Eve wants to hurt Lynia. She really, genuinely does. To feel skin, and muscle beneath, tear under her hands --

-- and her other parts --

-- and hear the sounds she makes: the gasps, which turn to screams, which turn to whimpers. To see her eyes widen in terror and revulsion.

She knows all this. She knows it by heart: every movement that Lynia would make. And she knows how sweet it would feel. It's in her nature.

Lynia's sitting across the bed from her, lit by the sunlight filtering through the white silk curtains. She brushes a strand of amber hair from her face, and leans in toward Eve, her legs crossed.

"You all right, Eve?"

She's not. She's shaking, very slightly. Her heart is pounding, and if it pounds any harder, it'll stop being a heart.

"Yeah," she says.

Lynia leans closer, and shuffles across the bedsheets. Wraps her slender arms around Eve's neck, and rests her forehead on Eve's.

"You'd better not be lying to me, Eve," she says, in a soft voice with just the smallest hint of teasing. She is always like this. No matter how cruel the circumstances.

That's one of the things Eve loves about her.

"Of course I'm lying," she whispers.

Her hands are hanging at her sides, fists clenched. She wants so desperately to reach up and claw at Lynia's back: tear through the thin white shirt she's wearing, and peel back the layers of her flesh.

She can't. She won't. Lynia deserves to be happy. Lynia deserves to be innocent. Lynia deserves to be spared the truth.

Lynia doesn't look angry. No, she has forgiven much from Eve. A white lie is nothing to bother with.

She kisses Eve's forehead. "I understand. It's because of what Teresa said, isn't it?"

It isn't.

"I know she's stern. And she's still a little bit afraid of you. But she doesn't mean it! She knows it's wrong. And she loves you, just like I do."

That doesn't bother Eve at all. Fear? It's only natural. But Lynia can't see it. Can't see any of it. She's too...too Lynia.

Actually, the little flash of panic on Teresa's face every time she lays eyes on Eve feels good.

Lynia takes a deep breath, and prepares to say the words. She knows them well, because she's said them a thousand times before, since the day she and Teresa found Eve huddled in the corner of an alley. She will say them again. As many times as it takes to make Eve understand them.

"They're wrong. They say that because the sxelanth took your mother, you can't be trusted. But they're wrong. You're not tainted. You're not evil. You're not dangerous. You're not any less human than anyone else."

She caresses Eve's head, and Eve feels the softness of her hand and thinks about how good it would feel to rip the skin from her fingers.

She won't last much longer. It's been years, keeping herself bottled up inside her skin, but it gets more difficult with every day. The pressure builds inside her. Maturation. Probably. It's not like anybody really knows how sxelanthe work. So far as Eve knows, she's the first time this has happened.

Another gentle kiss to Eve's scalp. "Everything they did to you -- you didn't deserve it. Not one blow."

She agrees with that. She should have been killed, back in that orphanage, instead of abused and bullied. If only she'd died back then, before she met Lynia -- before she saw what wonderful things there were in the world, and what terrible danger she posed to them --

Her arms move, too swiftly to be human, and she clutches Lynia like she's dying. She feels the breath in Lynia's lungs. She won't hurt her. She won't.

Lynia just giggles, very softly, and pets Eve's deep violet hair.

How can she be like this? How can anyone be like this? Even Teresa, Lynia's own sister -- even she is different. No one is so soft, so pure, so giving.

There is a part of Eve that wants very badly to believe that Lynia could forgive even what Eve would like to do to her.

After all, it's not as though she'd be permanently hurt. Once it was over she'd be good as new. Until the next time...

Because there would be a next time. She's held it off this long with a bright line like a flaming torch. If that line gets broken, even once --

God, she doesn't even know for sure what it feels like. If she had that memory inside her, if she knew how happy it made her...

All resistance would crumble.

Lynia is still holding her, and kissing her, and petting her. Eve is crying, but she doesn't appear to have noticed. It must be something terrible this time.

It...it almost feels like she's been getting worse, lately. But that can't be. They saved Eve from that awful place, years ago, and now she's recovering. Because Lynia and Teresa love her, and she loves them.

Well, if she is getting worse, then Lynia will just have to make sure it stops.