Chapter Twenty Six

Enemy Glue

“Now, Misha,” Jenna said, standing on the dock of the Sand Palace. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I know you thought Phane was super dreamy when you saw that picture of him before he got his surgeries, but he’s going to look completely different after what Brazel did to him. Try to keep your expectations low.”

“Come on. A little muscle isn’t going to change anything. It was love at first sight. How could something that happens so quickly be undone in only a moment? That makes no sense.”

Jenna stared at her and wondered if Misha was listening to what she was saying. For something to be done in a moment and then undone in another moment made perfect sense to Jenna. Do. Undo. Do. Undo. It was the things that had been stewing for decades that were hard to undo.

“Okay,” Jenna said patiently. “Just understand that whether you like him or not after he gets off the pod, you still volunteered to be one of his nurses while he recovers. Even if the sight of him makes you want to throw away your life with me, you can’t make a move on him for the full six weeks you volunteered to care for him. Understand?”

Misha nodded enthusiastically.

“You shouldn’t mix romance with nursing,” the registered nurse on the dock pointed out in a nasal drawl. Her name was Antonetta and she didn’t cut the romantic figure the name suggested. Instead, she came very highly recommended from Brazel’s hospital and was only on loan for the first two weeks of the six because of her exceptionally high qualifications. She was so muscular that she eliminated the need for them to have an extra nurse on staff.

Celestina stood next to her and she looked half the size of the registered nurse. Misha was more like a quarter of the powerhouse of a woman.

Jenna saw Antonetta as someone she wanted to have on call for a variety of reasons and went over to talk nicely with her before Phane’s pod landed.

“Even though the cameras will get first whack at him before we have a chance to pretty him up,” Celestina was saying to the huddle of women gathered on the dock. “The rest of us need to smile and be welcoming. Misha, please tell me your makeup bag has more inside it than a single chapstick. It looks pitifully small.”

Misha clicked it open and revealed four levels of cosmetics.

“Master of lightning,” Antonetta cursed when she saw it. “At least your patients will always look well.”

Misha smiled like the creepy little yarn doll she resembled, and Antonetta held her ground heroically, although the corners of her mouth fell.

However, Jenna put a hand to her cheek contemplatively. Didn’t Misha come from a morgue? That was right! Her last job was to make dead people look well.

Jenna smothered a laugh and looked upward.

Phane’s pod arrived.

The door opened.

Nothing happened at first.

Celestina’s drones zipped around even though Phane’s crowning wasn’t big enough news for the drones to be projecting a live feed. Celestina was just going to collect the footage and make a news package from it. When they saw inside the pod, it was obvious that they needed to make a new plan.

Phane lay limply across the seats. There was blood spilling from his temple and from his nose. The two spots were connected by a black line.

Antonetta stepped forward and started working on him as competently as any doctor. “He’s been electrocuted and shot,” she stated as she covered the area to get to him.

“Is he alive?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah. It looks like a part of the pod malfunctioned. The panel popped open and the charge was delivered.” She picked him up like a broken doll and carried him out. “Better forget about the coronation today. We may even need to ship him back to the hospital.”

Misha ran in front of Antonetta to open the doors and give orders to the staff.

Jenna and Celestina hung back on the deck. “Ixy, get Crimp over to have a look at this pod. ASAP.” In a quieter voice, she asked Celestina, “Did you turn off all your drones?”

“Do I look like I’m twelve to you?” Celestina hissed back with an edge to her voice. “If we have a scandal, another attack on a diplomat, we need to have as much proof of what is happening to us as possible. This was meant to look like an accident. From now on, Antonetta gets two drones accompanying her at all times. What do you want to do about the crowning?”

“We’ll have to stall it until he’s stable.”

“You want to do it anyway?” Celestina pressed. “Those assassins might be thinking that you’ll run out of diplomats before they run out of ‘accidental’ accidents.”

“Feeling vulnerable?” Jenna jabbed.

“Me? No. They’ll save you and me for last. We’ll have a lot of warning before that.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Why will we be last?” Jenna questioned, thinking that she would be first on the chopping block while Celestina was last.

“Because we have the best contacts. We can group Scion with that as well. They don’t want Phane to have a voice in our negotiations, that’s for sure.”

“It makes me want him more,” Jenna said savagely.

Celestina smiled. “You sure do know how to pick them.”

Jenna wasn’t sure if she did have the best contacts. So far in their partnership, Favel had been great for money and poor at defense.

If she really wanted a good contact for defense, Sardius had to come back, or she had to find someone else to fill that role.

***

Jenna sat on the edge of an armchair in Phane’s room. He was asleep. He’d been asleep since they’d retrieved him from the pod. It was during a security crisis like this that she wanted to talk to Sardius most.

She tried to reason out what she should do about Phane and his ‘accident’. She worried that it didn’t matter what she did. If she crowned him, it would offer him no protection. Actually, she didn’t have as much protection to offer him as she hoped.

She needed to talk to Favel. She knew the Octavians were trying to protect them. That was what the security team in orbit was trying to do. Regardless, Phane’s pod had been hacked and the hardware inside had been turned into a weapon. That seemed like something the team in orbit should have been able to prevent. The only thing that made sense to her was that there was still someone on that team who was intentionally letting things slide. Sardius had not caught who was responsible for the last security breach (the one where she was kidnapped), and even though he had replaced the whole team, there was already a new leak. Perhaps, Jenna needed to put out that flame before they did another thing.

Pushing her hair out of her face, she decided to forgo talking to Favel and go straight to Fallcet. She bet he knew what was happening. He had been involved in her kidnapping. Undoubtedly, he knew who was the leak in the orbital team. It was dangerous to approach him and demand answers, but what other lead did she have?

Jenna rushed straight to the Dahlia Palace, which was in a state of transition. She hadn’t quite finished moving out and Fallcet was in the process of moving in.

Once inside, she found him in her old bedroom. He wasn’t moving her things or his. He was just walking around, touching things. When she entered the room, he directed a pleasant gaze toward her. “I hear you did a lot of the repairs in here yourself,” he said, examining the paint job. “Nice work.”

“How did your people bypass our orbital security when you kidnapped me?” Jenna asked without preface.

“I wondered when you were going to ask me,” he said simply.

“I wasn’t going to ask you, but things are getting tight. Did you know that someone was going to attack Phane today?”

He half nodded and half shook his head. It looked like he was drawing a circle with his chin. “I didn’t know it would be today, but I knew it would be sometime soon.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she demanded.

“It’s your own fault for trying to recruit someone so unsuitable. You need to see that the AAMC is serious. I tried to tell you. I tried to tell you many times.”

“And you failed to tell me that I still hadn’t brought you over to a place of neutrality,” she observed dryly.

“Of course, you haven’t. You’re not sleeping with me. How could you have brought me over to your side without giving me what I want most? You think I want to be an Octavian diplomat? I like diplomacy. It’s much less messy than the warfare, but I want you. I already said so and I don’t care what else you have going on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that I didn’t mind that you were screwing Ryatt, or Sardius, or whatever his name was. It wouldn’t have bothered me, as long as you were doing whatever you were doing with him with me too. You still can… if he comes back.”

Jenna felt sick, but she refrained from saying anything for a moment. She just stood there. The first thought that sprang to her mind was that Fallcet was the one who told Don Leo where Sardius was. He did his research on the man he thought was her lover, found out who he was, who wanted him dead and just got rid of him.

That was the moment Jenna’s true waspishness took form. She pulled her hand back to strike him but stopped short. Her hand fell as she stared at Fallcet. He had acted like a prick and he deserved a sharp little slap, but what Jenna saw was far better than if she had slapped him.

It was way better.

She gave Fallcet a look that stopped him in his tracks. “Do you ever get woozy when you see a boneman with his shirt off?”

Fallcet gave her a funny look.

Ixy started screaming. “It’s go time! Jenna just said the command that gives me permission to fire a tranquilizer dart at Fallcet! Where are the controls?”

While Ixy fumbled around, Fallcet took a step toward Jenna. “What are you implying? I’m not gay.”

Jenna cocked her head to the side and looked at the place on the side of Fallcet’s head where his crown had come loose. In all the years Jenna had worn her crown, it had never slipped. Even when the hipposyphis pulled her head as hard as it could with its sucker, her crown had hung on. Fallcet’s was slipping. Could he feel it?

“Well, have you ever seen a boneman with his shirt off? How do you know you don’t get woozy if you’ve never seen it?” Jenna asked playfully, stalling for time.

Fallcet gave her a look like she was one hundred percent crazy and then fell on the floor.

Ixy had hit him in the neck with a dart.

“Bull’s eye!” she screamed through Jenna’s earpiece. “I got him! One shot in a million. Am I right?” It sounded like she was turning on her swivel chair in celebration before she stopped her celebration and asked, “Why did you want me to shoot him?”

“Hang on a second,” Jenna said, prodding him with her bare foot. “Any chance he’s still awake?”

“Want me to shoot him again?” Ixy offered.

Jenna got braver and put her foot on his face, her toes making an imprint on his cheek. He didn’t move as she gooshed it around a bit. “No. I think he’s gone. He only needs to stay unconscious for a minute anyway.” Jenna reached down and pulled the crown off his head.

Normally, when Jenna crowned a diplomat, there was nothing to be seen when she pulled the adhesive loose. There was just a lot of glue on the underside of the crown. What had happened with Fallcet was that the glue had stayed on his head and the crown had come off. When Jenna looked at the underside, she saw something that was a cross between electrical circuits, but also blood vessels.

Involuntarily, she touched the surface of her own crown. Was something like that inside her crown as well, or was what Fallcet was wearing a fake? Had he always been wearing a fake? Jenna didn’t know.

She stormed out of the Dahlia Palace. “Ixy, can you lock that palace down so he can’t leave?”

“Yeah. I’ll do that now. Oooh, Jenna! You’ve hit the honey pot. Now you can get rid of Fallcet!” she sang over the earpiece.

Jenna was in a rage. She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. She was so angry at herself that she could have screamed. She would have screamed if it wouldn’t raise a million concerned octopi from the ocean to comfort her.

“Get Favel to meet me at the Crescent Bell Palace. I need to speak to him right now!” she hissed so angrily she was spitting everywhere.