Her ear twists around on her head at the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. One wobbling leg does the work plaintive words and a tremulous voice could not, and freezes Bella in mid-step. Her back arches, stiffer than the scaffolding for the set being built around them. Her muscles ripple with the effort of standing in place in a moment when her heart is screaming to leave. She doesn't turn to face him; she lifts her hand to stare at her fingers instead. The memory of the blood makes her shiver.

"Twenty Poisons is Mynx's game," she hisses, "Quit fucking playing it with me, you aren't any good at it."

Bella's hair bounces across her back as she turns her head. It drifts casually across her shoulder and falls in luscious sheets down the other side. In all this lighting the blue-black sheen is startling, almost as much as the hard glint in her golden cat's eye. The half-dried dress of the Temple of Artemis clings and flutters across her body in such a flattering way that even the pieces of it that are torn seem artful instead of shoddy. The fur on her arms and legs seems especially silken compared to other times you might have met her. She looks like she belongs in whatever film is being shot here, in all honesty. The beautiful priestess who delivers a prophecy of doom or deliverance or whatever.

It's not fair, is it? That she could look so good and so whole when you and yours are all broken messes. She's the one who did everything wrong. She's the one who sold her soul for power. She's the one who came a hair's breadth away from killing half the crew, yourself included. So why does it look like she's being rewarded? And why has she so easily slipped inside the inner workings of this ship when it's bent over backwards to deny you?

"I'll tell you what I told him, while he was begging me to save his wriggling tentacled ass: I have never, and will never betray the Empire. If Mother couldn't drag me with her, you have no chance. But the Imperial Princess is on this ship and I'm still Her Majesty's Praetor no matter what anybody says, until the day she tears the title off my body with her own hands. So as long as I'm on this ship I'm damn well going to make sure it functions like it's fucking supposed to. We are [i]not[/i] friends. And I'm not gonna sit here and guess what you're after, so spit it out or get the fuck out of my way."

...That was too far. She knows it. Bella tenses, and you can see the moment where she comes a twitch or two away from digging her claws into her own skin before she stops herself with a frankly huge and heroic effort. She sighs, and finally spins around. The conversation will continue. When she speaks again, her voice is low and cautious. It costs her a lot to be like this right now. And you're an attentive sort: from the way she keeps almost reaching for her back it's obvious something about it is bothering her a lot. But she doesn't dare say or do anything about it. Not when she looks the way she does, and you look like... well, you.

"You're in this mess because you didn't push. Do you get that? You knew you were being jerked around in that asshole's letterhead and you never hunted him down or sent anyone to speak with any of his other nodes, and now you're in a place where your enemy's giving you the status report that he wouldn't. And here you are, trusting me. Asking me for help. Why? What are you hoping I'll do? Just tell me what the fuck you want, already. I can't stand this."