The bloody red head emerged.The white sheet turned crimson.The infant sat up.Unfurling soft, white feathered wings, the newborn demigoddess regarded the world around her with large, beguiling blue eyes. As if satisfied with what she saw, she seized her own umbilical cord between her small, sharp teeth and severed her tie with her mother with one, quick bite.

You shall be the Reaper, Lilith,’ the Aquis said. ‘You shall be the Redeemer. The Seducer of Demigods and the Slayer of Kings.

Branches moved and shadows shifted as Lilith dug the poppet's final grave.

What need for feathers now? What need to confirm their loss? While the womb-red sky swelled with the promise of tomorrow, and he rode the warm, crimson currents, skimming, wheeling and gliding.

Lilith returned to her cooking. She didn't let herself think about anything but preparing the food, one ingredient at a time, a pinch of this into a bowl of that, a vial of this into a jug of that, and so it went, while the sweat ran off her in rivulets and her hair and dress clung to her, and the kitchen hummed with the droning of flies.

You just got what was coming for you!" Anger stripped the niceties from her speech. Lilith spun around to face him again—her fists clenched—as if she could strike him, and wipe the sneer from his dead lips. He infuriated her. Nauseated her. Drove her mad with his mockery. Death had made him bitter, and any charm had sloughed away, along with his flesh.

The surge of his ardour swept through him in climatic release, filling her womb with his final, mortal sowing.