“I’m not stupid,” Redana says, with surprising acid. “That’s not an answer. You think if you dance around it you can be clever. [i]She is wrong, please![/i] I got the message already. I know what you want to do to me.”

She holds up the Command Seal melded with her miraculous flesh. She figured out how to get it to meld. But she didn’t have time to puzzle out the other half of the instructions. Which left what? Cutting the whole hand off? Getting an [i]Aírgetlam[/i] from her Magos to replace the failable flesh? Just so that...

“Molech gave you orders and you killed him.” Her tone’s flat. “I gave you orders, too. That’s it. That’s why Bella wants to hurt me and why you aren’t my friend. It’s because of the orders. And all this time I thought the Father of Theory was wrong. That just because I was a princess and you were servants...”

She clutches the hand close as if she was suddenly burned, eyes wet. “All I wanted was freedom, just like you. Except for you freedom was sitting with a pedestal up your butt looking out at an overpacked planet and not doing [i]anything[/i] about it. Well, I don’t care. When I remove this you’ll try to kill me. [i]Whatever,[/i] I don’t care,” she says, lying transparently. “But I just want to hear you say it, to not lie to me again. Go ahead and tell me you killed Molech because he gave you orders and there can’t be anything but violence between people who give orders and people who take them.”

Because the alternative is that it’s [i]just her.[/i] That she’s bad and broken. That it’s her fault Alexa hates her and Bella hates her and maybe Vasilia and Dolce really are scamming her or something and she’s [i]alone,[/i] really alone, and maybe she really was alone all along, that her feeling of safety around Bella was bullshit all this time. So it’s that there’s this rule of human nature. And all that’s still true and she is alone but it’s not her fault, it’s her mother’s fault for wanting a daughter in the first place.

She can’t look Alexa in the eye. Her heart’s loud. Shut up, heart. Stop pounding her head in. Is she feeling woozy? She promised she’d take it easy while walking off the fever. Alexa can’t notice her wobble, right? Stupid! She couldn’t even wait for a better opportunity to get the truth out of her murderous new bodyguard, not that her old one was really any different! “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Did she say that out loud? Will Alexa assume she’s talking about her? Well, well good! Dany’s done caring! Care-free zone! Do you think she cares? Haha, it’s hilarious how wrong you are! She’s tearing up for completely unrelated reasons!! So there!!!