The smell of ozone brings her up short. Metallic, burning, and deep, like the cleaning chemicals she used in the palace but wrapped in electricity. It's the scent poems call Justice, which Bella hated reading. It's the scent of Zeus Olympios, the songs all say, which Bella hated singing. But really, more than anything else, it's the scent of failure. It's what punishment smells like. 

You can't notice a thing like that and not think that something horrible is about to happen. The very best thing it could possibly be is a Thunderbolt from somebody like Jas'o, and that's already bad enough to make Bella sprint faster than she's ever gone before. She's half a lightning bolt herself, dropping her body lower, dropping all pretense and bounding on all fours every time she hits a particularly steep incline because she must be as fast as the wind, as the gods. Even though her lungs burn with the effort of the climb, she sprints as if trying to outrun a bolt of lightning.

And the reward for her haste is that she makes it just in time to see Redana collapse in on herself. Her princess. Her princess! Gone! Bella's lungs turn inside out. A second ago they'd been heaving with effort to suck in every last bit of thunder-soaked air they could get. Now, they expel it like a plague. Bella is frozen in place. Her hands are clamped like iron over her face, but they can't keep the strangled scream from escaping her lips. Redana! Redana! No! Gods, please, if there's a merciful soul among your miserable lot, O Zeus, whom she has never had the courage to pray to before, please don't let please don't please please don't take her princess like this don't don't don't don't...

Perhaps this is what it means to have a prayer answered. And perhaps that answer is why Bella so rarely prays. Her scream dies down into a surprised squeak. Her arms fall limply to her sides. Her mouth falls open, and her face is slack and stupid. For the first time since she got rescued from the box, Bella looks [i]up[/i] at the face of her princess.

It is just barely possible to know that this... this War Queen is the same as her Redana. The contours of their jaws follow the same lines, and the nose is just the same. The width of her hips and the particular quality of her muscles, though they are both larger in this form, have the same proportions as her princess. It's like staring through a window into another reality, one where Zeus took primary responsibility for raising Redana instead of Nero. But all of this could be explained away as the trick of her eyes and her desperate heart, except for... the smell. 

Underneath the hated wisps of lightning breath, Redana's scent is overwhelming. The tang of her sweat: musky, with a tiny note of saltiness atop a wave of sweet... unique in all creation. Nobody smells like Redana except Redana. You could chain Bella inside a dark cave for a thousand years, leave her to forget everything she's ever known, and she would still be able to name this specific smell. But what is? Bella watches in awe as her princess hefts an axe and effortlessly cleaves through multiple warriors of legendary skill as if they were paper props in a play about her exploits. Her cheeks grow warm, and it takes her a long moment to realize she is blushing. Her tail rises all by itself, the tip curling in on itself with excite... relief. This is relief. Relief and awe.

"Red... Redana?" she breathes, forgetting all her etiquette inside the thick stew of her emotions. "Princess, is that..?"