"With the second... You won't hurt me until then?"

"I won't go out of my way to make you hate me. Which will not be the same thing."

Hmm... "I need to think," she says abruptly, because if she doesn't then the Demon Queen might try to drag her emotions out of her. "And - I can't if you're watching me. I want the track to myself for - a little bit."

"Very well. I will give you two hours."

She nods, and stands, and- before she goes to the track - "How long will my training be?"

"At least ten years."

She nods again, uncertain what else to do - and then she leaves, and heads for the track, where she runs. She doesn't take off this time, is careful not to, but she runs and runs and runs until her heartbeat replaces her thoughts, and then new thoughts can bubble up from under where the stripped-away masks used to be.

She doesn't want to be hurt, repeatedly, viciously, every single day - but that doesn't matter a lot, not to her, even if she thinks about it a lot. 

She tried to hate her family. They were bad people. She knows that. They hurt her, and, worse, they hurt her people, and they weren't ever nice or considerate. But she wanted them to love her, more than anything, and that drowned out the hatred.

She runs, while that thought bubbles and heaves.

And a new thought bubbles up as it dissipates into the beating in her chest. There's a deep, dark hole in her, where her thoughts sink when she keeps them under the masks too long, and there's layers and layers of feelings there. Bones are buried in those layers, the calcified remains of thoughts she can't think.

A lot of those layers were hatred, once.

Lily thinks about her dead family a lot, but she doesn't think she feels sad. Numb, maybe. Disbelieving. Nervous, because now she's responsible for a people held in a tyrant's grip.

Hurting her people will be the easiest way to get Lily to hate the Demon Queen, but... She's more likely to get numb to other hurts if they happen all the time.

Which they will.

The Demon Queen is easy to like. Lily -

She doesn't think she hates the woman, though maybe she does a little for the blood of her people that she's had no reckoning for. But she doesn't hate her the way she tried and failed to hate her family. And there's a spiteful part of her that doesn't want to hate the Demon Queen, that wants to deny her that ritual.

There's a sad, small, lonely part that wants the Demon Queen to love her.

Lily stops, and crouches down, hugging her knees and fighting tears.

She wants the Demon Queen to hug her again. She wants to be told she's doing well at her studies. That she's smart and fast and full of potential.

Lily loses the fight, and tears start to spill down her cheeks.

And a small thought, one with teeth that rip into Lily's head - a small, vicious thought bubbles up.

If the Demon Queen loved her, the woman might not kill her. She might change her mind. If Lily is good enough, she might be worth more as a separate person than as nothing more than a battery to charge from.

She sits, her tears slowly drying, and she tries to think about that.

The problem, of course, is that no one loves kids, especially not enough to set aside power. Though the woman said her training will be at least ten years, and that's definitely more than Lily's entire life away, far enough away that her oldest siblings got married around that age.

No one loves kids, especially real kids and not the idealized concept of raising a family together with a person they love, but Lily won't be a kid forever, and she won't be a kid when the time comes, and maybe she can convince the Demon Queen to love her then.

The problem...

The only problem is that Lily wants to be loved now. She doesn't want to leave her survival to some future her, one farther away from her than Lily is from a baby. And - she's wanted to be loved since she knew how to want things, which is all of her existence because Lily is made of want, made of things she craves but doesn't have.

She doesn't want to wait until she's even a teenager, old enough to be courted, to be loved. But... She's heard teenagers and sometimes kids - often girls - called mature before. Little ladies, nearly adults. So maybe...

So.

She'll convince the Demon Queen to wait, to put off building Lily's hatred until that final gasp, and -

She'll make the Demon Queen love her. Sooner rather than later, ideally, and so she'll make the Demon Queen see her as an adult. As mature, and old enough to handle serious things, and old enough to be loved.

(It might not work, but it'll give Lily breathing room too, time to learn without seeing shadows in every corner. And if it works - she'll have everything she's ever wanted.)

She straightens up from her crouch, and she starts to run again, faster and faster and faster until she's flying, and she flies every second she can, pouring her mana into it, exhausting herself body mind and soul. 

She returns to the lesson room before the two hours are up. 

Her teacher is reading.

"Have you made a decision?"

"I want you to wait for the end," she says, "To make me hate you. And - I think that'd be best for your plans, too."

"Then so be it."

She nods, in a way that she hopes looks more certain than she feels. And, softly: "I want to - have someone I'm working to impress. I learn faster that way, and... It'll be hard, if I have to hate you instead." (That sounded logical and mature, right?)

"This will be the only way I make it easy on you."

"I don't mind you being hard to impress." She glances down, a bit shyly, not really knowing what she's doing.

"Back to work then, child."

She smiles. Pick up where they left off?

Unless she'd rather skip over the information.

She enjoys learning.

Where they left off, then.

The sheer relief has sped her up - taken a weight off her mind, and she's now actively trying not to spend so much mental space watching the Demon Queen warily. And she pays more attention to what the Demon Queen says, too, searches for hints of what she approves of, what she finds a positive trait. 

The diligence and quickness are good, and she appreciates when Lily connects concepts together on her own.

She can do all of those in spades - and those are the things that come most naturally to her when she's not spending all her effort on basic peace of mind, and when she's not masking to hell and back. (She's never felt this listened to, never been given an external reason to push herself to be even more diligent, even faster or cleverer, beyond her own burning fascination and desire - it's a strange, heady feeling, and it settles in her chest and firms up her determination to get the Demon Queen to love her.)

(Perhaps then the climb will not be so steep.)

Perhaps not.

(Lily throws herself into her studies with a fervent energy, and so too throws herself into whatever responsibility the Demon Queen willingly gives her; she pushes hardest for some level of responsibility over her people, but she's constantly brimming with ideas - many of them good, at least with some polishing - for assorted subelements of running the kingdom.)

She advances quickly - she still has a long way to climb until she's at the Demon Queen's level, but it's entirely plausible she'll hit that at eighteen. She attunes herself some to what her teacher approves of, but also pursues her own interests - shapeshifting ranks pretty high among them.

And she learns about the Demon Queen, as much as she can, and she charms the people in the base. (Her history. What it's like to live under her. (What kinds of girls she takes to her bed, too.))

And Lily grows, remarkably quickly. She gets taller, stronger - physically and magically. Her mind grows too. And she grows in a way that means, by the time she's thirteen, she's starting to understand what she's asking for, when she says she wants the Demon Queen to see her and love her as an adult. 

It only makes her want that more.