Chapter Three

Lost More Than A Crown

“Smoothie is gone?” Jenna asked in alarm. “I thought they told me that everyone was unharmed.”

“Everyone was unharmed.” Sardius crossed his arms. “Let me explain. When the AAMC broke into your palace the first time and Sardius sent you to Favel’s mansion during the prison riot, they didn’t need to hack anything. The soldiers were already aboard the palaces, and Sardius could have chosen to shoot them with the guns on hand, but he did not, because things would look a lot better for you if he didn’t. He had already arranged the removal of everything important and then he simply instructed Smoothie to beat the tar out of the guys in the servants' wing. It went fine.”

“This time they weren’t already here though,” Jenna said, going through what she knew.

“Right. So, this time, the AAMC was more prepared to jump in with both feet. They secured a defector to help them from the orbital security team. The guns in your palace were offline because the rat opened a window in our online security. They hacked your system, took your guns offline, and severed Ixy’s connection to the Dahlia Palace. Are you following me?” he asked gravely.

Jenna nodded.

“Good. Then they had to eliminate Smoothie. Fallcet teased that he would do so when he ate that mushroom in front of us, which was gross, clumsy, and telling. They didn’t hurt her. It was completely unnecessary to do so. They merely brought another Shushfief in and had him talk to Smoothie. She couldn’t move at all. Smoothie was lonely for her planet and her people. She couldn’t hurt the other Shushfief and he canceled out every move she tried to make.” Sardius rubbed the back of his ear. “She felt terrible about not protecting your palace, packed her bags, and left before Favel picked us up from the warehouse.”

Jenna sighed. “She must have needed money badly to stay here if it has been that lonely for her.”

“Yeah, that’s the situation. In any case, she’s fine. Conrad managed to get her on a communication line and she’s still leaving. She’s been traveling ship to ship to get back to her home world.”

“Have you talked to her?” Jenna persisted.

“Yeah. I got off the commlink with her about an hour ago.”

“And you couldn’t convince her to come back with you?” Jenna asked sadly.

He gave his head a micro shake. “Once she told me the whole story, which she readily spilled, I did ask her to come back. I said you were safe and that no one was angry with her. I said that you could handle yourself with Fallcet and there was nothing she had to apologize for. Then she cried a lot and said she needed time to think. I told her to take all the time she needs.”

“Do you believe that or was that just something you told her?”

“What?”

Jenna elaborated, “That I could handle myself with Fallcet?”

Sardius wasn’t there when Fallcet interrogated her. He didn’t know what she’d done or how she’d acted, not even that she kept laughing in Fallcet’s face.

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Sardius tweaked his nose. “Yes. Of course, you can handle Fallcet. I don’t think there’s anyone you can’t handle. After all, you keep learning more and more about Sardius and nothing you learn about him seems to turn you off him. Personally, I find that unbelievable. Fallcet is a little fish and he’s easy for you to handle because he’s completely enamored with you.”

Jenna snorted. “No, he isn’t. A man like that could never love anyone but himself.”

“Maybe so,” Sardius agreed, “but you are so curiously blind to your own charm.”

“What charm?” Jenna asked languidly, parting her lips on the question mark.

He inched closer to her on the bed. “You are very sexy on the outside, don’t get me wrong, but if you weren’t as hard as nails on the inside, all that soft sexiness would fall very flat. Do you know what is the most valuable?”

Jenna shook her head. “Tell me.”

“What is unattainable. That is what is most valuable. According to the laws of supply and demand, something that is in low supply is more valuable. It’s valuable according to scarcity. According to that principle, the most valuable thing in the universe is a person. It’s always a person, not a mineral or a piece of technology. It’s a person. There will never be another person like that. They’re one in a trillion. You come off like that. Like you’re not easy to get and whoever does get you is the luckiest devil in the universe. Fallcet may have thousands of matches through the universal matching algorithm, and he may have thought that an offer to be a third husband was insulting, but he’s eating it right now. He’s wishing he said yes. If he said yes, he’d be here in your bed pleasuring himself with the most valuable woman in the universe instead of in a holding tank with an octopus beak stuck to his head.”

Jenna chuckled. “And yet…” She looked Sardius over with eyes and spoke of their situation. He was sitting on the bed with her and nothing remotely racy was happening.

He gathered her meaning and fiddled with his collar. Then he said something that meant more to Jenna than anything else anyone had ever said before. “No one can come to you until they have as much to give you as what you can give them.”

He had been thinking the same thing she had thought, that their relationship was off-balance because she had given more about herself to him than he had been able to give in return. When he said ‘no one’ he meant himself. In a perfect world, he would have said, “I can’t come to you until I can bring you all that I am wrapped in a bow.”

For now, he couldn’t.

“However,” Sardius continued. “I will tell you a story and put you to bed.”

“You’re going to tuck me into bed?” she exclaimed incredulously as he moved around the bed, getting her organized for sleep. He placed a glass of water next to her on the bed stand, pulled the blankets up for her, and pulled the bed curtains to shelter her from the lights that were left on all the time.

He got into bed next to her without any bravado and began his story. “Once upon a time, there was a little mushroom who lived at the queen’s palace as a cook. The days passed quietly and almost happily. However, tragedy struck and she felt such sorrow, she had to run across the stars until she could calm the sound of her heart. Back at the palace, the rock the little mushroom left behind looked around and wondered why they needed a cook. Their queen did not eat. She merely drank liquids, so the rock volunteered to make the queen’s drinks until the little mushroom felt well enough to return.”

Jenna laughed. “You’re turning your nightly report into fairy tales? And Vash really agreed to take over Smoothie’s kitchen duties indefinitely?”

Sardius nodded.

“I’m relieved. Did Smoothie leave a way for us to get in touch with her? I’d like to send her a note reiterating what you told her, so she can return if she wants to.”

“Yeah. I’ll hook you up.” He gave her a charming grin before admitting, “I’d like to make the rest of what I have to say a fairytale to make it less jarring, but I’m afraid I’ll make it sound more terrifying than it is if I do that. You see, Conrad and I found the breaches in the orbital security team’s code. I think we’ve patched it and I’ve sent a request to Temptic to have the whole floor crew switched out, but that still may not be enough to restore your peace of mind. Conrad and I are going to keep working on it… mostly him. He has a better workspace in the prison than I have here. I’m going to interview the staff we’re pulling to see if I can figure out who our rat is.”

“Yeah, I can see why you’d want to tell it to me straight instead of weaving it into some sort of sci-fi fairy tale. Who does that anyway?” Jenna joked with a playful flick of her wrist.

“Yeah, I don’t know why anyone would find that entertaining,” Sardius agreed.