Chapter Twenty Eight

What Happened At The Sun Palace

Jenna yawned. She had just finished watching four hours of Vissy's media content. Make-up tutorials, travel vlogs, get ready with me videos, skits, and so much more. At least, she wasn’t bored, but she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for the videos as Celestina. Celestina noticed a thousand wonderful things about each of the videos and stopped them every three point six seconds to explain them to Jenna.

“What do you think?” Celestina raved. “Can we invite her down?”

Jenna shook her head in the negative. “We can’t invite anyone here until Sardius gives us the go-ahead. He’s made massive progress with my force field, but we need to let him get it completely sorted before we invite another person here.”

“But once he says it’s okay, we can, right?” Celestina urged.

“Yes. Of course,” Jenna said, blinking away the sunspots the huge screen in Celestina’s palace left on her eyeballs. “I was going to tell you. I want to scrap my plan to get a ninth diplomat so I can work on recruitment. I’ve changed my mind. I need to take a seat.”

“Why?” Celestina asked in surprise. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with you doing that. I thought that was the plan until you said it wasn’t. What made you change your mind?”

Jenna tapped the jewel in her crown. “A lot of what has happened to me on my journey to this moment was not my big idea. Everyone knows that… sort of. I was crowned as a baby. Babies can’t give consent. I was willing to accept the crown because it took me away from Earth. It gave me Sardius and a thousand other things, but the jewel in the crown is another matter. I did not give my consent. I would not have given my consent if I’d been asked. The Octavians are different from what I thought.”

“What did you think?” Celestina asked curiously, obviously trying to be a friend instead of an interviewer.

Jenna rewarded her by opening up. “That if I kept a steady stream of diplomatic candidates in flow, I would have done everything my grandparents wanted.” Jenna shook her head gently as she thought the whole thing over. “Then I wouldn’t be responsible for how the talks went when I was so unqualified.”

Celestina’s eyes bugged out. “You have never acted unqualified. This is basically your show.”

Jenna scratched under her hairline and sighed. “Yeah? Well, being a coward was not going to save me and I had Sardius to coach me. The situation I’m in now with this jewel is dangerous and I need to achieve quorum so that I can let all of you in on the secret and start negotiations. I can’t be left out of them. I have to take the reigns and stop expecting a trap door to open under my feet that leads me home. I can’t go home. I can only go forward.”

“What about further recruitment?” Celestina asked sensibly.

“We’ll wipe the slate clean and start accepting new nominations. Then we can all decide on the new diplomats together.”

“And Vissy?”

“She can come for an interview as soon as Sardius gives her clearance,” Jenna said, right before Celestina’s PA announced that Sardius had arrived.

“Hi, girls,” he said casually. It would have been very casual if he hadn’t been holding a knife with the most wicked edge Jenna had ever seen.

“Is that just part of your uniform now?” Jenna asked with a confused expression on her face.

“I can’t believe security let you in with a weapon like that!” Celestina gawked.

Sardius rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Celestina, I assume you have a room somewhere in your palace that does not have a camera in it.”

“You know I’m married to Josh, right? The cameraman king? Why would I have something like that?”

“Okay. I worded that stupidly. I’ll rephrase. You must have a room somewhere in this palace that takes only private camera feeds.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Celestina colored. “Why would I have something like that?”

“Because you’re married to a photographer who wants to take private videos and photos of you,” Sardius replied without coloring.

Wherever Josh had been, that was the moment when he chose to surface. “What’s this about?” Josh asked.

Sardius leaned in and said, “I want to try something with Jenna, but I need the footage to be kept secure.”

Josh looked at the knife, then back to Sardius, then back to the knife… then back to Sardius. “Sure!” he said finally, and with enthusiasm. “I just need a minute to tidy up. Can I film it?”

“Yep!” Sardius called back. “I was going to ask you to.”

Celestina stood up. “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“You can watch if you want,” Sardius replied, wagging his head at her. “What weird idea are you forming in your head anyway? Josh trusts me.”

Celestina frowned. “Well, then yeah, I’m coming. I don’t want you doing weird things in my palace.”

Josh craned his head around the corner. “Come on, Jenna. You and your danger bubble can come first.”

Sardius hadn’t yet given her samples of Celestina and Josh’s hair, so they still had to keep a wide berth.

The room Jenna was led to in the Sun Palace was a guest room. It still looked a lot like a guest room in that it had a bed in the middle of the room. It was surrounded by cameras.

When Jenna saw it, she wanted to rib Josh about what he and Celestina obviously did in the room, but she held her tongue when she saw his face. He was standing behind one of the cameras pressing buttons.

It suddenly occurred to Jenna that Josh must love her and Sardius a great deal to even let them see inside the room, let alone use it. It was a room where he made his most personal art with the woman he loved most, yet Sardius had asked and Josh had hesitated, but only for a moment.

Celestina was very red as she followed Sardius in.

Teasing them was absolutely out of the question.

“Close the door, Darling,” Josh said to Celestina.

She did as she was told.

Josh stood behind the camera. “Okay, Sardius. Action!”

Sardius dropped to his knees and then to his bum. “You get on the floor too, Jenna.”

Jenna got down on the floor as well and waited for him to explain.

“This knife,” he said, placing it on the floor next to him. “Is special. It’s used for killing Bonemen. A lot of knives don’t cut through our bones and cutting our skin off doesn’t hurt us the way it hurts humans. So, our enemies developed a knife that would slice bone. I have a few of them and earlier, I started thinking that maybe I could break off the tip of your crown with one of them. Octavian beaks are made out of the same chitin my bones are made from. I thought it was worth a try. If I was lucky, I’d take your jewel with the tip of the beak. It seems like it’s hanging on by almost nothing even though it is impossible to remove. Lay down.”

Jenna got on her back and looked up at Sardius, who was leaning over her.

“Josh,” Sardius said in a clipped tone. “You don’t need to act so bored. This won’t be boring. No matter what.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It sounds…”

Sardius took off his boots, revealing that he had no feet and Josh shut up.

Celestina sidled up to her husband and took his arm.

“See? Not boring. How many people do you think I’ve told I have no feet? I just don’t want to hurt Jenna with my boots.”

“That looks like a hard secret to keep,” Josh commented.

Sardius shrugged, put his heels on Jenna’s shoulders, and hooked the blade of the knife under her crown.

“Just the tip,” he said before he pulled on it.

To everyone’s astonishment, Jenna’s whole crown came off with a snap. It went flying and the jewel that had been blue turned black. The force field was deactivated when Jenna was no longer powering it.

“What happened?” Jenna asked, her hand feeling the top of her head. She didn’t feel her crown, she didn’t feel skin. She didn’t feel anything that made any sense. Finally, after touching her head for a solid fifteen seconds, she asked Sardius, “Is there a metal plate on my head?”

He looked at Celestina and Josh, who had fallen to their knees to get a better look at the top of Jenna’s head.

“Yeah,” he finally admitted. “The corner of it has come up. I think I might be able to pull it loose. I think it came loose at the same time as your crown. I’ll just.”

Jenna felt it detach from her head with a sharp and sudden snap.

There was a little blood on it when Sardius handed it to Jenna.

She took it in her hand and looked at it. It was a rectangle, a little smaller than the footprint of her crown. It was silver colored and it had an engraving on it. The words read, ‘This wasn’t meant to last forever, Grandma Letty.’

Jenna held it in her hands and stared at it. “How did my crown hang on during the Hipposyphis test?”

“I don’t know,” Sardius breathed. He held Jenna on the floor and then called for Ixy to have Misha send a hat to the Sun Palace for Jenna.

When it arrived, the hat Misha sent was Jenna’s grandfather’s fedora.