"This again? With all due respect, Your Imperial Highness, go fuck yourself."

Bella's voice is cool, not cold, like water running across someone's hand. Her face is a mirror for Redana's detached conviction but for the tiny smirk that plays across her painted lips, just enough to flash a trace of sharp teeth. Every beat of the song soothes the storm inside her body. Every word half listened to from Beljani replaces nervousness with confidence. She reaches deep inside herself to find the tangle of emotions associated with Redana, and finds they've been burned down to husks in the wake of her transformation. She sniffs. Her nose tells her nothing she didn't already know.

This is a formal dance, nothing of closeness. Bella and Redana circle slowly to the music with palms clasped around each other's forearms. There's significance to the gesture, some ancient ritual dating back to blah blah blah, but Bella only ever heard the story from Redana, who never exactly bothered with reading the material. Irrelevant. Around they go, holding each other tight in a spiral that draws the attention of every last person here tonight. They stop as one. A cool nod from each. They shift, and circle in the other direction.

"When I saw you here I thought maybe you'd finally grown up, but I see you're the same idiot you've always been. I betrayed you? I followed you? Which one of us stuffed the other in a closet, again? Seriously, get a clue. I'm. Doing. My. [i]Job.[/i] I always have been. Unlike some people, I know where my loyalties belong. I know where [i]I[/i] belong, and it's not stuck out here in the middle of nowhere waiting for luck to finally catch up and kill me."

The music shifts, and the dance changes. The pair pull close, with Redana's arms about Bella's waist and neck. The latter flicks her tail and lets herself be lead in the delicate waltz without the faintest flicker of protest or of passion. The plan is in place, and every tiny motion only confirms that it's working. Why get upset? Why not dance? Her biggest... her only mistake was not asking Beautiful for help sooner.

"Fight it if you want to, I don't care. I don't need your cooperation anymore. You can spend tonight enjoying yourself, or you can spend it pretending you're the victim here, but either way you're going home. But you wanna know the best part? I don't have to lift a single finger to make it happen."