Chapter Five

Hang All the Moons

Jenna stood next to Sardius. He was grumbling with his teeth clenched and his annoyance visible.

“Try to keep the disgust off your face,” Jenna said with a smile as they watched as Celestina interviewed the newly crowned Fallcet on the deck of the Sun Palace.

She nudged him.

“I should be pleased,” he conceded. “He’s been very forthcoming with information. Aside from where the leak in the orbital team came from, everything he’s said has been verified and the urgency to finish crowning eight diplomats is very real. The talks with him feel very different from when he was first here. Don’t get me wrong though. If anything, I hate him more.”

“Why? What’s different?” Jenna wondered.

Sardius’ expression went to a blank deadpan as he said, “Because he’s completely in love with you. I knew he was feeling a little lovelorn before, but it’s much worse now. He thinks you hung the moon, and not just one moon—all the moons. Now every time he looks at you, he looks at you like the world revolves only because you’re on it. It’s nauseating. It’s also disgusting because he’s found the way to your heart. You told him yourself that your core is your duty. Now, when he talks to you, he stretches the limits of what he should tell you in every conversation. He wants to impress you with his resourcefulness. Is it working, Madam Diplomat?”

Jenna shrugged. “I don’t think I did anything, in particular, to make him fall in love with me. The only thing that makes sense is that he said he fell in love with all the women the algorithm matched him up with. He told me as much before. Doubtless, it will soon pass.”

Sardius watched unblinkingly as Fallcet snuck a quick adoring glance at Jenna. “I don’t know,” the boneman huffed.

“Look, I spent five days in conference with him. You were present for every conversation I had with him.”

Sardius rubbed his eyes. “Those were the worst five days of my life.”

Jenna shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.” She didn’t think anything of Fallcet. He was finally speaking her language, but that didn’t make them besties.

Jenna and Sardius stood there in silence for a few minutes, watching the interview and Celestina’s winning smiles.

Finally, Jenna said quietly. “I think I can manage everything here. If Fallcet can muzzle the AAMC on my behalf, I shouldn’t have any further security breaches. You should go.”

Their eyes met.

He blinked his gray/brown eyes at her and dismissed her idea. “That’s a terrible plan, Jenna. We let the wolf into the hen house. He’s got his own pen, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. Sure, you can handle him, but he’s not alone, even if he appears so. He’s got a crowd of very impressive backers including his father and the rest of his militaristic family. What good is it going to do to leave you to gather power just to return to find that you’ve been ravaged in the meantime? I can’t leave.”

Jenna exhaled a hot breath. She wanted to ask him a million questions. If he planned to change his identity, then why didn’t he have more cosmetic surgery done? She wouldn’t have known any different when she met him. As it was, she couldn’t ask anything. She slid her hand into his and laced their fingers. With her thumb, she touched the protruding bones on his knuckles. He never wore the padded hand covers now that Fallcet was there all the time.

“I’ll let you have your way without complaint if you tell me you love me,” she whispered, knowing full well that Ixy could hear her and was listening intently.

Without looking at her, he whispered in her ear. “I’m pleased you’re trying to break me. I want you to break me. But,” he said, his tone turning light, “you won’t be able to.”

“We’ll see,” she said, letting go of his hand and clapping at the end of Celestina’s recording.

When she was finished on the stage, Celestina came over and hooked Jenna by the arm. “I’m taking you to see Excelyn and Philip. You missed their wedding.”

“I was stuck in the conference room,” Jenna said in her defense.

“Yeah, that’s what I heard. Don’t worry. Josh edited footage of you to make it look like you were there. You have to debrief us. I filmed Fallcet’s interview like you said and explained away why he didn’t have his crown put on in front of a universe-wide audience, so you could get another crown from the fish, but something is fishier than the way you’re getting the sixth crown. Spill your guts, Jenna.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

They walked together to the Stone Palace, with Sardius trailing behind them to meet Excelyn and Philip in the courtyard.

“We were supposed to be taking pictures meant to promote your engagement to Favel,” Celestina continued, talking to Jenna. “But you disappeared. You were lucky we had something else to give the audience.”

Jenna turned to the happy couple. “Thank you, both of you, for getting married immediately on public TV to hide the fact that I was dealing with the aftermath of having been kidnapped for the second time in my life. To be honest, I still haven’t gotten over the first time.”

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They smiled.

“It was horrible,” Excelyn stated with a hollow look in her eyes. “All those cameras pointed at us. All those wedding planners Celestina brought in. How we had to film the same scenes over and over again so Josh could get the right angles. If I was in a marching band, there would have been less standing. Yet, even though it was exhausting, it was still so much better than our first wedding.”

“It was,” Philip agreed with a tense eyebrow twitch.

“That’s a relief,” Jenna said with a smile. “Congratulations Excelyn. And Phillip,” she said, turning her attention to him. “I promise I’ll insult you later, but right now, I have so much to tell you both.”

Celestina smiled the compulsory smile at Jenna before dropping it to say, “Now sit your butt down, Jenna. Why are we suddenly accepting the mushroom eater into our ranks?”

Jenna couldn’t bear to tell them the whole truth, that the AAMC would kill them (aside from Celestina) if they didn’t get the representation they wanted. Jenna was fine to explain the impending threat of war. That felt like reason enough. It was just that Fallcet had proven to her when he kidnapped her that the AAMC could have killed her if they’d wanted to. They also could have easily killed Excelyn and Philip that night if they’d been determined. The diplomats were not safe on Octavia Prime and not even Sardius could protect them all by himself. They could all work better if they didn’t know.

Jenna would have to work harder than ever to secure everyone’s safety.

Sardius stood behind Jenna’s deck chair and clasped his hands behind his back. The action was figurative and literal.

“To start with,” Jenna began, “Fallcet has promised to never eat another mushroom as long as he lives. Actually, he’s promised to stop eating altogether.”

“We wouldn’t want him to get pink streaks in his hair,” Philip said, sending his wife a teasing smile.

“You’re going to have to forget immediately that Fallcet kidnapped me, that he ate a mushroom, that he acted like an ass, and that he crowned himself on his own. He did it as an act of desperation because he doesn’t want a war to break out and we’re quite a bit closer to the edge of one than I realized. There are people in the AAMC as well as in the Adamis Alliance Government who are perfectly happy to let Adamis and Octavian relations fall to crap. Fallcet kidnapped me partially to speed the crowning of new diplomats. He wanted me to crown four diplomats of his choosing in order to get the right people talking to the Octavians.”

“That sounds terrible,” Excelyn grumbled.

“Oh, and it is,” Jenna agreed.

“There are only three diplomatic positions open,” Celestina commented. “Which one of us was supposed to bow out? Wait, we can’t bow out, can we?”

“It’s true. We can’t,” Jenna admitted. “Once we’re crowned, we’re crowned for life, but there are more crowns than just three. I have over twenty. Even before this happened, I have an idea swirling around in my head. What if… I gave up my seat?”

“Jenna, no,” Celestina disagreed instantly.

“Hear me out, please. I wouldn’t die or give up my crown. The reason this program got down to one Adamis diplomat is because people want this program to fail. That’s why there were so many diplomats who were killed in accidents. But we don’t have to let things grind to a halt if we stand together. To do that, we need to enlist many Adamis to stand up for this alliance. We need to crown more than eight diplomats. We need twenty, maybe thirty. We need enough that can make treaties that can be passed to the Octavians right away. They haven’t been in talks in years because they can’t get eight people in the chairs. We need people powerful enough that no one wants to assassinate them. We need backups for the diplomats living in the palaces and backups for the backups. I have to tell you all that I feel within myself that my role here was never to take a seat myself, but only to make sure that the seats stay full.”

Excelyn and Philip reached for each other’s hands and Celestina wrung hers together.

“You’re saying you’re going to do what Fallcet wants and you are essentially giving him your seat?”

“I’m not giving him my seat, but I have to give someone my seat if I’m going to continue recruitment.”

“I hate this, Jenna,” Celestina said.

“I’m sorry, girls, but I don’t know what else to do to make sure this program keeps going or how to give the AAMC what they want without giving them what they want.”

“Wait, are you including me with the girls?” Philip asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” Jenna replied instantly. “Girls have been included with the word guys for ages. Suck it up.”

He nodded while Excelyn laughed.

“So, you won’t be gone?” Celestina asked nervously.

“Not for ages. There’s so much work to do and since Phillip is living with Excelyn in the Stone Palace, there is an extra Palace for me even after I have eight diplomats crowned. In any case,” Jenna said, returning the meeting to the important part of the conversation. “I will be around. If I have to leave, I’ll return to Octavia Prime every single time I crown a new diplomat for the ceremony and to retrieve a new crown.”

“That won’t make good TV after a while,” Celestina commented.

“No. It won’t,” Jenna agreed. “But we’ll have to do it. If you’d like, we can shorten the interview and just show clips of the crowning. It doesn’t matter to me as long as it’s enough to get my fish network to fork over another crown.”

“Fine. As long as you know I won’t be able to peddle that to audiences forever. As long as we’re talking about good TV, are you still going to have engagement pictures taken with Favel? I mean, is your engagement to him still important if you’re not going to come to the treaty table?”

“Obviously, I need to speak to him and find out what he thinks and feels about all these changes. I’ve invited him to visit me tonight.”

Once she’d said everything she’d planned to say, Jenna let silence move into their meeting. Excelyn and Philip held hands and looked at her sadly. Celestina twisted her hair around her finger like she couldn’t stand to stop moving or meet Jenna’s eyes.

“I know why you’re doing this,” Celestina said softly. “It’s to protect all of us by strengthening the program. It’s a very worthy thing you’re doing. Are you going to have enough money? I understood that you left Earth with nothing except the clothes on your back.”

“I have money,” Jenna admitted.

Celestina pulled her finger out from inside her curl and stared at Jenna. “What do you plan to do once all the crowns have been given away and the program is secure? What then?”

“I’m not even thinking about it.”

“Will you come back here and take a seat?” she asked forcefully.

Jenna smiled. “If I learn anything about being a diplomat, maybe I will.”

Celestina did not look convinced or soothed, but she leaned back in her chair and said, “You’ve got to come back all the time and set things right if they go astray.”

“If you put it that way,” Jenna laughed. “I would be happy to return to kick some ass and hurl some insults. After all, I’ve been invited so kindly.”

Only after hearing that did Celestina quiet down.