Her tongue is covered in sand. Heavy, dry, gritty, barren. Trapped. The desire to swallow is overwhelming, but it's like trying to do it with a mouthful of cinnamon: all that she can do is choke and sputter. But she must do it quietly, quietly. Oh so very quietly. She has not known fear like this since the Opera.

She can feel fingers of pure ice reaching down her chest and filling her insides with a cold more intense than any weather she has ever known, a thought that chills her even more as it registers across the front of her brain. She cannot speak. She [i]cannot[/i] speak. She cannot allow Her to know that comparison that came to mind. The very concept is blasphemy itself.

All she wants in this moment is a whiff of roses. All she wants is the smile that smell implies. It is nowhere to be found. There is sulfur and bright burning metallics and the odor of their conflagration, and there is the formaldehyde miasma of a body preserved well enough to contain a god even in death. Part of a god? Or just an Empress? Her nose cannot tell. She is too busy looking for roses. Roses the Empress has lost. Roses the Princess has given away.

"Your Majesty, I..."

The words drop from her mouth as if shot out of the air with arrows. Useless platitudes delivered in her useless voice to express useless sentiments. This is not her place. She puts her mouth to better use and drinks the tastes and scents of the chamber deeper than before. And there she finds sweat, and ash, and the soot of war. She finds fresh soil and iron and a fear that is not hers.

Redana.

Bella finds her legs for Redana. She stands again even as the anger that was animating her ebbs away into pure terror, all for Redana. She stands behind her and wraps her arms around her shoulders in an act of suicidal possession, where there is warmth and the firmness of muscles still fit for the Olympics (as hers never were) and the grateful pressing back of that beautiful head into her own soft chest. She holds, and is held. She stands.

And even in this, Nero does not turn to her. Not even to frown.

"Y-Your Majesty, can't you see me? Can't you hear my voice? Please, I! Do I... do I have to give It back to you? Because I! I!!"

A mother. A father. It doesn't matter to her at all. She left in the end for the promise of a single tender glance. So why? Why isn't she getting it? What did she do wrong? What has she forgotten to do?