Chapter 24
Better than a Jelly Bean
Jenna and Sardius were in a hallway. The doors on both sides of the walls were closed and locked.
“What is this place?” Jenna asked, looking at the doors and feeling overwhelmed. “I don’t get this at all. If we’re in a warehouse, then what are all these rooms? They seem like they’re too far apart to be offices.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Jenna said, trying to think of how to explain. “In an office, you need a desk, a chair…”
“No,” Sardius said, laughing. “In an office, you need a bed and a chair. What do you need a desk for? You haven’t asked for a desk yet and you’ve been working out of your palace for ages now. Has it been a whole year?”
“I don’t even know how long a year is anymore,” she groaned. “So, you think these are private living spaces? We should be trying the doorknobs. I bet they have clothes that we could borrow that would help us fit in better and would be less wet.”
Sardius sighed. “Let’s not try the doorknobs. If we do, we could alert someone to our presence more than just us walking down the hallway. Let’s try to find a door that is open already.”
“You think we’re likely to find something like that?” Jenna asked dryly.
“There’s one right there,” he said, pointing.
Jenna didn’t believe him, but then he showed her the black crack that indicated that the room was not only open but also empty.
They went inside, locked the door, and turned on the lights.
The room was bathed in a soft pink glow. It was decorated nicely and it was honestly more Jenna’s idea of a futuristic sci-fi fantasy than anything that had happened to her in outer space thus far. Why did she dream of red sofas that looked like jelly beans? There was a screen and behind it, a bed with a soft comforter.
Jenna scoured the dresser and found all the drawers were empty, as was the closet. “Maybe no one is living here,” she concluded sadly.
“Do you want my clothes? They’re dry,” Sardius offered with a coy smile.
“Keep your clothes on. Is there anything else we could use in this room before we move on?”
“Maybe,” Sardius said, taking something like a remote control in his hand and, pointing it at a screen on the wall, began pressing buttons. “I want to find out where we are and how to get out of this building. I’m loath to leave without your earpiece, but getting you out safely is more important than the earpiece. Without a doubt, Ixy can tell whoever has the earpiece to go screw themselves on repeat until they’re tired of talking to her. Regardless, Ivy and Conrad are probably working on our rescue as we speak. Whoever kidnapped us hasn’t had us that long.”
“It’s no ‘whoever’. It’s Fallcet,” Jenna said dully.
Sardius rolled his eyes. “Excuse me while I vomit. There are weenies and then there are weenies.”
“Are you saying he’s a weenie?”
“I’m saying I stood behind you while he tried to poach you. It was gross and it was the most pathetic attempt at seduction I’ve ever seen in my life and believe me, I’ve seen some doozies. So, the wanker has already had a conversation with you since you got here?”
Jenna nodded. “Their plan hasn’t changed. They still want my crowns so they can crown whoever and take control. I had one crown in my room so now Fallcet has it.”
Sardius was briefed on the whereabouts of the other crowns when he was Ryatt, her Chief of Security, so he knew the stash was inaccessible. “So, he’s working for the AAMC without any masquerade?”
“He says he’s here to negotiate my release.”
“Is that what he says?” Sardius said, having been stopped in his hacking effort by a password screen. He tried a few things, taking a little of his irritation out on the buttons.
Jenna sat on the red jelly bean sofa and let the wetness of her clothes sink into the fabric. The truth was, she didn’t know what to say to him. She just wanted to look at him, see him work, and process the change in his identity.
Abruptly, he banged the remote against the floor. It came apart in pieces. He dropped to his knees and pulled something from the sole of his boot to pry the case open even further. He cursed softly. “I bet they’ve already chosen someone from among their ranks and crowned him. You know that, don’t you?”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“I didn’t know you cared that much about Adamis politics,” she said, having long since reconciled herself to the idea that an AAMC man would be crowned. She wouldn’t like him, but she would have to put up with someone because if she refused to crown even one of them, she was going to have an even bigger problem on her hands than one AAMC diplomat.
“I don’t,” Sardius said sourly. “What I don’t like here is them taking control from you. Those guys just can’t stand being told how their war is going to unfold by a beautiful woman. Beautiful women belong in their beds, on their arms, on their payrolls, at the foot of their massage beds, and sweeping up the ashes they flick on the floors. They don’t belong in the most pivotal position in the universe. They hate you, but the lack of aggression here shows that they still want something more than the crowns from you. That’s what they’re saying, but there’s more to it. They don’t want to simply get rid of you because you’re too interesting.”
Jenna looked at him wide-eyed. “They have that many feelings toward me?”
“Grow up,” Sardius fumed. “They have those feelings and more. I keep telling you that you’re too busy to know what everyone is saying about you. There’s too much for you to even absorb. I haven’t tried to hide it from you because there’s no need. You’re too good a woman. You keep your eyes focused on your job, not the chemicals flowing through the heads and dicks of men billions of miles from you. But now they’re on our doorstep making a mess. Even so, we’re on Octavia Prime, and we still have the home advantage.”
“Sardius,” Jenna said softly. “You jumped into this with me on purpose… more than once.”
His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “I know.”
“Are you in love with me? You’ve never said such a thing, not when you were still only in my ear and not when you appeared in the flesh.”
Something in his throat tightened and he visibly swallowed to loosen it. “Jenna, I can’t ask you for anything. I… have no right… I… am a bigger louse than I look. You don’t know me. I haven’t shared myself with you. There’s a lot more to me than what you’ve seen.”
“But you want to protect me?” she asked stubbornly.
He swallowed again and looked away. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“Then you have done all that you’ve done for me out of the goodness of your heart? There’s nothing in it for you? There’s nothing you want from me aside from your paycheck?” She got up off the couch and stepped closer to him.
He kept his chin pointed away from her. “I admire you,” he said grudgingly.
His ear was closer to her and she directed her whisper into his ear. “What if I told you that I want more from you?”
His head jolted up and a dangerous glint flicked across his eyes. “I’m here because I want to be here. You can’t order me around like I’m your slave.”
Jenna shrugged and turned away. She wasn’t having a romantic tug-o-war with him. “If you’re not interested, then you’re not interested. You can’t blame a girl for trying. I just didn’t think all that stuff mattered. If you were a terrorist, a pirate, a convict… You know all the stuff you did that they imprisoned you over. I just thought that old stuff was irrelevant if we kept things between ourselves.”
She had taken two steps away from him when his hand snapped out and he grabbed her elbow. “Gah! Where in the world can we keep things just between ourselves? In your palace, we’re always recorded. There are cameras and audio recording devices everywhere. Where are we going to have some privacy?”
“Here,” she answered simply.
He dropped everything in his hands and let the fallen pieces sit like sprinkled confetti. He pulled her toward him. The room they were in was bare as a cardboard box. It was a warehouse. There were no cameras and no audio equipment. There wasn’t even a sprinkler system over their heads.
He kissed her.
“Don’t fall in love with me,” he whispered between kisses.
“Shut up, Sardius. I’m a diplomat. I get to fall in love with everyone.” She pulled him toward her and brought him back into the kiss.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said, as she kissed the side of his face.
“Two more minutes,” she negotiated.
So, he gave up fighting her and kissed her with all his heart for two minutes.
Then she pulled off him, took a step back, turned her back on him, and said roughly. “Hack that thing already.”
Sardius panted a few times before smacking his lips and saying, “There isn’t any point in hacking that screen. I’ve figured it out. We’re at the Adamis Shipyard in Lemaid Harbor. I should have realized that before, but that’s really the only place they could have taken us that would get us out of sight fast enough for them to have kidnapped us in the first place without the Orbital Security Team having caught them. If we’re there then, all we have to do is find an ocean entrance and drop down. We’ll be saved very quickly once you hit the water. News will travel faster in the ocean than if we set off a flare.” He selected his tool from the wreckage of the remote control and inserted it back into his boot.
“You thought of all that while we were kissing?” she questioned.
He didn’t answer her directly and instead said flatly, “We should go.”
Jenna hesitated, remembering the crown and her earpiece. “And they already crowned someone?” Jenna asked, thinking it over for a second time and thinking that it was a larger catastrophe than she originally thought.
“Undoubtedly,” he said as he got to his feet. He put out his hand. “Don’t think about it. We have to get you out of here.”
He took a moment to reassure her with his eyes, with his voice, and with a light touch on her cheek.
She smiled at him. “I’m glad you dived into the pod with me.”
Sardius’ face changed—went unreadable. He took a step closer to her. His lips parted on words she desperately wanted to hear.
“What are you two doing in my bedroom?”
Jenna and Sardius turned to see Fallcet standing in the doorway with a suitcase trailing behind him. The suitcase was the first most obvious thing about his appearance, but it shouldn’t have been. The first thing they should have noticed should have been the curved black crown on his head.