Chapter Eighteen

Octavian Love

The next morning, Jenna woke up to the news that Phane had arrived at the space station and Brazel would start on the plan for his surgeries as soon as she was adequately rested after working on Sardius the night before.

Jenna’s head swam from the tranquilizer Excelyn had shot her up with the night before. “Can I speak to Brazel?” Jenna asked Ixy as Vash shoved a nutritional drink under her nose. “I want to know how the surgeries on Sardius went.”

“You’ll have to wait,” Ixy replied shortly. “Temptic has been keeping me up to date on her movements. She was in surgery with Sardius until late last night after a very long day for her. She came out and went straight to sleep. She’s not up yet.”

Jenna put a concerned hand to her mouth. “What kind of surgery did she do? He said something about body augmentation, but I wasn’t thinking straight enough to listen.”

Ixy chuckled. “It’s not at all surprising that Sardius has been up to that kind of BS. He’d be in a huge battle, disappear for a few weeks, everyone would think he was dead, and then he’d reappear without a scratch on him.”

“That doesn’t explain what Brazel did to him when she sliced him open,” Jenna reminded Ixy.

“Okay, okay, okay. I’ve been watching, and I’d love to tell you, except Sardius pulled a neat little hacking trick when he had his conversation with Brazel. Meaning, he messed with the audio equipment as soon as she was alone in the room with him. I can show you the video from the space station if you’re interested. The cameras in the surgery theater are also less than revealing.”

Jenna pinched her nose bridge. She could have screamed. If he could manage to fandangle a private conversation with Brazel, why hadn’t he pulled the same magic tricks with her so they could spend a few minutes alone?

The answer was as clear as a bell.

He didn’t want to talk to Jenna alone. He didn’t want to tell her his problems. He didn’t want to find that moment where they could just be in love as themselves… or even just be honest with each other. He had been trying to shut her out.

Jenna swallowed.

She stuffed those thoughts down the garbage compactor of her mind. She wasn’t going to think about it. The pain she felt was still raw in her chest as she registered that she’d lost him, not once, but twice.

She circled her mind back to the last thing Ixy said and replied, “That’s okay. Knowing Sardius, there wouldn’t be anything useful in the video recordings. Where is he right now?”

“He’s passed out in the recovery wing of the space station,” Ixy answered primly.

“Will I be able to talk to him?”

“Temptic arranged it so that he won’t be put to sleep when he gets in the pod for the transport to Don Leo’s ship. He’ll be awake and he’ll be able to talk to you. I’ve blocked off that time in your schedule. For now, do you have anything you need to get done before you have the twelve-hour pod trip with Sardius?”

“Twelve hours?” The emotion in Jenna’s voice could not be interpreted.

The truth was that she didn’t know how she felt about spending twelve hours on the phone with him. On one hand, every moment she could spend with Sardius was precious no matter how it was spent. On the other hand, it was going to be excruciating thinking about where he was going and what he was about to do.

“I don’t think he should be kept awake for all that time,” Jenna said, thinking that she needed to give him the biggest boost she could. “He needs to prepare for his encounter on the ship. He probably needs to rest more after his surgery. Should he sleep for the time he’s riding on the pod?”

“We’ll see what he says when he wakes up,” Ixy said. “For now, do you want to talk to Phane?”

“Not yet. I’m still in my underwear. I’ll talk to him when I’m dressed. If you would be so kind, could you please invite Celestina over to help me with my first talk with him? I’m not at my best and I don’t know if I can do this by myself today.”

Ixy said she would get Celestina and signed off.

Jenna moved to get out of bed, but her whole body was having trouble listening to what her brain was telling it. She thought back to when she had first woken up in the hospital on Octavia Three after Armen had kidnapped her. She hadn’t been as shaky then. During that, the worst thing she did was cower in the closet for a few minutes. She had been strong. Nothing that happened then mattered much anymore. In retrospect, what happened with Armen had been nothing.

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Absolutely nothing.

Now, as each one of her toes was having a hard time listening to her brain’s commands, it all came clear.

Everything she had ever hoped for had come true in Sardius. He had been everything. He had become the only man she had ever loved. Even if he hadn’t always been honest with her, even if he had a well-deserved terrible reputation, and even if she’d been a fool for him. It was better to be a fool for him than anybody else.

She took a sip of her drink and almost gagged on it.

“Ixy?”

“Yup.”

“Find out what Vash can cook for me in the kitchen. For the moment, I don’t care if I gain a hundred pounds, lose all my muscle definition, or look like I’ve swallowed a baby whale. I need food.”

Ixy was gone and back in a flash. “Vash says he’s got nothing he can prepare quickly.” She paused. “Ivy says Excelyn and Philip are having breakfast and it’s basically a rice-filled omelet. Shall I ask them to make you one?”

The idea of eating anything Excelyn was eating made Jenna’s insides turn over and throw up on themselves.

“No. That’s okay. I’ll just go have a shower now and think about food later.”

“Is this because of the liplo fruit thing? What she’s eating today is perfectly normal. Ivy says no one ever throws up after eating what they’re having. Are you sure you don’t want–”

“I’m sure,” Jenna said, forcing herself to her feet.

“Shall I still ask Vash what he has to offer?”

“Nope. I’ll see if I feel like eating anything after I’ve showered. I still have so much glitter caked in my hair, it’ll take an hour to wash it all out.”

A few minutes later, Jenna stood in the shower. She’d lost the ability to stand on her own, so she was leaning against the shower wall. It was a good five minutes before she remembered that she ought to be washing the glitter out of her hair. Even with intense scrubbing, it took her four rinse and repeat cycles to get her hair to feel normal.

When she got out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and was about to call for Misha to come style her, when she heard Vash moving around in the bedroom. She opened the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He looked bashful. “I was bringing you something to eat. I know you said you’d changed your mind about eating after all, but I managed to find something for you.”

“He’s not telling you the whole truth,” Ixy said in Jenna’s ear. “The Octavians are miserable outside the front docks. They are waiting for you to give them the story about what happened that you wept like the damned last night, but until they know… they’ve been bringing offerings to try to cheer you up. Vash has been taking them. There isn’t room for any more fish in your aquariums. They’re all filled to the brim with underwater flowers. Didn’t you notice them when you woke up?”

Jenna looked around her room and finally took notice of the tanks. They were full of flowers, coral, and other beauties of the deep sea.

Jenna strolled around the room, looking at them. She tried to let the feelings of the Octavians who brought them sink into her sick heart.

Until Favel popped out of the water of one of the tanks and accidentally splashed her.

She screamed.

“You jump-scare too easily, Jenna,” he commented, as he held onto the lip of the aquarium with suction cups.

Jenna held onto Vash’s forearms as she tried to steady her breathing. “What are you doing in there?”

“I couldn’t leave you last night after I heard what happened. You have to know that Sardius is the bravest man in the universe. I’d like to tell my people what happened, so they can all understand how great your pain is… and how your pain is for them.”

“How can we do that, without exposing the truth about PAs? That is not our secret to tell.” Jenna tilted her head toward Vash. She was certain he didn’t know exactly how it worked and he lived in her household.

Favel drooped until he slid back into the water.

Jenna wanted to go to him, but Ixy interrupted, “Lou Denver is on the line. You didn’t call him back yesterday and he’s getting testy.”

“I haven’t gotten dressed yet!” Jenna howled. “Tell him he’ll have to wait. And I’m not meeting him in here. All these flowers will make him think…” Jenna stormed out of her bedroom with the idea of going to find Misha herself when she saw that her bedroom was not the only part of her palace that had been touched by Octavian love.

The halls, the entryways, the sitting rooms, the dining room, the deck, the entire place was festooned with flowers, cards, gelatin poofs, ribbon, and anything else someone would think to deliver to a person who wasn’t feeling well.

Jenna stopped and stared.

Misha came up from behind the leaves of a tree that had not been there previously, but now its branches took up quite a lot of real estate on the floor and had a big white bow around its trunk. The stylist was pulling sweaty tendrils of yarn off her face. “There have been so many clothing deliveries, I haven’t taken stock of all of it yet.” She carried a makeup bag in her hand. “I’m sorry. There isn’t enough room for me to do your hair and makeup in my studio. Is there room in your bathroom?”

“I don’t understand,” Jenna mumbled, ignoring Misha’s question and looking at everything that surrounded her. “This is all from the Octavians?”

“Yes,” Vash said, coming up behind her. “They started coming in about an hour after you went to bed last night. I’ve been up all night receiving their gifts. This isn’t even all of it. There is a ton of stuff that we had to leave outside.”

Jenna stared in wonder. “How am I going to reply to all this stuff? How can I say thank you? Do they have labels on them saying who they are from?”

“I didn’t even see all the different Octavians who dropped each of them off. Quite a lot of what you’re seeing was shoved up the underwater entrances. I closed the doors when their gifts became too many. Then they started leaving them on the deck and on the gangway. Then they started leaving them at the palaces beside yours, so there are quite a few things that were left at Celestina’s and Excelyn’s,” Vash explained.

Jenna was so overwhelmed that she didn’t know where to turn.

Vash put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about this right now. Go with Misha to your bedroom and let her put something under your eyes. You look puffy.”

Jenna saw at once that he was right. That was probably why no one told her anything about the gifts. She couldn’t focus on them now. She had to get prettied up and talk to Admiral Denver and then talk to Phane.