Redana shrugs off her coat and begins to modify it distractedly. She had made it more military in aspect, thinking Vasilia would want to project strength: epaulettes, braids, and a double row of buttons. The buttons stay, but her fingers smooth out the rest of her decorations back into the fabric. Instead... something more Hermetic. Bella would know what to put on there. A wing? A talon? The wand? The tablet? An eye, ringed in feathered orange, bright and stark on the dark synthfabric.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, and not just because they have the right to travel among the stars. The Auspex makes something breathtaking out of the throbbing furnaces and intricate fields, magnetic and otherwise, like an impossible butterfly pinned against the glittering stars. Of course Mother forced them out here to be her hands and eyes and ears. If something like that hung like a second moon over Tellus, it would always be an implicit challenge, even if the entire Ceronian fleet sat on their haunches by its side.

Then she closes her eyes and focuses. Everything’s been so... so unreal. Ever since Baradissar. Ever since Bella. Ever since she was touched by Dionysus who makes women mad. If he had touched her differently, what would she have done to Bella? If he hadn’t touched her at all, would she have given in and been taken home by her, in her fury, with her threats?

Was Dionysus on her side at all, or was the Mirrored-Mask simply touching a coin as it spun through the air to make it land on its side?

What’s important is that Alexa is on her side. What’s important is that the Starsong Privateers believe in her. And so she believes in them, too.

“Awaiting your orders, Captain,” she says. There is, unconscious, underneath, her mother speaking through her. She does not ask Vasilia if she may be of use; she simply asserts that her place is, in this moment, doing whatever she can to assist Vasilia. Confidence. She has to have confidence. Alexa deserves that, at least.

And Alexa deserves the gentle look that Redana shoots her way as the princess pulls on her remade jacket. One that says: you got this. One that says: I’m thinking of you, so don’t worry. One that says: you’re not alone, Alexa.