And [i]breathe.[/i]

Redana rolls on the cheaply tiled palace floor, taking desperate gulps of air through her nose. Breathing was difficult for a moment there, because there was fur in her nose. Sweaty, matted, drooly fur. And Bella’s hand was iron-firm, and really didn’t want her lifting her head to take a breath that wasn’t All Bella All The Time, and Bella herself was, was the opposite of iron-firm, because she was soft and yielding and enveloping like Poseidon’s waves, that must be what drowning felt like, soft and sweet and insistent, feeling each breath, in and out like the lapping tides, like the lapping tides.

Redana burns. Her nostrils flare. She strains sloppily against the chains, the ones that betrayed her and set Bella free, simply to strain and not lie there uselessly. She grinds against the leather set between her teeth and growls like a Servitor. Her shirt is falling to pieces, and the air is hot and wet on her skin, slick with sweat.

She’s failing them. She’s failing everyone. Bella and Vasilia and Epistia. She made promises! Let her keep them, please! Let her throw herself between the cats, take the blows she’s always been strong enough to take, because she can’t bear to see her captain and her (former) best friend fighting!

Zeus! Father! Why have you looked away? Is it because she let Bella tear out Jas’o’s throat, let her run wild off the leash? Is it because she failed some test? Or does your wife, her stepmother, hold you back by the wrist, by the throat? Do you struggle to breathe in her grasp, too? Does she envelop you like the sea so that your eyes are blind and your ears are deaf and your tongue is a cry of Hera, Hera, Hera?

Is your heart a wounded thing yearning for destruction, too?