Eve recoiled. Arman's words slammed through her like stone punching through ice, an unfamiliar stinging tunneling deeper in her chest. Around her, the world collapsed, becoming a muddy, dizzying fog. A hiccup of fear mixed with the air puffing past her lips in short, rapid little bursts.

Samir's voice was worried. Tender. "Eve, what's wrong?" She could hear him shifting, walking somewhere on the outskirts of her consciousness. Getting closer. The air by her arm shifted as he drew near, and she couldn't keep her short little scream in her throat. Half-blind with terror, Eve tore backwards, anywhere where he wouldn't be close to her.

"Don't touch me!" She cried, arms crossing over her chest, finding purchase in her shirt, gripping tight as though that might somehow help keep her together. Arman had gone utterly silent, not daring to intervene. But Samir, stupid, stubborn Samir only paused for half a breath.

"Surely you do not think it is your fault."

Eve laughed. It distorted with hysteria and sounded more than a little wet, burning tears spilling over her cheeks. "Don't come near me. Don't even think about it. I will not have this happen again."

"Eve." Her name sounded like a prayer falling from his lips, face open and steady, as though he were coaxing some wild animal. She looked at him through a haze of water, bending as if that would help keep her rapidly collapsing heart in one piece.

"You do not understand," she whispered, shutting her eyes so she would not have to look at him any longer. "This is part of it. Part of what they've done to me. Part of how they've cursed me. I will not have them hurt another using me a second time." She had thought Samir might be different.

Had secretly prayed for it, despite the futility of such an action.

"A curse," Samir hummed, thoughtful. "Your friend mentioned it as well. You think it is affecting me?"

"Yes." She wouldn't beg for sympathy. Wouldn't say more.

There had been enough lost last time.

Against the darkness of her eyelids, Eve fought to ignore the flashing gold of half-forgotten memories. The strangling knot developing in her throat intensified its efforts, yanking a choked sob from deep within. She took another deeply unsteady step backwards. Hoped the distance between them might save her.

Samir's steady response sounded skeptical. "No. I don't think it's you."

Eve allowed herself a single glance, and promptly regretted it. The unfamiliar frown tugging at that mouth looked more prominent still with the thin white scar tissue tearing across it. He looked at her expectantly. Eve swallowed, and fought to straighten without flinching away. "Of course it is."

He continued to gaze at her for a long time, frown growing deeper. For so long that she wondered if he would agree, if he had finally outgrown his curiosity. Instead he only pinched the bridge of his nose and inclined his head carefully, one gunmetal droplet dangling from his ear. Expectant.

"Don't you trust me? Will you push me away, after all?"

"And why shouldn't I, Samir?" she spat, venomous, the words built of nothing but lies and sheer desperation. His long legs began to take measured strides in her direction, and her volume began to rise in response. "What are you supposed to be to me? Are we supposed to be friends? What do you know about me?"

He took her into his arms anyways, pulling her up against his chest, even as she let out a wretched groan. His fingers moved lightly, tucking a stray red strand behind her ear, sliding down until his palm rested firmly in the crook of her neck so he could draw her in even closer.

"I do not think we are friends, fireheart," he said quietly. "Nor do I want to be." His arms around her trembled, ever so slightly, and anything she may have thought about his words dissipated entirely. Immediately, she began to push at him again, and he let her go, breathing in harshly through his nose.

"Am I hurting you?" She rasped, cowering.

"No!" Samir's gaze darted sideways once, and her hands were once again cradled in his. He'd responded so fast it left her reeling, confused, mouth open and cheeks tight with tear-tracks. It was almost as if...

But of course it was.

The room fell silent. Tense. They shared another glance - short this time - and Eve yanked her hands out of his more firmly this time.

Her lips pressed into a tight line. "Samir. You know something."

"I am not even sure what I know." He twisted the ring on his pinky absentmindedly. Nervously. A flash of expression passed over him; spooked and unsettled. It made something unfamiliar and acidic rear up inside her. Some long-forgotten excessive protectiveness. "The headaches come with something. Flashes. But this last one, I saw you. I think it was you. It was dark and Dorian was there-"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The weight Eve's palm clapping over his mouth interrupted him. "Stop."

Samir paid her no mind, plowing forward with his words, mouth moving softly against her fingers. "They imprisoned you, didn't they? Your kind. That's what Mira said too. That they contained you."

But oh.

Oh.

This made even less sense than before. Eve knew that if she was hurting him, she could have at least forced herself to keep some distance between them. But now it seemed almost as though it was the opposite.

As though Samir's contact with her had awoken something in him. How else could he have seen something that was hundreds of years in the past?

Nothing about the situation made any sense. If there was anything she was more or less certain about now, it was that the man was possibly less human than she was.

"Yes."

...

Why had she just admitted that? She made a conscious effort to shut her mouth. It all felt like so much. Too much. Absently, she wondered what they thought of her, now. And when she had begun to care in the first place.

Eve looked away, up at the star-speckled, swooping ceiling as it rocked peacefully back and forth.

Samir stepped in front of her, his hands hovering in front of her face, uncertain. "Evelyn," he whispered, a fierce scowl twisting his face into a poor caricature of what it should be. "Eve. I will accept your overreaching sense of responsibility. I'll turn a blind eye when you deliberately withhold information. But stop shutting me out."

Her eyes stung anew. She closed them, and leaned slightly forward, allowing Samir to cup her cheeks. "I just don't understand why you would take on so much risk," Eve said, and it was a little breathless. Samir's palms squeezed, so close she could feel his breath pass across her damp skin. The rumble of a chuckle reverberated against her skin. "It hasn't even been that long."

"Perhaps it doesn't seem that way yet. But time is the great healer, and the great equalizer." One hand fell from her face, and came instead to rest in the small of her back, drawing Eve the rest of the way against him. She shuddered, mind hazy and churning, threatening to burn her to cinders from the inside out. His lips pressed to her temple. "Be a little more honest. Won't you miss having me around?"

She would.

The world went silent. Eve looked up at him, eyes glassy. "'Mir?"

"Hm?"

"Do that again."

"I will," Samir promised, voice dragging so low it felt as though she could feel it touch her. He held her, propped up against him, her head falling on his chest, and for a brief breath, everything felt right. "But first you have to tell me why they locked you up."

The moment passed.

Suddenly plank-stiff, Eve weighed her options.

"Must I?" she muttered, chewing on her lip. She could taste a hint of blood, so perhaps she'd already been doing that, unconsciously agitated.

"I think it's the proper time," Samir hummed. "In fact, I can guarantee it." His palm slid to her hip and squeezed. "Come on, fireheart. A little trust." Eve felt her cheeks pinken.

When had he started calling her that?

"My magic," she began. "The gods - they are strong because of people. Because of those that believe in them, worship them. But I don't need any of that. I can just feel things. I can use those feelings." Samir was fixated on her, had gone statuesque as she began to speak, a perfect mask of calm indifference. As though he wasn't at all troubled by the situation. Words spilled past her lips, as though the dam had broken, without pause or consideration to the consequences. "The strongest magic comes from the most negative feelings. Fear. Anger. Pain. And when they - the gods - learned about this - they used me. They would cause disasters, simply so I could make them worse, feed off the anguish, the terror. The worse the disaster, the stronger some of them became. Amongst them, the strongest became known as the Elder Gods. And all the while I could feel-" She choked on a long inhale.

"Shh," Samir soothed. But Eve couldn't stop.

"For a long time I couldn't say no. And when I finally did-" her lip trembled. Pathetic. "I lost that which I cared for most. And after that, nothing mattered. I didn't do a single thing they asked for. They couldn't figure out how to kill me. So they did the next best thing - they locked me up."

"For how long?"

"I beg you, do not ask any more. I've said enough." Eve grit her teeth and forced herself to reign it back in a little, to add a couple supports to the wall she'd been patiently constructing in her mind all these years.

"Eve." Samir thumbed gently at her cheek, the picture of control, as though he wasn't shattering what was left of her resolve. Her body had begun to shake again. "Tell me what the curse does." Silver glinted in his ears and at the corners of her eyes, where she could barely make out his rings.

"It kills people." The floor slid out from beneath her feet. Stop. She had to stop talking. "Slowly and painfully. The more time they spend around me - the more I take from them - the less of them remain."

"Is that so?"

Guilt welled, sharp and full in her throat, and her voice weakened to an anguished confession. "I did not think it had been long enough to affect either one of you. I was not planning to spend more than another few days with you. Forgive me, for not telling you."

"Arman," Samir said, calmly. "How do you feel?"

"You mean except for the fact that I've apparently been feeding this woman with my own lifespan?" He shrugged, hands in his pockets. "Fine."

"See?" Samir's smile was probably meant to be calming. It did nothing but send a curl of self-revulsion through Eve. "He's fine. Nothing to worry about." How could she have allowed herself to get involved, and what possessed her to bring them back into the mythic dimension?

Surely she was losing her mind.

Perhaps she'd been quiet for too long, because that familiar, calm baritone sounded again, more hesitant this time. "Eve. You're not alright are you?"

Before, Eve would have probably said she was fine. But it was too late to pretend now. "No." She wanted to crawl into a dark, quiet space and hide. She wanted the semblance of peace that she'd had in her life back. She wished it were possible to forget it all.

"It'll be different this time."

It would be.

Eve would bury herself alive before she'd allow a single hair on his head to be touched.

A tiny curve crept across her lips despite the click of the hammer on Arman's gun.