Redana’s first instinct is [i]mortification.[/i] People are staring at her, and not at her [i]face.[/i] Not at her face at all. Her outfit seems to consist mostly of [i]triangles,[/i] and translucent sleeves that just bring attention back to the triangles. She’s practically [i]naked[/i] from behind. She reaches up, into her hair, looking for the knot holding the kerchief over her mouth…

And then she lowers it, slowly. Epistia’s smart (and smells good) (and her mouth tastes good). She’s… she’s right. Maybe even Mynx wouldn’t recognize her in this disguise. Nothing to give her away, not even her voice.

The Eye of Hermes shows her a hunched-over, blushing girl with PRINCESS emblazoned over her head, and then WOMAN OF MYSTERY over a confident, hip-shaking, strutting… woman. The Eye of this woman flashes, as if to remind her— as if to remind her that it can scan the room. It just needs the Woman of Mystery to give it time to work.

R’dyna? Rhythalla? Reshella?

Reshella lifts her veiled chin and tries swaying her hips. Her heart is beating so fast, and skips a beat when someone cheers for her. She takes a step, then another, then another, and it takes more discipline than— than the likes of Princess Redana, who is very different from Reshella, might use to push herself past her limits when straining for an Olympic gold. Reshella is very brave and she likes it when people stare at her body, at the triangles, at the way she moves, like the way she imagined Bella might, dreaming of space pirates and damsels in distress and kisses from girls with triangles for ears.

Reshella bites down on the sodden mass between her teeth and shivers in feelings that it would be very inappropriate for an Imperial Princess to have. Nobody knows that she’s gagged. They might wonder to themselves, as she flits from person to person, offering them the chance to ogle, and even— R-Reshella is brave and okay with being groped, actually, because she’s secretly a spy and that gives her the time she needs for her very special eye to do its work. You can’t see her red cheeks behind her glittering Dionysian veil and her hair is down over her ears and in this light nobody can tell that the blood’s rushing to her breastbone, too, even though all of it is on full display. In the smoky light of the party her eyes are colorless and sultry.

No, no, no, no— again and again the Eye tells her, tells Reshella, that the assassin she’s looking for, that she’s playing a game of disguise against, isn’t where she’s looking. But Reshella is willing to do whatever it takes to win this game. [i]Whatever[/i] it takes.

Someone tugs on her wrist, and Reshella is pulled onto a table. Instructions and suggestions are excitedly thrown at her from all sides. But that’s okay. Reshella remembers these scenes. She’s confident and sexy and she’s not going to compromise her mission. She lifts her hands over her head, shakes her hips, rolls her stomach. She’s not tall and she’s not busty and she’s not graceful, but she [i]knows[/i] what this is supposed to look like. She stands on tiptoe, slowly rotates around the table, someone is beating a tambourine on the off-beats of the bass, and dancing is just like running, isn’t it? It’s about control of her body, but instead of optimizing for speed, or for strength, she’s optimizing for…

For everyone looking at her. Wanting her. She’s not Princess Redana, who would be covering herself up frantically. She is Reshella, dancing-girl, party entertainment, mysterious in her silence, as fearless as Skotia, and maybe, just maybe, it would be acceptable for Reshella to be wanted in ways that Redana could never be.

A Ceronian waves her over from the table, grinds against her, whispers in her ear that she smells like Epistia. Let him add something, if she will? And Reshella doesn’t say no, she just nods, because what if she’d have to explain herself? And letting him know she’s gagged would just cause more questions, and it feels so good to say yes, doesn’t it? (It does.)

And the Ceronian pulls the belled collar around Reshella’s neck and locks it behind her throat and she is [i]complete.[/i] She thanks him by stroking up his jaw and wiggling free, jingling as she continues to prance from knot to knot, almost forgetting why she’s here, because it’s snug around her neck and the bells are so soothing and it’s almost like Reshella is back on Tellus with Bella, except Reshella isn’t a princess, so perhaps there could have been… perhaps they could have shared the bells, at the very least.

And it’s like this, sultry, jingling, sexy, desired, and caught up in the waking dream of the party, that Reshella suddenly comes face to face with the two people who she knows can’t possibly be the Assassin she’s looking for, because they’re the other two Assassins.

And there she is in triangles and bells, smelling like Ceronians, completely unable to explain herself.