"With respect, Liege," Bella chirps, her voice instantly finding that old note of placid politeness expected of an Imperial Handmaiden rather than a Praetor, "I believe you are being over generous in your assessment."

A careful dip of her head. Her Auspex turned respectfully toward the ground, daring to look at the majesty of King Anjia only with her natural eye. That's the only way she looks at any of them around the table. Her tongue curls inside her mouth, begging for wine. She is parched. A desert of nerves and nervousness. Something is crawling inside her throat, begging her to wash it down. 

But she does not move except to curtsey, her hands even in the middle of the gesture holding on to Redana. As if she still believed they were the only things in the universe that could keep her lover safe. Her lover... her shield. Her invitation. Her Princess.

"Technical skill is the pillar I deserve to be measured by. I am a maid. At the Empress' request I became an administrator. I did my best to run a ship, and run it well, but I did so in opposition to the journey you are praising. And I was thwarted by... forgive me, Princess, but by absolute morons. I think about it constantly. I do not understand how I could have failed to keep things from coming this far. But now that they have..."

Gods. Gods, if ever any of you did not hate her even a little bit, please give her a glass of wine. She has no right to intrude on Hades' hospitality after winning so many of his treasures from him. But she is dying. Wilting. Fading into a creature that cannot leave this place. Or she will, at least, without something to restore her. Her body is pinpricks and claw points where she ought to have skin. Her body is an itch like a name on her armor that she is forbidden from erasing. Her body is shame and an empty, ravenous void that screams desperately for any manner of real food, real drink, real relief.

Though of course, were it presented to her she would not dare do more than nibble on an hors d'oeuvres. Not in front of legends like these. How can being seen, being praised feel so much like torture? She swallows; the feeling is painful and dry.

"It was not my heart that overcame the Master of Assassins," she begins again, "It was Beautiful who put me back together, when I had come undone. It was Beljani who dared to write the name Sagakhan on my skin as a prayer to the Diodekoi. It was Mynx who woke me with her own blood. And Redana pulled me free. I did nothing. I raged and I killed, but I never took my target. I was merely a pawn, and a costly one at that. It took a lifetime's worth of other hearts to pull mine free."