Chapter Sixteen

Blood on Gold

Jenna was more like a normal girl when she got ready to see Sardius that night. Ever since she got Misha as her personal stylist, she had used her for makeup and hair solutions, but since the installation of the jewel in her crown, Misha could no longer touch her. It meant that Jenna was being treated like a sick person who was not going to make any public appearances, so she didn’t need a stylist. Misha stayed in her workshop and made arrangements to take a vacation. She was going to leave in a few days, but Jenna had Ixy call her and ask if there was something special she could wear to meet with Sardius.

Misha came down with a dress in sage green. It was exactly Jenna’s signature look. Tight top, voluminous skirt and a dangerous slit up the side.

“I’m guessing for this occasion, you need to look the most like yourself,” Misha said, hanging the dress up and stepping aside. She placed a few bottles and a roller on the dressing table. “Take this and spritz it over your hair and then roll your hair into this. Even if it can only be in the roller for ten minutes, your hair will look better than it would if you did nothing. Shall I choose some jewelry for you or do you want to do that yourself?”

“I wish you were doing my makeup,” Jenna said mournfully as she took the dress.

“You’re only meeting with Sardius,” Misha reminded her with an innocent expression. “If we have to put on the same show for him as we do for the press packets, you’ll get worn out fast. He has to think you’re amazing when you’re low-key. Just do this tiny routine and hope he’s impressed.”

They chatted for a minute about Misha’s holiday before Jenna remembered that she needed to get Vash to find the wedding certificate for the third husband. Misha slipped out while Jenna spoke to Ixy to order it.

By the time Vash arrived with the gold wedding certificate, Jenna was mostly finished getting ready. She just needed to take the roller out of her hair and fluff it.

Vash left the certificate on the table, keeping his distance from her. “Ixy says that if you want this, Sardius is going to marry you tonight with it. Is that true?” Vash asked, trying to keep the amusement off his face.

“That’s what he says he’s going to do,” Jenna confirmed, spraying herself with perfume.

“Does that mean he’s got it all figured out?” Vash asked, indicating her crown and the force field surrounding her.

“I don’t know. He says he’s got an idea of how to solve it, break it, whatever… but I don’t know. It seems like an impossible problem to me unless he can get a Hipposyphis to do the opposite of whatever he did when he put it on me.”

Vash shrugged. “I’ll be curious to see how it works out.”

“Stay close by,” Jenna instructed. “I may need you as well as our resident doctors if things go bad for Sardius.”

Vash nodded and disappeared into the back of the house.

When Ixy told her that Sardius’ pod had arrived, Jenna tugged the roller from her hair, fluffed it according to Misha’s instructions, picked up the wedding certificate, and went out to meet him.

She didn’t beat him to the front door. He strode in like a man with a purpose. He wore a uniform, though not one Jenna had seen him wear before. Oddly enough, his uniform was also green. It was a dark forest green, but also green.

He came toward her like he wasn’t going to stop when he reached her. She took a few steps backward to keep him out of the force field.

He stopped and turned his head to speak to a microphone on the wall. “Ixy, lock down the palace. Turn off your equipment and take a break. I need at least two hours.”

“You don’t want this recorded?”

“It’s imperative that it remain unrecorded. I can’t be filmed while I break Octavian technology,” he said levelly, pulling at his collar and undoing the top button. “This is serious business. You know it is.”

“Jenna,” Ixy said in a small voice. “Can I have your approval before I follow his orders, please?”

Jenna looked at Sardius across the way. She didn’t like how he was orchestrating their wedding. Jenna knew there wasn’t much to a wedding. Her wedding to Favel had been almost nothing. She knew it was the exchange of DNA and a promise to always love each other, but he was simply being too brisk about it.

It was also the look in his too blue eyes. They made him almost look like a stranger sometimes. But if she didn’t trust Sardius… There was no one left in the universe for her to trust.

“Yes, Ixy. You have my permission,” Jenna said, trying to put something in the tone of her voice that matched her groom.

“Lockdown in three, two, one… Complete. Goodnight.” The sound the palace communication system made when Ixy severed the connection was a little unnerving.

Jenna stood with their wedding certificate in her arms and felt a little cold.

When she looked up, the cold look on Sardius’ face had melted. “Put the certificate on the table.”

Jenna walked over to the table, set the wedding certificate down, but did not step away from it. “Should we say a few vows before we prick our fingers?”

“What kind of vows?” Sardius wondered, coming closer to her than she thought was safe.

“Till death do us part?” she said hesitantly. She did not want Sardius to be hurt, so she had lifted a foot to take a step back.

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“I’ll sign that.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Listen, Jenna. You know that signing that document is not a fair deal for me. Not only do I have to share you with possibly seven other men who have their own interests even if they don’t share your bed. I already have to share you with Favel who you’ve sworn eternal friendship to. He’s trying his best for you, but he’s not going to be able to give you what I can give you, even if we’re standing in a palace he created. So, sign it and give me what you can. I promise I’ll try not to act too displeased when I do not get everything I want.”

Jenna’s eyes got sad and wet hearing that. She didn’t move away from the certificate, but instead, she wound her finger around a small section of her hair and pulled it out at the roots.

“Whoa!” Sardius said, shocked. “You didn’t have to do that. I have a knife on me. We could have clipped a little off.”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “You can’t blame me for being tired of the continual game of tug-of-war with people leaving objects here and there for me to pick up. It hurt to pull out a whole lock of hair like that, but I don’t care. I’m impatient. I even had to scoop my engagement ring off the floor.”

“That’s a great idea,” Sardius said. “Take off your engagement ring and leave it on the table.”

“I don’t want to take it off, Sardius,” Jenna practically growled.

He scoffed and looked away. “Please do as I tell you. I’m not asking for it for my own amusement. I want to give you another ring, but I haven’t had time to prepare anything better. That one will have to do for now.”

“I suppose ring shopping is impossible in all the space stations right now,” Jenna said, rolling her hair into a loop and fitting it into the marriage certificate’s little glass chamber for just that purpose. Then she twisted and turned the pink diamond to remove it from her finger.

“I bought that one,” Sardius explained, “but I wasn’t going to buy your wedding ring. I was going to make it.”

She set the pink diamond on the table next to the certificate. “Really? What were you going to make it out of?”

“Literally the first piece of metal I found that wouldn’t react to your skin.”

“That’s pretty romantic,” she teased him.

“Damn straight, it is. Now, do not prick your finger before me. We haven’t even begun to get romantic.”

“That’s a relief,” she said as she stepped away from the table to give him space. “If that was the tippy-tip of how romantic we could get, we are in big trouble.”

Sardius stepped up to the table and chuckled. “First things first.” He put a hand in his hair and from the longish blond front part of his hair, he yanked a few strands free.

“What are you doing?” Jenna interjected. “I forbid you from changing the hair that is already in the marriage certificate. Doing so would invalidate it as far as I’m concerned.”

The hair sample in the marriage certificate had been donated when Sardius was still in jail in the Xypher Zone. As part of proving he was the same man who charmed Jenna over her earpiece, he needed to provide blood that matched with it.

“Never fear,” he said calmly. “That wasn’t what I was about to do.” Instead, he picked up the latticed pink diamond ring and poked a few of his hairs through one of the holes in the back of the ring. Then he tied them in knots.

“That’s weird,” Jenna said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s weird, but people have done that for centuries. Put a bit of hair in a locket. This is especially weird because it’s loose instead of concealed in a ring or a locket.”

“If it’s so weird, why are you doing it?” Jenna questioned curiously.

“It’s an old Octavian custom,” he replied with a smirk.

“How can that be an old Octavian custom?” Jenna blurted. “They don’t have hair.”

“Well, close enough,” he said, sliding his finger in the slot at the bottom of the marriage certificate. It was the place where his finger would be pricked and his blood collected.

From where Jenna was standing, she could see his blood fill the area until the little green light went on. It was a match.

He smiled at her and stepped away from the table. “All yours.”

“This is the worst wedding I’ve ever been to,” Jenna complained as she came closer to the table and put her finger in the slot for the bride. The needle in her finger was uncomfortable, but she kept her finger in the gold certificate until her blood was properly collected. “You know, I think I’ve even been to funerals that were more jolly than this.”

When the green light came on, Sardius stepped into the hazardous six feet radius around Jenna, took her into his arms and kissed her.

She pulled away from him. “Are you crazy? Are you okay?” She scanned his body and saw that he was unharmed.

He took the ring off the table and whispered to her. “As long as you wear this ring, I will be able to touch you.”

“Why?” Jenna asked, confused and uncomprehending as he fitted the ring on her finger.

“If you have something that has my DNA in it on your person it is the key to allowing me and only me to be close to you. Telling you this and not keeping it a big selfish secret is my wedding gift to you.”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“I could have come up to you and touched you as long as you were holding our wedding certificate with my hair in it, but that’s not convenient for everyday use. I had already worked this out, but I hadn’t had time to make you a ring or a necklace or something with my hair in it to wear. When I came down just now, I was thinking something stupid like putting the marriage certificate under the pillow on your bed while we had our wedding night, but when you mentioned the ring, that gave me an idea. It’s much more convenient.”

Jenna’s head was reeling. She was recalling her conversation with Mirr under the sea. If DNA was the way to bypass the forcefield, then that made everything clear. If that was the way to enter a planet that was secured by the Octavian Council, then all the AAMC had to do was find the right Octavian and take them to the planet with them. She wasn’t even sure if it mattered if the Octavian was alive.

Jenna squirmed. “Why did the Octavians do this to me?” she shouted. “You’ve cracked the code and now I have to protect their secret. How do I even do that? I’m on display. Someone from the AAMC will watch me closely enough to figure it out and the Octavians losing their right to certain planets when they claimed them first will be my fault. What the? Ahhh!” she screamed.

“I take it you’ve been involved in talks with the Octavians on the side and you know a bit more about what their treaty problems with the Adamis really look like,” Sardius observed with a wry smile on his face. “That’s okay. Don’t tell me anymore. We can keep it a secret. We’re just going to need to remove you from the public eye.”

“How can we do that when all your goals are about taking over the universe with me as your banner?” she asked, squirming.

“Come now, Jenna, I made those plans when I didn’t know what was happening to you. Okay, so we don’t keep you locked up like a troll in the dungeon. I had been thinking that you should have a bit of DNA from everyone on the floating palaces and that way you can move freely without any fear of hurting anyone who is supposed to be here. Maybe we can pretend that it is business as usual for as long as possible.”

Jenna’s breathing started regulating. “Do you think that’s possible?”

Sardius nodded. “I don’t know all the details off the top of my head, but I’m sure we can make arrangements that keep your secret. And if I’m in charge of your security, I can manage it all without anything looking funny.”

She fairly leaped into his arms and planted her mouth on his.

“So you missed me?” he asked, nuzzling his nose into her neck.

“Of course, I missed you! How could I do any of this without you?” she wailed, wringing her arms around his neck.

“So, I can kiss the bride?”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” Jenna threatened.