Aurora was gone.

"Oi!" said Kol angrily when Klaus started to complain. "You try doing a complex spell to trick the entire Strix order and tell me how easy it is to monitor a prisoner! We were going to have to do something to keep Yara alive during what could have become a brutal fight, wouldn't you prefer we focus on that? We'll find Aurora again."

"We think it was Lucien who broke her out," said Freya. "We couldn't have stopped him. He has access to the kind of dark objects that would've been needed to break the spell that contained her."

"Let it be," said Yara, massaging Klaus's shoulder. "They're the reason we were even successful. It's not over yet. Aya will likely take over The Strix, won't she?"

Elijah nodded. "Yes, that is the likeliest outcome. This may be the perfect opportunity for Marcellus to enter the inner circle, though I suspect he's practically already there."

Yara frowned, but she knew he was right. "Maybe Aya will be more reasonable than Tristan. I've heard many things about her, not all good, but if there's one thing she understands, it's loyalty to this organization. She doesn't have a brother or sister she is going to put at a higher priority. Maybe with her we can strike an agreement. The Serratura is off the table. The weapon that needs to be found now is the apparent other piece of white oak."

"Speak of the devil, and she will come," muttered Elijah, holding up his phone and answering. "I sincerely hope you're calling from somewhere far, far away."

"I think we both know I won't leave until this prophecy is averted," said Aya on the other line. "Somewhere out there is an elusive weapon capable of killing an Original. I'm calling to suggest we pool our efforts to find it."

"I don't play well with others."

"Lucien's witch Alexis left her clues in a rather cryptic puzzle. What if I told you I had the means to put it together?"

Elijah had that handled. Yara and Klaus had tried to find Aurora by searching Lucien's penthouse first, but they found it empty; he'd taken all of his belongings with him, having expected they'd pursue. The only thing that remained were boxes of dark objects that he must have seized from Cami. They carried them back to her, which seemed to bring a smile to her face.

"Where's Kol?" asked Yara when they returned and found the youngest brother wasn't home.

"He went to find Davina," said Freya. "Josh and Aiden heard that The Strix Coven was attempting to recruit her. He said he would put a stop to it."

"That's concerning. Why would they want to recruit her? Didn't she just get shunned? Doesn't that mean she has no power?"

"She has some power. Magnified if she were to join The Strix Coven. I don't wish to sound rude but what is it about her and not any other witch in the French Quarter?"

"I really hope that Kol can find out."

"If anyone can, it would be him. Elijah!" She acknowledged her brother, "You're back."

"I am," he said, a puzzled look on his face. "One of The Strix witches, she had a new prophecy. She told me something about an unending darkness, a lone figure, a pale horse, a flame that would burn us all..." he walked toward the bookshelf, beginning to take books at random and open them to specific pages, "I thought the pale horse might be something Biblical, or even tied to one of the equestrian constellations. There's Pegasus, perhaps even Equuleus."

Klaus stared at him like he was crazy. "Neither of those sounds like a weapon, unless they plan to bore us to death. You know, it would be nice if, just once, the witches bloody well said what they mean."

"Brother, please," said Elijah, seeing that Freya and Yara had already taken books from him and begun to look at the pages he marked while Klaus sulked. "Help us, or remain quiet."

The hybrid's idea of helping was sitting in an armchair and watching while they all read and took notes, bouncing ideas off of each other and waiting for Kol to either come back or let them know what was going on with Davina and The Strix. Marcel didn't even know that Aya had offered her membership, and was hoping he could gain some insight on her reasoning to let them know if they needed to be extremely worried or only mildly so.

"Niklaus, do you really intend to sulk and observe when you could be helping us through this stack?" said Elijah, frustrated when yet another pile arose and Klaus didn't contribute.

"I'm thinking," said Klaus sourly. "I'm sure you won't find the answer in any of your books."

"The longer it takes for us to determine what the weapon is and where it resides, the more time Aya has to consult her witches and take it from under our noses. We need you. A storm is coming, and we must keep our family safe. Freya, Kol, Yara, Hope, especially Rebekah–"

Klaus sat up, jaw tight. "What you just said... keeping Rebekah safe. I know what the weapon is. I made it myself!"

They sprang up, following him out of the library and into Hope's nursery. "All my efforts to protect and provide comfort for my family," he ranted. "The pale horse, it isn't a constellation, nor is it a Biblical verse. It's a trinket I made when we were children. A toy carved from kindling which I gave to Rebekah in the hopes of easing her fears."

Elijah frowned. "I collected the firewood myself. It was fallen branches from everywhere, and..." his eyes widened. "The horse was made of the white oak... The weapon has been here all along."

Klaus plucked up the little wooden knight he'd carved for his sister, now resting comfortably on the windowsill beside Hope's cradle, part of the collection that Ansel had made for him. "That is why Freya's spell showed the white oak in New Orleans. It wasn't cloaked, it was here all along."

"Looks like I came back in time," said Kol, making a face when he found them all struggling to fit in the nursery. "Davina didn't join The Strix Coven. And it seems you all found the weapon."

"Keep it safe," said Elijah, beckoning Klaus to close his hand around it. "I'm going to silence that witch."

Klaus tossed the knight to Kol. "Put it near the other one. We'll figure out what to do with it later. I've got to carve a replacement. Hope reaches for it every morning."

They had one day where everything felt fine. No one was hurt, the white oak was safely tucked away, and Hope didn't throw a fit when she saw the knight was gone, she simply looked around for it and was pleased when Klaus offered her the fake, which she immediately tried to gnaw on.

But when they looked for both pieces to try and figure out whether they should destroy them completely or hide them somewhere beneath a thousand spells, they only found one– the indestructible stake that'd remained hidden for weeks.

"Where is the chess piece?" snapped Klaus when he found Kol enjoying a bagel.

He made a face. "I'm eating here, what's your bloody problem?"

Klaus slammed his fist down. "Where is it?"

"You said you hid it in the safe," said Yara more gently. "But it wasn't there."

"What the hell do you mean it wasn't there? I put it there because I thought the other hiding place was too obvious!"

"It isn't there," insisted Klaus angrily. "Did you take it?"

"No, I didn't take anything!"

"You're sure? Because I see the golden dagger you made resting comfortably beside Papa Tunde's blade but I don't see that bloody chess piece!"

"I didn't take it!" bellowed Kol. "I put it in the safe and if it isn't there, then I don't know where it is!"

"This is bad," said Yara softly. "That either means someone broke in to get it or... is it possible it wasn't even the real one in the first place? Did they find out before us and put a replacement there before we could get to it so we'd think we have it then we– oh god, we need to find it."

Freya and Kol set up their Locator Spell, confirming the piece was still in New Orleans, but when they tried to find its exact residence within the city, they came up with a dead end.

Elijah had reason to believe The Strix had been behind it; apparently after he'd killed the witch who showed him the prophecy, her body had been used for a spell by the other girls, most likely to extract what she'd seen and piece it together themselves.

"So Davina's recruitment was partially a distraction," mused Kol as he tried and failed to locate it again. "They could have used me for this. Or Elijah, we were both in close contact with members of The Strix yesterday. They could have put a magical tag on us, used it to essentially draw their presence in like a ghost, to see what was going on in here and listen in on our conversation. Or if Yara is right, they knew all along and wanted us to think we solved it when we didn't."

"Where's Elijah now?" asked Yara, tapping her foot anxiously as she waited to hear back from the nearby shop owners who had security cameras facing their entrances.

"He says he has an idea to get Aya out of power, Marcel is helping him."

She chewed anxiously on her nail, worrying what that meant for Marcel.

The security camera footage was disappointing. It showed a girl with long dark hair and a black cloak entering the Compound and existing again within a minute with the little wooden knight clasped in her palms. They found her soon afterward, but she was already dead with the scent of lavender left behind, a branch tucked in her hands as her dead eyes stared at the wall of the alley she'd been abandoned in.

Aurora had the white oak.

Marcel was the new leader of The Strix after midnight. He mobilized them immediately to look for Aurora, and every supernatural community (including a few of the witches who wanted The Strix Coven out) were on the lookout for her.

"Oh, my boy," sighed Yara, going to visit him at his loft and drawing him into a hug after three days of what felt like a futile search. "It's good to see you."

"Good to see you, too," he said. "Spoke to Davina at last today. She's doing a bit better but still struggling. Says you keep sending her food."

"I don't know if she's eating it but I wanted to at least give her something in case it's been hard to cook for herself."

"I'm sure she appreciates it... even if she doesn't say anything. She's on the lookout, too. I'm hoping we get Aurora soon. The Strix and their witches are all keeping their ears to the ground. The girl that helped her was a traitor to them, but really, she was just trying to get out. That Coven... well, Kol was right about one thing, they're dark and they suck the happiness right out of those girls."

Yara grimaced, lowering herself onto his couch. "What does Aya have to say about the ordeal?"

"Nothing. She doesn't know how Aurora got to the girl and she's furious about it. Guess she thought if anyone was gonna find the white oak, it would be her. Our coven hit the same cloaking spell as Freya and Kol have. Wherever she is, she's plotting something and I don't think we'll be able to sense when she arrives."

She frowned as she saw him sit down, rubbing the back of his head worriedly. "It's been rough," he admitted. "Taking on the leadership. It's harder than just leading a couple dozen vampires in New Orleans. This is vampires all across the world and not from my same sire line. There's a lot of angry people, a lot of expectations. And Elijah helped me but he hasn't been in the best mood lately and Klaus is starting to see this as a betrayal even though he knows I'm only in The Strix because of this family, because I'm trying to help."

"I know, my love. And we'll never be able to repay you for what you've done. Every day you're in here I worry, but you've risen quickly and you have surprised me. I'm proud of you. And you are helping us so very much. He'll see that, in time. With some gentle persuasion. Right now he's upset about all the things going wrong, so much out of his control. He hates it. Hell, I hate it."

"I hate it, too," said Marcel. "I just want them out of here. I want things to go back to the way they were. Hope will be a year old soon and what do we all have to show? Nothing but misery."

"She'll be okay. We'll all be okay. I want to believe that. I have to."

It was hard to keep her cool when Klaus called to warn her about heading back to the Compound. Aurora had kidnapped Freya.

"He and Elijah are handling it," said Yara, calling Hayley to let her know that they were out in the Bayou. "But I recommend you keep your wolves close and try to account for everyone. Lay low, I don't want any of you to get caught in the cross-fire."

"Thanks for the warning. I'll keep you posted."

She hung up, and Yara turned to Marcel, who had ended a call with The Strix at the same time. "Got teams on the lookout," he said. "And something else."

Yara motioned for him to continue. He seemed hesitant, even scared.

"Aya has a backup plan," said Marcel quietly. "The Strix, they want to do this spell to unlink themselves from the Originals."

"Unlink... so that they won't die if Klaus and Elijah do?"

"Exactly. That way it won't matter that Aurora has the white oak. They won't die because of her hatred for Elijah. That's why they wanted Davina. She and Kol were trying to complete this spell ages ago because Mikael was on the loose and they didn't want us to die."

Yara's eyes widened. "No, we can't let them do that! I mean, I can understand why they'd want that, I would also like for all of us not to have that fear, but this is the worst possible time for it right now. With all that's going on, at the very least we benefit from The Strix having to protect Elijah, for old sirelings with grudges to not come calling and wreak havoc. We're the ones that are going to have to deal with the fallout when the enemies come, not The Strix. Enemies will come, they will try to hurt Klaus and Elijah because of past grievances and without fear of their own death to stop them... hell, The Strix would immediately turn on you and attack the family. Aurora has the white oak; Aya could side with her as soon as she knows she's safe. We'd lose them, we'd lose all of them. No, we have to keep them linked, we have to make sure no one can come attack us. Maybe in the future it can be considered but Hope is just a baby, this could affect her."

"I'm not sure how to put a stop to this," said Marcel worriedly. "I mean, the Coven has yet to find the last ingredient, so we have time, but we have to plan."

They had less time than they thought.

Yara had gone back to the Compound to watch Hope when Kol had run off to help his brothers with Aurora. Marcel had called, agitated, and let her know that the witches knew what they needed.

"Bad news," he said, sounding like he was running. "They need an unsired heart."

"An unsired heart? Like, someone not turned by the Originals?"

"Yeah. And take a wild guess who they want to go after."

Her stomach did a flip. "Hayley. No, no, they can't hurt her."

"I know, and I told them that. They can't forget that she's Hope's biological mother. You, Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah all knew her that way– they could still get defensive. And then I-I accidentally mentioned there was an alternative. Jackson, because his heart is identical to Hayley."

"Marcel, no! But–"

"Hey, they haven't gone after him, I insisted that would still hurt Hayley, I saved him temporarily, but Aya said I have an hour to find an alternative."

"What else did she say? Why... why would she just give you that unless she had a train of thought all mapped out?"

He was silent for a moment. "She does. I believe her exact words were 'Perhaps we will simply turn a hybrid of our own. Find the tribrid and take her blood. She is your sister, after all.'"

Yara was starting to panic. "Nobody's home, Marcel, I can't fend off an attack if they come for Hope, they can't– they will hurt her! Even if they don't kill her she'll be so scared. We can't give them the tools to do that, we can't!"

"It's either we give them Hope's blood and they get their own unsired heart with someone we don't give a shit about, or they'll kill Jackson and maybe even Hayley too. They don't care about any of them, Yara. It'll hurt less in the long run if you just let me draw a little bit of Hope's blood."

"I can't do that, Marcel, I can't. I can't help them with unlinking themselves from the Originals, I can't risk the enemies that would come flooding in. I know Klaus and Elijah wouldn't be okay with this, I refuse to go behind their back."

"It's either we're responsible for the unlinking and Hope will be okay, or we become responsible for the unlinking and Jackson's death."

"No, no, this unlinking can't happen, it will come back and bite us in the ass. Marcel, I can't make that choice. Because you know what I'll want to do, you know I'll prefer Hope remain untouched but I can't just offer Jackson up to the slaughter. And either way The Strix get what they need to perform the unlinking!"

"Listen, Yara, I'm at a loss here, I can't stop them because I'm their leader now. This is out of my hands at this point. If you don't make the choice, if you don't draw Hope's blood on your own or point me toward Jackson... you know what I have to do."

"No, no, no! No, this isn't– we can't do this! It will only hurt us. We need to stop their progress right now!"

"I wish there was another way, but I can't just kill them all! And how many hours has it been, Yara? Where are Klaus and Elijah? And Rebekah, I haven't heard a peep about Rebekah in awhile. I would rather they unlink us all so we are safe if anything happens to them, because Hope needs her mom. I need my mom. And I'd rather you are safe and able to get her out of town than you dying because of Aurora's anger toward Klaus and Elijah. I'm in no position to stop this. It's lucky enough we even know about it, because otherwise..."

Her lip quivered. "I know the alternative. Oh, god..." she set the phone down when she sensed he'd walked up behind her. "Marcel..."

"I don't want to do this, but I know it would kill you inside if Hayley got hurt because of this," he said slowly. "You would hate yourself if she suffered, especially when you took on the pregnancy with the purpose of getting her as far away from this drama as possible. I don't have a choice. The enemies will come but we can deal with that. I'll do something, anything. But right now there's no stopping them. You know that."

Yara set Hope carefully in her crib. "Marcel, I don't want to hurt you," she said weakly. "Please don't make me hurt you."

"You hurt me, you know what it means."

She struggled to make the choice. He knew it, she knew it. He offered his arms in a hug, and she didn't fight as he snapped her neck.

Hope was perfectly fine when Yara awoke. However much blood had been drawn, it hadn't affected her.

Still, Klaus was furious.

He and his brothers had returned with Freya and found Yara unconscious while Hope played with her chess piece. As soon as she awoke and told them what happened, Klaus nearly broke his phone.

"Aurora nearly killed Elijah and Freya today," he said hotly. "And now The Strix mean to leave us open to attacks from our enemies."

"Aurora is gone for now," muttered Freya. "She's not gonna stay quiet for long."

"Yes, it seems there's no shortage of those who would stand against our family," muttered Klaus. "Let's kill them all."

Kol cleared his throat, "I say we pool all efforts to find Aurora and put a stop to this de-linking before they have a chance to complete their spell and come to get you. They will be more prepared with their bait this time. Let's account for everyone that matters and make sure they can't be used to set a trap."

Klaus found Yara on her bed, running her fingers over a tiny soldier, set atop the copy of Hamlet that they'd used for Marcel to learn how to read.

"He had no choice," she whispered when she felt his presence. "I know he didn't, they would have killed him and they would have either barged in to hurt our daughter or they would have hurt Hayley and Jackson and they've done nothing but help us. There was no choice, I was meant to let him take Hope's blood. There was no way out of it without you all here. I couldn't... I didn't know what to do."

Her lip trembled, "I froze, Klaus, I froze and I'm glad Hope is okay but Marcel... I keep telling myself that he's on our side, I know he is, my sweet boy... but I see the way you and Elijah look at him. You start to doubt it, you start to fear... he made himself in his own image, he drew away from this family. They call him our son but he doesn't say it about himself. I just... I just want this to be over. I didn't want him in The Strix, I never intended this to be the case.

"They have used him and though he has given us intel, it... it... what has been the point of it? Just for the same outcomes, the same worries. They keep pushing and pushing–" she snapped the toy in half. "And I'm powerless. I can't beat a Strix vampire. Marcel only beat Mohinder because they wanted him to. They won't want me to. They'll kill me, they'll ruin our family, our lives. They'll unlink us all and they'll leave us alone but we will be left to deal with those who come after us. Everyone we've ever angered. You have your enemies, Elijah has his, I have mine, even Kol's may come with calling cards when they know how vulnerable you are."

Klaus removed the broken pieces from her hands. "We won't let it happen. They have no one out there that they can take to lure us in. The wolves and the vampires will search. When we've found Aurora, we will show no mercy. We will attack en masse and overwhelm her. We'll seize the white oak and then we will turn on The Strix. Marcel will be the only survivor."

"My boy," she whispered, covering her face with the book. "They've taken my boy. He's here but he's not really here, they took him from me."

"And they will suffer for it."