"You're starting to piss me off."

Bella snorts her irritation as she turns her back to her friend again. Her tail flicks like a whip as she dresses, only calming for just long enough for her to thread it through the hole sewn into her panties as she pulls the lace fabric up around her hips, then one more time when she repeats the motion with her pants. It lashes so aggressively that she has to pause in the middle of fastening her sheer black bra to grab and squeeze the tip until the pain calms her down again. She rolls her eyes and spins around again to lean against her wardrobe as she works the straps over her arms.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing. The second things start going my way you swoop in here you start inventing problems and magically you're the only one who can sense or stop them. Pretty fucking convenient, isn't it? Suddenly your useless ass is indispensable and you get to tell the Empress that [i]I'm[/i] the one who's messing everything up."

There's no snappy comebacks to fill the pause while she stands there, half-dressed. No stammered excuses, either. The look on Mynx's face is so mask-like that it almost feels like a slap in the face. Bella glares through her newly mismatched eyes, but she's the one who blinks. She pulls out a tight fitting black jacket and slips it on without bothering with a shirt, fiddling with the neat rows of brass buttons until the whole thing is completely covering her with the vague Ancient World military aesthetic that Her Majesty also favored for a brief period, once upon a time. She reaches for the light switch, and sure enough in the changing lights her outfit inverts. She shrugs; at least she isn't bringing this back half-assed.

"This is the last time I'm going to tell you, there is nothing wrong on my ship. The Lanternites are under my control, the Kaeri are sulking but handled. And in any case neither one of them has anybody capable of unleashing Her Highness' assassins loose without my direct say-so. Even Lorventi admitted to that. You were wrong about Redana. And you're wrong about this. I won't let you take this from me."

"Bella, that's not what I--"

"Stop, Mynx. Just stop."

But the silence gnaws at Bella's chest. It tears at her with terrible teeth as she lifts the open-fronted red skirt off the top of her wardrobe and ties it around her waist. She swallows and looks away, her tail curling around her leg as she busies herself with a belt that cinches her clothing even tighter and forcefully highlights the shape of her body underneath the fabric. There's not a word spoken between them while she arranges the gold chain jewelry about her neck outside the high collar of her jacket and straightens out the intricate pattern of links and loops about her right shoulder. The longer she works, the tighter her chest clenches. She nearly reaches for her jacket buttons, as though that could fix it, but stops and forces herself to focus on lacing up a pair of dainty black boots up her calves, instead.

She hasn't done a thing with her hair since she got out of bed. She hasn't brushed or straightened it all week, in fact. Her fingers tremble as she hesitantly starts combing through the tangles to one side of her head, just enough to weave a single braid back into her hair, and in the middle of this act something or some god finally lifts her chin enough to look at the bed again.

Mynx is still there. Watching her. For some stupid, unknowable reason... she hasn't left. Bella sighs. Words of apology do not pass her lips. They don't cross her mind, even as she reaches for a handful of ribbons tied to a batch of bells she has no good reason for wearing anymore, and ties them to her belt. Her snarl is a sound of absolute frustration.

"Ok, fine! You win! If it'll make you shut up, then I'm conscripting you to be my bodyguard. You know, officially. Since you won't leave me alone anyway. Just be normal about it, for fuck's sake. Prove that I can trust you, Mynx."