Eva couldn't stop it.
Her body wasn't hers anymore.
The pain ripped through her—bones stretching, muscles twisting, her very essence unraveling. She collapsed onto the floor, fingers clawing at the wood as heat and ice warred beneath her skin.
She could feel Lucien watching. Waiting.
"Let it happen," he murmured.
Eva gasped, her vision splitting. Her reflection in the window was no longer human.
Her pupils had stretched, dark pools swallowing the color of her irises. Her skin pulsed, shifting like something beneath it was trying to claw its way free. Her breath came in ragged, unnatural gasps.
"What is this?" she choked.
Lucien knelt beside her, his touch ghosting over her arm.
"Your real form."
Eva's mind rebelled. No. No, this wasn't real.
But her body remembered.
---
The past bled into the present.
A forest drowned in silver light.
Lucien stood before her, not as a man but as something impossibly ancient.
And she was different too.
Not weak. Not fragile.
Something terrifying.
She remembered now.
She had been a monster too.
---
Eva's eyes snapped open, and the world looked different.
Colors too sharp, the air too thick, Lucien's presence a physical thing wrapping around her like a leash.
She stared at him, chest heaving.
"You made me this," she whispered.
Lucien smiled, slow and knowing. "No, Eva. You always were this."
And then, in a rush of horrifying clarity—she knew it was true.