Jenna stood in her wrecked bedroom with Vash.

“What do you think?” he asked, his voice grating like rocks grinding against each other.

Jenna bit the side of her thumb and answered heartlessly, “Screw the Lotus Palace.”

“You haven’t even spent one night there,” her enormous butler said timidly.

“Yeah, but I’m not getting chased out of here like my home has ghosts. If I give up this palace, it will always be remembered that I was attacked here and I ran away like a little girl. What? Am I going to give this palace to one of the new diplomats I crown? What would I say to them? ‘I’m a big diaper baby and I couldn’t live here, but I’m sure you can?’ Smiles and hugs? Screw all that! It isn’t like there isn’t another room down the hall I could sleep in while this room is being repaired.”

“The AAMC has sent a list of building contractors they use. Even if you’re willing to move back in here after the renovations, I wouldn’t have thought that you’d want to stay here during the renovations,” Vash said.

“Throw that list in the garbage. I’m not getting anyone they recommend. They’ll wire in backdoors so they can access my security system.”

“Who’s going to do the renovations?” he asked, his little voice hiding that he was a man almost seven feet tall.

Jenna straightened her back and cracked her neck. “I’ll do it. I was super interested in DIY stuff when I was back on Earth. I have stapled carpet, laid my own tile, painted, sanded, and one time, I even fixed a foundation.”

“It’s beneath you, Madam Diplomat,” Vash argued.

Jenna threw up her hands. “I don’t know who to trust. Sardius would have told me who I could hire that I could trust. He’s gone. Unless we find something major wrong when we’re cleaning up that needs a professional, then I’m going to do this myself.” Turning to Vash, she laughed a bit. “I know you won’t help me. You’ll say things like, ‘I don’t do grout. I don’t carry bricks. I don’t smile for the tourists.’”

Vash’s expression was downcast.

Jenna turned the tables on him. “Those guys didn’t lay a finger on you last night, did they?”

He shook his head. “Sardius warned me they were on their way over and I ducked into the hidden passage he told me about. They messed up my room though.”

“We should look into tightening security. Sardius told me he was vetting guards, but as far as I know, he hadn’t found a candidate that suited him. I need a new personal assistant. Excelyn is coming over later so we can go through some candidates…” Jenna trailed off. She had been about to add, ‘from another jail.’ Luckily, she stopped herself. She couldn’t be a diplomat with a loose tongue. “Have you had a chance to clean up your room?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you go do that? When you’re finished, you can come back here and get rid of anything ruined or smashed. At least that’s within your job description.”

“Where are you going to sleep tonight? None of the guest bedrooms are ready. If I don’t prepare one now, it might not be ready by the time it's time to sleep.”

“Don’t worry about that. There’s another room ready in the servants’ wing. I’ll sleep there. Sleeping near Smoothie will really help me sleep. I’d sleep under her bed if that wouldn’t weird her out.”

“But that room is not ready either.”

“I poked my head in earlier. It’s fine,” Jenna refuted.

“It’s a blanket and a pillow on a bare mattress,” Vash retorted.

“Yes, and that is good enough for me. Do you know where I slept last night?”

“Underwater?” he replied cautiously.

“Yes. Underwater. With twenty Octavians staring at me while I slept.”

“Was it unnerving?”

“No. It was fine. Favel’s mansion isn’t very deep below the surface, so I didn’t have to worry about the differences in pressure.” The last thing Jenna wanted to admit was that yes, it had been very unnerving to have twenty Octavians stare at her. Twenty of anything staring at you was weird, whether it was twenty humans, twenty octopuses, or twenty goldfish.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Just then, there was an urgent beeping sound.

“What the crap is that?” Jenna wondered noisily.

“It’s the communicator,” Vash said, showing Jenna the display screen. “You just never saw this before because Sardius screened all your calls.”

Jenna missed Sardius for the two thousandth time that morning and looked at who was calling. It was Admiral Lou Denver.

“Shall we take the call?” Vash asked.

“Yep. Put him up.”

The man’s face was even pinker than the profile picture of him Sardius had shown her.

“Good morning, Admiral,” she said stormily.

“Good afternoon, your excellency,” he greeted, his manner one hundred percent professional. “You must accept my apology for what happened last night.”

“I understand that you’re willing to pay for the damage caused by your officers?”

“Naturally.” A dismissive ‘boys will be boys’ grin across his piggy features.

Jenna gritted her teeth before snapping, “And what punishments will be enacted against them to be an example against those who try to attack a diplomat?”

“They did not actually attack you.”

Jenna’s eyes were steely. “Did you not know that the room we are standing in is my bedroom? Your officers entered my bedroom and caused this mayhem. You can see the damage for yourself. What would have happened to me if I had remained here? I expect all of them to be stripped of their rank and removed from the military. Anything less is completely unacceptable. Obviously, they came here to steal the crowns so they could crown whoever. And who do you think ordered them to do such a thing?”

“It could hardly have been someone in the military,” the Admiral tried to deflect.

“Your soldiers are so poorly trained that they take orders from people outside the military?”

“No. I-I…” he stuttered.

Jenna continued, “Do you have any idea who was behind the assassinations of the dead diplomats? I have a deep fear that I shall be buried next unless you can show me unbridled support by dismissing all six of those officers.”

“Your Excellency,” he said in an attempt to pacify Jenna. “None of that is necessary. They were just being rowdy boys.”

“You promote ‘rowdy boys’ to the rank of major?” Jenna asked acidly. “I’ll be dead by next week with the AAMC protecting me.”

“All they were going to do was crown each other and get our agenda back on track. No one was going to hurt you. There were no orders issued. It was something they decided themselves and you would have loved it.”

“With numbers like those, my opinion as a diplomat never would have mattered again because there has to be an even split of four against four to even have a debate. With six diplomats who always vote the same way, the AAMC's interests always would have been paramount. I would not have loved it. There are a lot of Adamis outside the military who deserve a voice, Admiral.”

His face looked like someone was turning a screwdriver in his mouth. “You’re such a pretty thing. Too bad you have to think that way.”

Jenna had a moment when she wanted Sardius more than she’d ever wanted anything in her entire life. She puffed her chest. “Do you want to go to war with me? I’m happy to go to war with you.”

“Happy?”

“Yes. Joyful.”

“But you have no army,” he said slowly like he had found the chink in her armor. “You don’t even have an Adamis husband to watch your back. You have nothing.”

Jenna frowned bitterly. “You didn’t have to do anything special to get along with me, Admiral. All you had to do was let me do my job. Since that is ruined, I will be placing your interests at the back of my queue. I have other groups to pull diplomats from and until every single one of those soldiers is discharged, I will not interview another member of the AAMC.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” he gushed, flustered.

“Am I? Have you found the vessel that gunned down my ship? I almost died being flung out into outer space. It wasn’t the Adamis that helped me. It was the Octavians. I got attacked in my own home by my own military and it wasn’t the AAMC that came to my rescue, but the Octavians again. There have been multiple assassinations and no one is solving them.”

“They were accidents,” he obstinately rebutted.

“Right,” Jenna agreed, but her tone said that she did not believe him.

The Admiral lost his patience. “Listen, you miserable little girl. The Octavians have us by the throats. They control almost all space travel. The treaties must be rewritten.”

“I have nothing against that!”

“Then why are you fighting us?”

“Why are you trying to force me to do things your way instead of convincing me that your way is better?”

He cleared his throat and prepared to be patient. “You just got here. What do you know about the Adamis and our needs? Go to war with me if you like, little girl, but you’ll lose.”

“You mean, you’ll have me murdered.”

He loosened his collar and ended the transmission.

Jenna leaned toward Vash. “Was that recorded?”

“Yep.”

“Good,” she huffed, going out to meet Excelyn.

Too angry to think straight, Jenna showed the video footage of the call to Excelyn. They sat in the courtyard and watched the split screen of Jenna and the Admiral fighting.

Excelyn looked at the screen with a broken expression. “We’re both going to die.”

“Do you think any Adamis news outlet would be sympathetic toward us?” Jenna asked, wondering if they could transmit the recording of the phone call on the news somewhere.

Excelyn got that look in her eye, that special little glint. Jenna knew it. It was the one she got before offering Jenna the liplo fruit. “Have you ever thought about crowning a reporter?”