When I was little, my mother—my human mother, taught me that there is good in every human heart. For every bad person, there is someone who loved them: a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a child. For every crime committed, there is a reason. My mother taught me that Jesus was betrayed out of love—that even Judas Iscariot had the heart of a good man.

I grew up human, trying my best to be human, looking for the good in every heart. I saw it in my mother and father, and in my brother Max who swore to protect me from the world, because he thought it was his job. I saw it in Michael, who played back-up to Max’s protection, almost as if both of them knew that someone had to protect me from myself. I grew up thinking that everyone had that one redeemable bit of love in their hearts that made them human, and that if I tried hard enough, I could be human too. But as I searched for it in the heart of everyone around me, I never thought to look inside myself.

When Tess came, she awoke the alien in us all. The dreams with Michael always felt wrong, like something wasn’t quite in sync with the rest of me, but that alien part of me—I knew that part. It was like something was waking up inside me that didn’t need to be human. That felt stronger and loved deeper and knew things that my human heart had never thought I’d know. It was…older. Wilder. For a while, I thought I was possessed, like those people on those shows Michael watches late at night, with the man in the trench coat. Whatever it was that was waking up—it was right. It was me. It knew me, and I knew it, and with it, I was complete. With it, I didn’t need to look inside human hearts. Human hearts ceased to be significant.

When I was older, my mother—my alien mother, taught me that I had an enemy. She said that we would know this enemy, because of the evil in their hearts. They would look like us, and sound like us. The only difference between these enemies and the humans around us would be that lack of goodness. That lack of love. But Diane Evans’ daughter still insisted that there was good in everyone, because Mom said it was so. Diane Evans’ daughter was still clinging to her human identity, still looking for the good in her own heart. I have two mothers, and each have taught me a different lesson. The heart is good. The heart is evil. Our enemies know no good. We are good. But aren’t our enemies taught the same thing? To them, we are the evil. My human taught me that it was for God to decide who was right and who was wrong. My alien mother insists that we take that power into our own hands. That we know what gods know.

And then we found the evil. And that evil spoke of a name that fed that alien part of me. Vilandra. Diane Evans’ daughter thought that the name sounded like something out of one of Alex’s bad fantasy novels. But the alien part of me recognized it. Diane Evans’ daughter swore that it wasn’t true, that she had a good heart like the human that she was. But the Queen’s daughter recognized the story of an old love, felt the hunger and the passion for someone denied her, all because of the semantics of evil and the small differences between right and wrong.

Vilandra speaks to me. She speaks to me as Nicholas spoke to me, as Vanessa spoke to me, of a past that Diane Evans’ daughter wants to deny. If I was the traitor—if I was the betrayer, is there good in my heart? Can I still be a human, because I betrayed both my family and my planet for love? Or is good, like evil, something that’s subjective? Is good, like evil, a concept that belongs only to humans? Which of my mothers is right?

Or is it possible that we’re all wrong?

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