drained. This decayed. Not when the soul has already departed and the body turned to frost.
Still...I couldn’t stop myself. I turned sharply to Aurora.
"You..." I narrowed my eyes, voice hoarse but demanding. "You wield dark magic. I can feel it. It clings to you like a second skin. Do something!"
Aurora lifted her gaze to me...slow, tired, furious.
"If there was anything I could do," she said, her voice low, trembling, "do you think I’d be standing here? Watching her fall apart? Watching all of this happen?"
Her eyes glowed faintly with residual magic. And pain.
"Dark magic can’t bring the truly dead back. Not when they’ve been emptied like that. It’s over. They are gone."