-- (and her voice is so quiet that Eve must lean closer to hear) --

"For all of you I killed. All the sxelanthe I've destroyed... I guess... They'll finally have their revenge."

So she will.

She grins a grin full of snakes, and then her skin splits open.

All down her arms and legs -- crisscrossing her belly, marring her cheeks. The flesh comes apart and tentacles spill out, thick and glistening, impossibly long. The shreds of her clothing drift away, and she twists her body and shudders and moans.

They are all around her. Tentacles, covering the ground, brushing her skin, wet and heavy --

She is terrified. More frightened now than when the sxelanthe breached the city, when the accident killed Father, when Lynia was ill --

Breath fills her lungs, and she parts her lips to scream.

And then Eve's mouth is open wide, and her tongue is in Teresa's throat.

Feet of it, longer and longer, pouring like thick black tar into Teresa's mouth.

She gags and shakes and bites in her panic. Eve does not seem to notice. She can't breathe. She can't --

Eve inhales and exhales, and now there is oxygen in Teresa's lungs, pumped there by Eve's sinuous tongue.

"We can't have you screaming, now," she says, and the words come not from her head but from the many mouths that have suddenly appeared along the sides of her torso. "Not when someone might hear."

She whimpers and struggles and tries her best, without even thinking, to escape, but the great mass of writhing tentacles which used to be Eve -- which still wears scraps of Eve's naked flesh upon its surface, her face upon its head -- is wrapped around her knees, her wrists, gluing her to the stone.

She shakes her head violently from side to side, and Eve's tongue squirms in her throat.

Eve's wings are growing, still, wrapping around the two of them, cocooning. She reaches down with slender tendrils, gently, lovingly: and begins to tear Teresa's clothing from her body. Fine silk sliced in two and pulled aside, strings of pearls and gemstones casually snapped, their components rolling free onto the street.

So very pretty. Eve always loved the way Teresa looked, always admired that untouchable beauty of hers: always wondered, deep down, what she would look like with her shining chrysalis removed.

Now she knows.

She caresses Teresa's cheek with a tendril's tip.

"Don't worry," she whispers with her other mouths, while still she breathes life into Teresa's helpless lungs. "Don't worry, Teresa. I'll hurt you however I like. I'll keep hurting you until I'm satisfied. No matter what you say or how you beg, I won't stop. I promise."

And it will feel so very sublime. Her whole body is humming: and how much more of it there is now! Already she can taste the sweet panic in the delicate sweat on Teresa's skin, a subtle foretaste of pain.

Those tentacles. How could they have sliced away her clothing? Are there claws, hidden away upon their shining black surfaces? Blades? And now -- now her coverings are gone, her jewels, all her modesty and the symbols of her station --

To agree to this, that split-second sacrifice: she knows deep in her soul that it was the worst mistake of her life. She wants to scream again. How desperately she wants it. But she can't. She can't do anything.

There are tears in her eyes.

Tears like shining jewels.

So close -- so close. All the hunger, all the longing: it will be sated soon. Her tendrils run up and down Teresa's delicate body, and she feels the skin shudder beneath her touch. But not yet. Not yet. She has waited so very long. She wants it to be perfect.

She wants to hear Teresa's lovely screams.

Eve's black wings seal shut around them. Impenetrable and dripping. The two of them are now lit only by the faint beams of moonlight filtered through the membranous wings.

There.

She withdraws her tongue. All its length, up out of Teresa's throat -- but she cannot bear to wait any longer. Just a taste. She lets the spikes hidden beneath the surface of her tongue extend just slightly, scoring Teresa's throat and mouth. A -- a little sign of affection.

And the feeling is --

Were she human, she might have fainted. She is not. It is only pleasure and sweet lucidity that fills her. Her first taste of blood. Her first taste of pain. A sparkling little fragment of the heaven that has always been her birthright.

She is aware, suddenly, of the vast mountain of need that underpins her whole being, suppressed since long before she had a word for it. She gasps. Was it really only that mountain's tip, peeking above the clouds, which drove her all this time? All this hunger --

Oh. She is going to take so much from her beloved Teresa.

She is coughing. That horrible mass is gone from her throat, but -- she could feel the spikes. Had Eve jabbed them deeper, it would surely have killed her. The cuts sting, all down her throat, and as air returns to her she twists her head against the pain and hisses. Her heart hammers like a hummingbird's. The pain would not be too bad, except she can feel the tentacles on her breasts, her arms, her thighs, and she knows -- she knows --

The pain of her lacerated throat is only the very beginning. There is so much worse in store for her.

She chose this. She remembers that, and the tears flow hot and bitter. Why? She cannot quite recall. Why?

There was a reason. Some glorious cause, glittering out there in the night. The one for whom she fights and suffers. The reason she cannot ever lose control. But the purity of control is gone from her now. Already she is defiled, weeping before the enemy's cruelty. But she -- she will not give up. Her head swims, but clarity returns. No. She will never give up. Not for a second in all the sun's life will she ever betray --

-- Lynia.

Eve cradles her head with a tentacle, and caresses her cheek.

"It's safe now, beloved," she whispers. "Don't worry. The wings are shut. We're alone. No one will hear. You can scream all you like, and no one will save you."

She coils a tendril around Teresa's left breast and tightens it. Not quite hard enough to hurt. She has a sense for these things: the sxelanthe know pain.

Such supple flesh. She squeezes it as if checking a fruit for ripeness. What a treasure Teresa is.

Teresa whimpers through clenched teeth. Tightens her lips, and glares up at Eve's still-human eyes.

She won't give up. She won't.

She feels the soft, vulnerable skin beneath her many arms, just waiting to be sliced and torn and hurt, and she feels a hint of moisture in her human eyes. So many long years of choking the darkness inside her, and now she's finally going to indulge it. Indulge herself. There's no stopping it now. It's far too late, even if she wanted to. The sxelanth is hungry.

And it's okay. It's actually going to be okay. Because it's Teresa, and Teresa agreed to this, and you don't argue with Teresa. Because it's the only way, and she's strong.

And she won't break.

Eve opens the suckers all along the tentacles wrapping Teresa's body, and digs in.

She doesn't feel the pain right away.

It's like... It's like her flesh is marshmallow, or tissue paper. The sort of thing that gives before the slightest pressure, and now the monster's suckers, as hard and sharp as steel, are shredding her. She's -- she's worried more than hurt. A layer of faint concern, floating atop all the terror. Because there are so -- so many of them, and they're cutting all her skin, and --

It hits.

Breath fills her lungs, but it passes through her scratched throat and emerges as a mangled gasp. It hurts. It hurts. Never before has she felt so terribly embodied -- so present in her skin -- so painfully aware of every inch of herself, from the insides of her elbows to the small of her back --

She squirms, and there is no escape. She gasps until her lungs run dry.

Eve breathes in.

She can feel it. Teresa is hurting, for her. And she can feel it.

It's wonderful.

She holds Teresa tighter -- the thin razor's blades in circles about her cups digging deep, the suckers kissing the skin trapped inside -- and shivers above her, and lets out a long, low moan while Teresa suffers. Eve is blushing, she thinks. She could turn her cheeks to twisting horrors and hide it. She does not.