Chapter Eight

Sardius Veriticalus, The Revolutionary, Arrives

“Ixy, you could have given me some warning!” Jenna complained.

Ixy explained that she could not have. She had been notified of the ship entering the Xypher Zone, but it was not Don Leo’s ship. It was something else, like a huge diamond floating in space. It was only in the Xypher Zone for an hour before it changed dimensions and appeared within spitting distance of Octavia Prime. From there, Sardius contacted the orbital security team himself and then gave himself all necessary clearances. He was sending a pod to pick up Jenna for a meeting in orbit.

Jenna was overjoyed.

He’d lived!

That psycho had murdered everyone aboard Don Leo’s ship and returned to her with ten thousand times the swagger he had when he came the first time.

She had to look perfect. She had to be perfect. She had to change.

So, Jenna stood outside Misha’s workshop. Misha was racing through the place looking for the correct dress for Jenna to wear. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. Jenna was dying outside the workshop because she wanted to find something to wear herself. She did not want Ixy chasing around the place following her instructions. She wanted to figure it out herself.

However, Jenna still couldn’t be trusted. She wore the earpiece, the pain had gone away, but the forcefield was still very much awake. Misha threw a pair of white diamond pantihose at Jenna in her rush to put together an outfit and they were shredded in midair.

Misha bit her lips together and frowned deeply.

“You only had one pair of those?” Jenna asked with a frown.

“Yes,” Misha admitted painfully, balling her hands into fists under her eyes. “I only had one pair of those. I was going to dress you in a white dress like you were getting married. I want Sardius to see you in a white dress and think that he would be the luckiest man in the world if you were his wife. How am I supposed to accomplish that without white diamond pantihose?”

“He can’t marry me,” Jenna reminded Misha as she bit the side of her thumb.

“What?” Misha said, removing her face from her hands long enough to realize she wasn’t listening.

“Sardius can’t marry me. No one can marry me now because no one can touch me. I can’t fly into his arms or even kiss him hello. I can’t do anything, except…” Jenna waited for Misha to fill in the blank.

“Except look good,” Misha finished for her. “Okay,” she said, getting a grip and getting to her feet. “If you can’t look like a bride, what can you look like?”

“I need a revenge dress,” Jenna said, getting the perfect idea.

“Ooooh, that’s naughty. He didn’t do anything, but he’s getting a revenge dress? Naughty Jenna.” She shared a conspiratorial gaze with Jenna before letting her expression fall like a descending hot air balloon and huffing, “What’s a revenge dress?”

Jenna laughed, “You don’t know?”

“Well, it sounds black. It’s a black dress, right?”

“It could be a black dress, but it doesn’t have to be. What it’s supposed to be is a dress that makes him sorry he left me. Something that outshines even his memory of me. Something that blasts him into the stratosphere. Do you think a black dress would blast him into the stratosphere?”

“If you’re not married to black, I think I have something in baby blue,” Misha said, rushing to the back of her workshop.

When she returned, she had a baby blue satin dress.

“It’s weird,” she said, holding it it up.

It was weird. Jenna saw it had layers. The top layer was the baby blue satin. It was her style in that it had a very wide skirt attached to a very cinched waist. Most of her dresses had a slit in them even though they already had a wide skirt. This dress had a horizontal cut across the thigh to give a window to one of the wearer’s legs. Under the top layer was a loose layer of gauzy tulle that sort of hid her leg. It was very much like looking into someone’s house and seeing a little of what life was like inside, but not being able to see clearly because of the filmy curtains hiding the details. The top was tight, though it had cutouts that exposed her shoulders, like those windows were thrown open wide, to show something inside clearly. In exchange for the leg and the shoulders, the dress was very modest in the bodice, though it gave a nice outline.

“I like it,” Jenna said, suddenly aware that she was not going to get the perfect dress and she did not have time to be picky. She wanted to see Sardius today, not next year. It gave a bigger view of her thigh than usual and she remembered him saying something about her thigh and how it drove him crazy.

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“Well, I got it because it should turn your gray eyes blue, Jenna. Won’t it be fun for you to meet Sardius with blue eyes?”

Jenna didn’t know why Misha thought it would be extra exciting for her to meet Sardius with blue eyes, but she did not have time to dissect every detail of her conversation. She had to get changed, but something about that detail tugged at her memory. Did Sardius say that he liked blue eyes? Maybe it wasn’t that, but it was something. She just couldn’t remember and she didn’t have time.

“Sardius just arrived at the orbital security team’s station,” Ixy said to Jenna as she stepped into the dress. “Temptic is on the line. He says Sardius came in with an escort of army men, where he used his authority as your chief of security to fire them all and expel them from the station.”

Jenna pulled the dress up over her waist. “Good riddance,” she scowled as she tried to figure out how to do up the laces of her corset when Misha couldn’t help her. “Though if I’m honest,” she said out loud, “I’m surprised by how fast that man moves.”

“Jenna,” Misha interrupted. “How are you feeling? Are you well enough to do your makeup?”

She nodded and Misha gave her a diagram of how to do her makeup.

Jenna did it easier than she would have if it was her first time wearing overblown makeup, but she didn’t sleep when Misha had done her face up in the past and recreating the look was something Jenna could do… with Misha correcting her every five seconds from a safe distance.

When she was finished, her eyes did look blue. Not a deep blue, but blue like the icy sky of winter. The crystals placed on her cheeks made the effect even more impressive.

Her hair was another problem.

“Can’t you just wear a wig?” Misha whined, making her button eyes look even larger.

“I don’t tell you to shut up often enough,” Jenna remarked blandly as she applied her mascara. “I’m not wearing a wig. He knows what I look like at my worst and what I look like today is just another link in the chain. All we have to do is put part of it up. Give me a clip.”

“Your hair is a mess,” Misha complained. “The waves are all over the place.”

“It’s not so bad when you look at my whole outfit,” Jenna said, getting up from the vanity and doing a little catwalk for Misha’s benefit.

Her stylist sighed. “Yes. It’s not so bad, but it would be so much better if I could do your hair for you.”

“Shoes!” Jenna prompted and sent Misha running. “Get me something high enough to get this hem off the ground.”

Misha ran up to her, but stopped at a dead halt before she got too close. “It’s a little bit of a high/low. Even if I put six inch heels on you, we wouldn’t get your skirt completely off the ground.”

“Oh,” Jenna said, inspecting the slight train in the back. “Fine. No jewelry. I’ve got to go.”

Even though Jenna was dressed to look like ice itself, the effect was fairly ruined by the glow on her cheeks as she skidded through the halls of the Crescent Bell Palace on her way to the dock.

When she arrived, there was a geometric pod waiting for her. It did not look much like the technology the Octavians used. It had to be a Boneman thing. The Octavian pods looked like oblong eggs. The pod Sardius sent for her was more like a jewel with facets. However, inside, it was almost exactly the same.

Except for one detail. There were a pair of boots with a tag on that said they were for her.

“What are these?” Jenna asked Ixy, turning her head to give her PA a better look at them.

“They are gravity boots for the space station,” Ixy explained. “Remember, there’s no such thing as artificial gravity. I’m dumb. I should have expected that you’d need to wear something like that. Sorry you wasted all that time picking shoes to go with your dress. Put them on.”

Jenna did as she was told and threw her high heels out on the dock, where Vash caught them before they fell in the water.

“Good catch!” she yelled at him.

“You’re crazy!” her butler yelled back as the doors of the pod closed between them.

She was not put to sleep for the journey and she had plenty of time to stew before she was brought to the top of the diamond shaped ship Sardius brought. It was much more massive than it had seemed from the pictures provided by the newsreels. Jenna wondered if it was a ship at all. It seemed more like a space station.

The pod was inserted into a docking bay in the highest point of the ship. When it opened, it showed a wide white floor with a clear ceiling. Through the ceiling, she could see the blue oceans of Octavia Prime. Across the room, she could see the one person she could not wait another moment to see.

Something in her heart lurched as she stepped onto the white floor and a flash of white encircled her. It was her forcefield activating so intensely that she could see it.

What had touched her?

She didn’t look toward the place she thought she saw Sardius. Instead, she looked all around her. Had something been cut that got too close to her? She looked around and saw only white floor. No blood. So Sardius had not jumped to greet her the moment she got off the pod and lost a hand. She thanked her lucky stars. Steadying her breathing, she lifted her head.

Across the room, he came toward her, except he didn’t look much like the man she had known when he had played the part of Ryatt. His eyes were blue like the summer sky in midafternoon. It was accentuated by black smudges around his eyes. She had seen pictures with him wearing makeup like that when Ixy had shown her pictures of him, but she hadn’t equated it with makeup. It seemed like grease from working on starships or something. It looked like his face was blackened by goggles that made toothlike smears down his sharp cheekbones. As he walked across the room, it was a deliberate attempt to look a part. He was playing it well. He was in full military dress. It was a black uniform with gold buttons and metals and red accents. The uniform was imposing with shoulder pieces so large, they would have made Misha squeal. They gave the impression he was covered in armor and the fabric over was merely a facade.

He was not alone. Two men flanked him as he crossed the room to welcome her. Sardius stopped and smiled at her. He pointed upward.

Jenna looked. There were sparks going off like tiny fireworks in the space sky.

At first, Jenna did not understand what he was showing her. After staring upward for a full twenty seconds, she realized that he was showing her starships. Besides the huge diamond, which Jenna now realized was a space station, he had also brought an entire fleet of ships.

He brought an entire army with him?

Jenna didn’t understand. Why had he brought an entire army with him?

Regardless of the earring meant to control fear, her force field started to glow brighter.