By the time she woke again, she felt like the warmth in her had turned to fire and she was already panting hard. Her heart had begun to race at a pace she hadn't thought possible, more akin to a human's steady beat and it burned.
Clenching her eyes shut to try and calm herself, she breathed slowly but the change of pace only made her head spin.
Someone walked in but she ignored them, her body slumped forward and her eyes tight in an effort to calm herself. It wasn't working at all.
"Etani?" A low voice asked and she jerked at the strange voice, but it was Jaia and she frowned up at him. He looked different somehow and she couldn't tell immediately what it was. He looked sharper?
Shaking her head, she strained against the chains but it did nothing but make her arms hurt.
"Too hot..." she breathed, sweat beading up on her forehead and making her skin glisten.
"I know baby," he crooned, joining her on the bed and stroking her hair gently. "It's almost over and everything will be alright."
She flicked her gaze around the room, everything looked different somehow. Everything looked sharper and more detailed, she could see the individual fibres of the mattress and her dress, she could see tiny freckles on her legs that she had never noticed before. Tiny motes of dust in the air when normally she could only see them when the sun shone in the room.
"What are you doing to me?" she whined, trying to understand the differences but her mind was flicking from idea to idea at a pace she had never experienced before and her teeth were burning. She gauged it to be her first premolar on her top jaw were oddly, worryingly loose in her mouth
"We're making it so you can't die sweetheart. Not ever," he said and she jerked away from him violently.
Staring up at him in horror, she shook her head.
"You can't turn the Fae," she whispered, hoping it was true but no one really knew for sure.
"No, not completely turning you. Just enough that you get our immortality," he purred. "And are addicted to our blood," that last part was added as an afterthought and she whimpered gently.
"I'm afraid it's going to hurt quite a bit, we don't have a lot of time and the process is usually much slower."
Shaking her head, she pulled at the chain but it wasn't budging at all.
"We only thought about it after your little screaming episode," he said and she looked up at him once more, confused by the subject. "What kind of creature could make a scream like that but the banshee? Neither of us could think of anything and we had heard you scream before but it was nothing like that. I had a theory and we had to assume that it was a response to the change Epharis brought in your system," he sounded calm, trying to sooth a scared, hostile creature.
"So then we were left wondering what else you must have. The Fae and the banshee are similar, but they are very different species of magical creature. Kai did a little digging and it turns out the Fae and the banshee can procreate though it was uncommon," taking a deep breath, he smiled softly. "Your dear father wasn't a true born Fae, your grandmother is a part banshee and that little talent had been hidden inside you, waiting for use. So now we have to wonder what else is hidden inside you. What other secret powers does the Winter Princess possess? There was very little public record of your Grandmother's parentage that we could find though, so now we are left with the endless possibility."
Sounding delighted by the challenge, he looked up when Kai entered and they replaced the bags once more, neither of them feeding from her.
"You won't have the strength to try your scream, it takes a certain amount of energy for them to do that, or so we read. We are keeping you below that until the time is right," Kai said gently, yet his face was cool towards her, wary and mistrusting her.
"This is the last bag, I'm sorry for what you will be going through but this has to happen," Jaia said and he caught her head to keep her from turning away, planting a hard kiss against her temple. "I love you Etani, we both do and you're going to be magnificent," he breathed into her ear and the two left her alone.
'Lee?' she thought, searching her mind for that other voice that would give her so much comfort in a moment like that. There was no response, not even a hint and she sighed, knowing she was alone.
***
Sitting against the headboard, she looked between the two bags and wondered at how closely they matched when it came to draining into her, curious but unable to get either tube to bend or crease in order to stop one flow or the other, instead she simply watched the bags slowly empty.
It started when they were both at around the halfway mark, her stomach suddenly heaving and she rocked forward but nothing came out, at least nothing from her stomach.
One of her teeth dropped onto the bed and she felt at the spot with the tip of her tongue, horrified to feel a sharp point there. Finding the same tooth on the other side was ready to fall out as well.
Digging her tongue into the roots, she forced it out and spat it onto the bed with the first.
Looking down at them, they were perfectly white and clean with only a little smear of blood on the second where she had pushed it free of the gums.
Her face began to burn and she clenched her eyes shut, her tongue still feeling the spot when the sharp point pushed free of the gums.
They were not large, only a millimetre or two longer than her little, sharp canines, leaving her with two sharp sets of teeth and the feeling was incredibly odd.
Something odd came to her attention and she cocked her head to the side, listening hard to the sound of footsteps that seemed to be coming from inches above her.
Heaving again, she groaned at the pain of her stomach refusing to settle or give up its contents.
Fire began to spread from her inner elbows and creep down her arms, leaving her skin burning like acid but visibly unchanged, at least to her eyes and she was shocked to see tiny, tiny little clear hairs on her arms when she had previously thought there to be none.
Looking down at her feet, she saw the same on her legs and the tops of her feet. She had found it amusing to see the hairy humans at first, when her own body was so clean from birth but there they were, always there but so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.
Her hair whispered as she shook her head, a sound she had never paid attention to before but it was loud now.
Gritting her teeth to keep from making a sound as the fire reached her shoulder, she began to pant once more, her heartbeat rapidly increasing the closer the fire got to it.
"No..." she whispered, the sound of her own voice making her jerk. She hadn't ever heard her own voice like that before, a low purr that screamed pleasure and yet sounded cold at the same time, a distant promise of what the listener could have and she was left wondering at Jaia's words on what her lineage might be.
Shaking her head at the thought, she pulled at the chain and grinned when she heard the wood groaning, but being free wasn't going to save her.
The fire had turned her cheeks a warm pink, sweat glistening on her body and she felt as though she might catch fire.
When someone entered, she could smell the scent of warm male and the scent immediately made her think of Jaia, the spicy smell of his skin and the taste of his blood that had appeared on her tongue, mixed with a blood she didn't know and she could only assume it was Kai's.
Looking up, her eyes trailed up a rock hard body to a face she both knew well and had never seen before. With eyes sharpened by the blood, she could see every tiny detail that made him the demonic seductor he was. She had to wonder if that was how humans saw their kind and the thought made her want to laugh, right up until the fire licked at her heart and it suddenly stopped beating.
Her scream was terrible as the fire spread to every last inch of her body in an instant after the first teasing lick of her heart, the pain of burning alive coupled with the pain of her heart suddenly no longer wanting to beat and a horrific ripping sensation in her brain as thoughts and memories seemed to expand out of what she previously had known to be herself.
Her scream was endless, a plea for death and an end of suffering that didn't come.
Her torture lasted for hours, her screams cutting off after the first ten minutes as she fell into unconsciousness but she was still alert, her soul thrashing like a trapped fish as the fire pecked at it, pulling and twisting it.
Letari had found her immediately, clinging to her as the place that had been her soul home was ripped apart by flames and her soul was consumed by it and changed, no longer a soft blue but flecked with red, little sparks of fire that gave it a hypnotic beauty and a terrible suffering.
She felt a mouth at her throat, flesh tearing and the fire beginning to leave her, could feel hands at her elbows, two more mouths and the drawing out sensation of having venom sucked from a wound.
She felt herself drifting, high on the blood and lost to the void of nothingness that had been herself and yet she realised that the void was not nothing, the herself she had known had expanded, grown greater than it had been, more and able to know and understand more.
It was magical and the two swam in it, revelling in the vast size of it and yet both knowing that things were going to be very different and people were going to die.