When Bella turns, Redana is already looking at her. And the expression on her face is horrified. One hand covers her mouth; her eyes are wide with shock; her every nerve is frozen and taut. She is prey.

She knows, indistinctly, that Bella was, is a trained bodyguard, a last line of defense for the greatest prize of the Empire. But she has never seen anyone die at Bella’s claws before. Never. Never ever! Bella Oystershell Meowmeow is a fussy little maid who’s always worrying and fixing her lady’s hair and blushing whenever someone makes an off-color joke and does a silly little trot in place when she’s flustered!

And watching that calm attentiveness, that worried twist of her lips, that demure lowering of her lids, slip back onto her face is sickening. Redana’s stomach plummets as if someone kicked her legs out from under her. Everything. Everything she thought she knew about her Bella was a lie.

Was she trained before she ever hopped into that box? How long has she been pretending to be her lady’s friend? Her best friend? How many lies has she told her princess, if she can kill someone and then put on the mask of meekness? Was their whole friendship a lie?

[i]That’s why she didn’t want to let you leave.[/i]

No. No no no. Bella can tell something’s wrong. Redana can’t get purchase in the mud, can’t get up on her feet, not with one leg now completely numb. Her scramble backwards is ungainly, panicked, her fear palpable. Let her face a dozen hydras, or a legion of thinking machines, or a void dragon, just please don’t make her face the monster in front of her.

She can’t hurt Bella.

And she doesn’t know, can’t know, whether Bella won’t hurt her. For her own good. Jas’o is a crumpled mess and he was an ass and deserved punishment—

Zeus, father, was [i]this[/i] the punishment for Jas’o’s hubris? Bella your thunderbolt? The words won’t come out of her mud-clogged throat. All she can do is gurgle and crack her elbow on a rock as the ground slips out from under her again.

Weak. Vulnerable. Pathetic.