Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eve Zvezda was, to put it plainly, the worst thing to ever happen to Lilith Moonlit.

Project Ma had been her golden opportunity to claim her mother's throne, to punish those who had hurt her. Seth and his cronies would finally be made to pay for their crimes under her, and she would at last inherit what should of been hers by birthright. It was perfect. All she had to do was give birth to vessels for the twin gods, and everything would be hers.

That was, until she was informed her participation in the project would be "a conflict of interest". As if being Horus's "daughter" had ever done her any favors at all. She couldn't be queen, couldn't even be considered as a candidate because of her connection to the bastard. If he had been in the area at the time she heard that, she would've killed him herself.

But it was alright. Things could be salvaged. After all, they couldn't put another girl on the throne if there weren't any other girls suitable. And in order to give birth to the twin gods, one had to be alive. The trial ought to take care of that, weed out the unworthy. And who could be more worthy than a princess (never mind the fact that technically there were no princesses in Leviantia, she was the queen's daughter)?

Everything had been going to plan. The only two candidates had been a priestess from the temple and some girl they'd found in a village in Heldogort. What were the chances either of them would survive the test? Maybe the priestess was powerful, but she wasn't like Lilith. She hadn't been born for queenship the way Lilith was, it didn't run in her blood.

And she'd been right. Zellana Chirclatia tragically died in the middle of the trial, and was laid to rest with honors for her admirable sacrifice in the mission to save their country.

But Eve Zvezda had survived, and was now officially their future queen.

It wasn't fair. She didn't deserve it the way Lilith did. She was the only daughter of the queen, she had suffered for years under Horus with the sole goal of someday raining justice upon the bastards who had turned her mother into a puppet. Eve Zvezda, on the other hand, had been swept out of some backwater village one day and been handed everything Lilith had ever wanted.

Sure, she looked like a queen, even Lilith could see that. Who could be blind to the woman's laughter that sounded like chiming bells, her eyes that shone with all the brilliance of the wealthiest noble's jewelry, her hair that flowed like silk behind her in two perfect twintails? And her smile, brighter than the stars in the sky. It was little wonder she had caught the senate's attention, and Lilith couldn't deny the way her heart twitched when the woman entered a room.

Twitched with rage, that is.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. What had everything she'd ever done been for, if this was the outcome? If she was doomed to lose her dream to the most annoyingly radiant woman she'd ever met. A woman who was so frustratingly kind to her, Lilith was half sure that she'd somehow found out about Lilith's crushed dreams and was secretly mocking her. What other reason would anyone have to go out of their way to be that nice to someone they barely knew?

The night Eve Zvezda officially became the mother to-be of the twin gods, Lilith smuggled a vial of poison from Seth's lab. Nothing too fast acting, but without remedy, a person would slowly weaken until it appeared they'd died of some sickness. It wasn't a brief end by any means, but it wasn't a painful one. Most importantly, it wasn't a detectable one, and Seth would hardly recognize it was gone. It was one of his least favorite concoctions, probably because he considered its slowness too boring to be worthy of use on his experiments.

But Lilith didn't need a big, showy end for what she had in mind. She couldn't crush this flower in one decisive stroke, not unless she wanted to end herself as well.

The next morning, she slipped just a tad of it into a certain woman's morning coffee.

Eve Zvezda brought the mug up to her perfect red lips with her porcelain hands, her eyes shining with the promise of a future smile, one that Lilith mirrored as she sat across from her at the kitchen table. The angelic woman sitting beside her wanted her for a companion, and she was more than happy to get close.

Eve took a hardy sip, and the flower slowly, surely, began to wilt. And if Lilith felt a sharp twist in her gut at the sight, it surely had nothing to do with the vial of poison that weighed in her pocket like a stone brick.