"You didn't wanna wait and see if he was gonna take you up on ineffectual gnawing?" Bella asks, but then she prods at the emotion-blob and takes a moment to breathe oddly and ramp up her speed to process inhuman levels of muchness. "Oh dosage control issues hello," she says weakly.
"Yes, dosage control, I am figuring out a parallel-ness upgrade for my brain now," Bella says, closing the emotion-blob with a great effort of will.
"I might be getting braindead on how much you love me. Elspeth can do that, if she blasts people with too much vampire-mind," Bella says. "I already got kinda high on it, and if it gets anywhere near dangerous I'd start to worry about my ingot power deciding the mindreading's dangerous like my alt's witchcraft decided Elspeth was dangerous."
"That would be bad. I'd hate to have you not read me anymore," he says, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. "Will the brain upgrade help?"
Hex goes.
"Trying this again," she murmurs in his ear, and she opens the package of emotions and does-not-quite-drown.
But only not-quite.
And then it becomes a good thing that Lazarus has gone.