"I invited her to [i]every[/i] birthday."

The feeling of having put your foot in your mouth is just miserable. Redana's body threatens to crumple in on itself; she can't look any of the Alcedi in the eye, Lacedo least of all. "I brought her offerings, I made her sacrifices, and she always ignored me and made them rot away on the altar. And when she came here and started boasting about how my father wasn't any help, I..." She makes a violent, impotent gesture with one hand, one that just makes her all the more wound up.

"Honored Grandmother," she says, briskly, because she has to say it. Because now that she has incurred the wrath of her stepmother, she might as well be a Phalanx member without a shield: a danger to everyone around her. "I'm sorry. I have to leave. Hermes might be able to keep my father at bay, but I'm small and mortal enough to maybe slip past her notice, no matter what my stepmother does to punish me for what I said."

Then she looks at Lacedo's sandals and takes one hand in hers, because Redana Claudius is an oblivious battering ram of a girl when it comes to how she might make other people's hearts throb painfully. (After all, she lived with Bella for a decade, and fell asleep with her head in her maid's lap, and used her as a pillow at nights, and she has not yet realized why the world feels more dangerous and more lonely without her.) "Thank you, Lacedo," she says, with painful sincerity. "I'm sorry I made a mess of it. But I'm still going to speak with the Order of Hermes to make them do right by you. I promise."