Octavia Girl

Chapter 15

Eight Legs with Fur All Over

At Jenna’s next meeting with Excelyn and Celestina, there was a lot of laughing at Philip’s expense because it was his first meeting. Celestina insisted that he be crowned with a camera pointed at him, and Jenna pushed the point home. The TV guru needed a few days to prepare, but she was very excited with all the content they were thinking up.

Their priority list went as follows:

Crowning Philip. They were going to show all the gory shots of him getting the top of his head shaved, the same way they had with Celestine. Then they’d film the crowning ceremony.

Afterward, they were making a wedding special for Philip and Excelyn.

“I’ve had my secretary on the phone with Philip’s family to see if they’re willing to give interviews,” Celestina explained.

“How did that go?” Excelyn asked caustically.

“A few of them were reluctant, but there’s something about being interviewed for Interstellar TV that makes most people compliant. I had to promise to do a few of their interviews personally, but I’m into it. Besides, it’s not like there’s any diplomatic work to do with only three diplomats. Jenna, do you have anyone else on your mind?”

Jenna ground her teeth together unpleasantly. “I have just seen a news release that the six majors from the AAMC who ransacked my palace are being discharged from the military, as per my request.”

“Did they admit to wrongdoing in their press release?” Excelyn asked in surprise.

“Yeah. The officers weren’t put through a formal reprimand process when it first happened, so the higher-ups of the AAMC put them through one, found them guilty, and discharged all of them.”

“Did any of them admit that they were ordered to steal the crowns?” Excelyn persisted.

“No. If I were to guess, they knew when they signed up that if the plan went sideways, they couldn’t admit where the order came from. As it stands, Admiral Lou Denver has been in touch, telling me that they’ve met my demands and they want interviews to resume.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that he could choose someone—a single person—to be interviewed and that person could come to my palace. I said I would consider crowning as many as three, but they had to be interviewed one at a time.”

“Did they have anyone lined up?” Celestine asked, getting curious.

“No. They said they’d get back to me. I plan to be the biggest pain in the arse that I can be. I plan to interview at least five candidates before I’m willing to choose one to be crowned, even if the first person checks all my boxes. They need to have a few people come and go from here without incident if they want to get on my good side.”

“Really?” Celestina was tapping her writing stylus against her lips. “I’ve had someone from the AAMC mentioned to me on several occasions. It seems the AAMC is pretty desperate to be included in these talks in any way that they can be.”

“Why are they contacting you? I’m the one who makes the decision,” Jenna questioned.

“They’re not asking me to have their boy crowned. They’re asking me to take him as my first husband.”

Jenna was a bit stunned. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing for now. The AAMC can’t offer me any political posturing that I’m interested in. I want to marry a corporate powerhouse who already has a mistress, but he’d like to talk business with me, therefore would be interested in the arranged marriage. I’ve had my eye on Linc Baldwin. Once things are a little more settled, I plan to invite him down.”

“It’s good to see you’re so proactive about selling out,” Jenna commented.

“No. No.” Celestina waved away the snarky praise. “It’s my pleasure. Thank you for being willing to outright marry an Octavian. It takes all the pressure off the rest of us. After all, only one of us has to do it. Speaking of it, once we’re finished with Excelyn and Phillip’s marriage, we need to do a photoshoot with you and Favel. Josh is really excited to do it.”

Jenna nodded and checked their meeting agenda.

Suddenly, Celestina chirped up. “You’re not appreciating how special that is.”

Jenna looked back at Celestina with big dumb eyes. “Josh always seems to enjoy his work.”

“Yes, he does,” Celestina agreed. “But this is different. He is going to be the first person in ages to photograph a couple with an Octavian groom. He’s delighted. He has a huge list of photo ops he’s dying to try. He’s contacted clothing designers… fabulous clothing designers, Jenna! And asked them to send him their best offerings for you to wear for the shots. One of the bathing suits came by courier last night. It’s ravishing. And Josh wouldn’t even let me try it on. He’s gone one thousand percent serious. He says he never did anything groundbreaking before, even though he has done tons of groundbreaking things. He’s blocked off an entire week.”

“Can I block off an entire week?” Jenna wondered aloud. She wasn’t even sure if her schedule was flexible enough to give him that much time.

“You’ll have to,” Celestina replied without humor. “I’ll take on a few of your tasks if that will help.”

Jenna did a double take. There was definitely something she hadn’t appreciated about Josh before and that was not how serious he was about photography. It was how he had Celestina wrapped around his little finger.

***

Jenna walked through her newly renovated bedroom. The walls were repaired, new furniture gleamed in the sunlight, Misha had finished preparing Jenna’s closet, and the only thing left was for Jenna to sleep there.

Ryatt came in. He strolled over to the bed and tested the give in the mattress with his hands. “I’m sure this will be much more comfortable than the hide-a-bed in the servants’ quarters.” In the next second, he had splayed himself out on the bed. “I’ve got to give it a good test.”

Jenna leaned against the bedpost. “You’re not sleeping in here.”

“Why not? Honestly, I would be much more comfortable here than down the hall. Nothing dangerous could happen to you if I’m right here next to you. I like that.”

It was true that Jenna had let him sleep next to her for the first week. She liked it. Conrad was right. She did sleep better with Ryatt next to her, but she knew she couldn’t sleep next to him another night without things getting a little rowdy and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that yet. Not only that but because Ryatt hadn’t left her alone even one night, she had only got to talk to Sardius that one time on Spikay Two. She needed him to back off so she could have a private conversation with Sardius.

“I need a night alone,” she said emphatically.

He looked at her and waited for a longer explanation.

She started lying. “I need to know if I’m feeling better. If I’m feeling safe enough to sleep on my own.”

Ryatt opened his mouth to give his take on her excuse when Ixy interrupted. “Madam Diplomat, Favel is here and he’s brought you a present.”

Jenna had not been expecting Favel. He’d been very busy with his own business since the announcement of their engagement. Happy to see him, she headed into the main lounge to find him sitting in a goblet. Next to him, on a chair, was a white cat.

Jenna smiled and rushed forward. “Is that Charm?”

But then the thing moved and Jenna saw at once that it wasn’t Charm. Yes, it was white. Yes, it had fur, but when it moved, Jenna saw that it wasn’t like anything she had any experience with.

She screamed!

“What’s the matter, my love?” Favel fretted. “It’s a furlee.”

“It’s an eight-legged furred thing!” she hollered.

“It’s a spider,” Ryatt said, lifting it up and cradling it in his arms.

It had eight black eyes, two larger than the others, and all of them staring at Jenna. She screamed again. “Kill it! Kill it with fire!”

“Calm down,” Ryatt said smoothly and his voice instantly had a calming effect on her. For just a moment, his voice reminded her of something that calmed her very much. “Look, it’s sort of like a cat. It has paws just like a cat.”

Jenna was not convinced. “What you mean to say is that it has nine sharp ends instead of five!”

“I suppose so. Eight legs with five claws on each paw and a face for biting. I guess that is nine sharp ends. Well, it doesn’t have a tail,” Ryatt observed.

“Why the hell would that matter? A cat doesn’t scratch you with its tail. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I bet it makes a huge mess when it spins its webs. What the hell is it going to catch in my house?”

The thing was huddling in Ryatt’s arms like he was its mother. Ryatt crossed the room and bowed to Favel respectfully. “I’m Ryatt, Jenna’s new chief of security. I’ve been really excited to meet you.”

Favel nodded. “Ixy sent me your information packet. It’s nice to meet you too.” Then he turned to Jenna. “Pray, explain. What did spiders do on your planet that has made you so scared, Jenna? It’s a furlee. That’s the name of its species. It’s a hunter when found in the wild, so it doesn’t spin webs. It’s actually very much like cats on Earth and humans love cats!”

Jenna squirmed and squealed uncomfortably.

Favel’s eyes looked concerned. “I don’t understand. Why are you so scared? I thought it was the perfect gift for you. It’s like your world because it’s furry and it’s like my world because it has eight legs. I thought it would be something we could both enjoy,” Favel said sadly.

It clicked inside Jenna that she was behaving badly on several levels. She tried to unknot her shoulders, but even looking at it gave her the jibblies.

“What’s its name?” Ryatt asked, behaving a hundred times better than Jenna.

“Moonbeam.”

“That’s adorable,” Ryatt praised. “Jenna, you need to see how much fun this little girl is. It is a girl, isn’t it?”

Favel nodded.

“I assume you brought some food with you.”

Favel pointed to a watertight box next to the ocean entrance with a limp tentacle.

Ryatt snapped the box open and pulled out a jar of what looked like tiny black sea urchins. “She’s a hunter. You can’t put her food in a bowl and let her eat it. You have to toss it to her. It’s kind of like playing fetch with a dog, but a trifle more violent.”

Ryatt closed the door to the ocean entrance by sliding the panel shut and doubled the floor space in a single gesture. He placed Moonbeam on the floor and cracked open the jar. Putting his hand inside, he pulled out a single urchin and tossed it to Moonbeam, who caught it in her mouth.

Jenna should have calmed down watching Ryatt play with Moonbeam. She should have seen that the furlee was a cute thing, because anything covered in fur was cute, right?

She had almost calmed herself down enough to put her feet back on the floor when Ixy started talking in her earpiece. “Speaking of pets and Charm, I have been meaning to tell you that your cousin Lucy sends me a message every single day asking if you’d like Charm to join you on Octavia Prime. I keep telling her that I’m relaying the message to you, even though I’m not because I find her annoying, but the message she sent me today was a little more alarming than usual. I thought you might like to see it.”

“Put it on the screen,” Jenna said.

Jenna would have liked to laugh when she saw the camera view of her cousin, but it wasn’t particularly funny. Charm had scratched the hell out of her. She had three sets of claw marks on her face and a really bad one across her chest.

“Jenna, could you maybe consider taking Charm to live with you? I don’t want to say things like, ‘your cat is possessed’, ‘your cat is an actual demon’, or ‘I am planning to drown your cat’, but all those things are true.” Tears ran down her red face. “If you don’t take Charm away in the next seven days, I really will kill her and bury her in the root cellar!”

At that moment, Armen came in, saw the message she was recording, and tried to turn the camera off and delete the message, but Lucy was faster. She clicked send before he could stop her.

Jenna bit her lip. “Since I don’t want Lucy to kill Charm, I guess we’d better make arrangements to pick her up. Got any ideas on how to orchestrate that, Ixy?”

“Yeah, I already mentioned to Temptic that you might want something like that. He’s still in orbit, so he’s the closest person. I’ll send Armen the details, so he can get her on a pod and Temptic won’t have to go down to the surface.”

“That sounds great. Also, send an eviction notice to Armen and Lucy. Tell them to get out of my house if they aren’t going to take care of my cat.”

But Ixy kept talking like she hadn’t heard the last part. “Has anyone ever told you how alike you and Lucy are? She’s all ‘Oh no! The cat scratched me! There’s only one solution: we have to kill it!’ And you’re all ‘Oh no! The furlee has four more legs than I’m used to. Kill it with fire!’”

“Ixy, I’d take that comparison on the chin if you hadn’t just told me three minutes ago that you found Lucy super annoying,” Jenna replied firmly.

Ixy hesitated and for once, Jenna was grateful that no one else could hear what her personal assistant could say. “You are super annoying,” Ixy said like she had no filter.

“Am I?”

“Freedom is wasted on the free. Not only did you not crash Temptic’s ship, even though you were aboard it twice, but you never do anything fun. It’s like you want me to be bored watching you.”

“Okay,” Jenna said numbly. “Message received. Did you hear what I said earlier about sending Armen and Lucy an eviction notice? Please tell them they have three months to find another place to live. That is more than enough time and they should have been doing that anyway since they knew they didn’t like taking care of my cat.”

“You’re going to evict them?” Ixy asked, having heard Jenna that time around.

“Yes. Send them that message and see if they still need Temptic to pick up Charm. Now, I’m going to go have some quiet time with Favel and talk about what will be happening with Moonbeam. I won’t need you for a while.”

“There’s nothing fun to do in prison--”

“I’m not telling you to have free time. I told you to send those messages.” Jen pulled out her earpiece with an angry flick and seeing that Ryatt was securely holding Moonbeam, Jenna scuttled over to the chair next to Favel.

She had to talk quietly if she was going to miss having her voice picked up by the palace’s speaker/microphone system.

Favel turned his mantle, so he’d be able to hear her better.

“What are the consequences of getting rid of Ixy and Ivy?” she asked.

Favel minced no words. “You don’t want to hear the potential backlash. It’s a bad time every way you spin it.”

Jenna pulled her head back and frowned.

“You two should know that there isn’t a word that is spoken in this palace that Ixy can’t hear if she wants to,” Ryatt said, walking around like he hadn’t heard what Jenna and Favel said. “As a security specialist, I have to tell you that trying to keep secrets from her is a mistake as well. She is your first level of defense against all threats. If she doesn’t know what’s going on, she can’t protect you. Worse, if you offend her, she might not protect you.”

“So, how do I handle conflict with her if she’s being disrespectful or if she is flat-out not doing her job? I had no idea Lucy had been contacting me about Charm. That incident is only the tip of the iceberg of stuff Ixy doesn’t do. I agree that I probably would have ignored Lucy too, but Ixy didn’t give me the choice.”

“You have all the power, Jenna,” Ryatt patiently explained. “If you talk to her warden, and you can talk to the warden any time you want, you can punish her. You could get Ivy moved out of her room, you could get her put on limited rations, and you could get time added to her sentence. There aren’t a lot of rewards that can be given, it’s a prison, but there are a lot of punishments that can be given. It’s a prison.”

“How do you know all this?” Favel asked, tenting two tentacles in interest.

“I talk to Ixy sometimes,” he replied offhandedly.

Jenna knew it was a lie. He was a rotten liar. What was probably more true was that he had been a personal assistant himself when he had been in prison. Jenna wanted to ask him more about that, but it would have to wait.

Favel turned to Ryat, “Would you mind taking Moonbeam to see the rest of the palace? She needs time to familiarize herself with her new surroundings.”

Ryatt glanced at Jenna as if to ask her for permission.

Jenna gave him a quizzical look and then dug her index finger into her temple. “He’s my fiance and he wants to talk to me. Shoo.”

Ryatt nodded and disappeared with the furlee down the hall.

Jenna put her head closer to Favel’s mantle. “What do you want to talk about?”

Favel put a sucker on her eyeball and pulled on it in a show of frustration. “Look, I brought Moonbeam here as an apology present. We agreed that we’d have a conversation about getting you an Adamis husband when you got back from Spikay Two. Well, I had my boys put out some feelers to see what quadrants might be interested in such a thing. I thought it would be a snap to find a few well-connected men for you to date.”

“It didn’t go well?” Jenna guessed.

Favel pulled on his eyeball again before letting his sucker go with a pop. “The situation is grim. There is no shortage of men who would be willing to get together with you, but none I would even allow to come here. The options are unthinkably poor because relations between the Adamis and the Octavians are strained and tight. I’m not going to be able to find you anyone with my resources. I’m so apologetic.”

Jenna rubbed her pearl engagement ring against her teeth to feel the grit of authenticity. “Don’t worry about it. Getting me a husband is not on my list of things to do today. I’m crowning diplomats.”

“Yes,” Favel agreed. “That’s another reason I’m so sorry, Philip was a surprising and excellent appointment. I feel like we’re not giving you enough.”

“If you want to do something to ease all this tension, choose a wedding date for us. It can be in the distant future if that makes it more comfortable for you, but it doesn’t make sense for us to wait until I have a husband.”

Favel responded by pulling his tentacles under him and making himself small. When he finally spoke, his voice was full of bubbles, “That isn’t a good idea. You have no idea what people will say, what they have already said of you and of people in your position in the past.”

Jenna shook her head. It did not occur to her to ask what people were saying. “Have it your way. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss this.”

“Indeed,” he said sheepishly and a little paler than when he arrived.

***

Jenna was going to question Ryatt about his experiences as a personal assistant… that evening… after she had tried calling Sardius.

Finding herself alone in her recently renovated bedroom, she put Sardius’ earpiece in and tried again. She got the answering service line again. Since she wasn’t able to get in touch with him, yet again, she opened her bedroom door and waited for Ryatt to join her as he had every night for the past week. Granted, she’d told him that she wanted to sleep alone, but she didn’t think anything she’d said to him had made an impact. She expected him at any moment.

However, in the meantime, she had something else to do.

“Ixy? Are you there?” Jenna asked as she sat cross-legged on her bed.

“Yeah. I’ll turn things over to Conrad in a minute. I wanted to tell you that I got a reply.”

“From Lucy?”

“No,” the PA said sullenly. “I got a reply from one of the diplomats I had tried contacting. A while ago, you asked me to look into which diplomats served other nations and to poke around to see if any of them were interested in working for us. Though I didn’t get anyone who worked on the Adamis/Shushfief Alliance, I got a reply from someone else.”

“Today?”

“No. Yesterday. Listen, I overheard you talking to Ryatt and Favel about how you’re finding it hard to work with me.”

“You told me to my face I was annoying today,” Jenna reminded her. “Who needs that kind of negativity from the voice inside their head, Ixy?”

“Everyone is annoying,” Ixy pushed back. “Even you. Maybe even especially you because I miss freedom badly. But even though I have my panties in a twist about how my life has turned out, I don’t want you to punish me. Ryatt was right, you could get my warden to punish me and how he was suggesting I get punished was not what would actually happen if you told my warden that I wasn’t doing my job. If you’re open to giving rewards for good behavior, that’s one thing and that would be nice, but I need you to not punish me. I’ll do better and I’ll start by telling you about the diplomat who contacted me.”

Jenna didn’t like the fear in Ixy’s voice. It set her on edge, but at the same time, she didn’t know how to address it. She couldn’t tell Ixy she’d never punish her. There were intergalactic issues at stake and if Ixy persisted in messing things up just for the sake of it, Jenna might be forced to. Instead of offering any reassurance, Jenna merely asked, “Who is it?”

“His name is Fallcet Rewell. He works as an intermediary between Magna Prime and the Adamis Alliance. It’s diplomatic work as serious as what you do, though not on as large a scale. If he’s looking to move up in the world, then a job change working with us is key. Needless to say, he’s a pretty eager beaver.”

“Well, if he’s so brilliant, then why didn’t you tell me immediately?” Jenna asked, feeling the burn of fresh frustration.

“I thought that if I held back a day or two, it wouldn’t matter much for his application, but it would matter a lot for you and Ryatt,” Ixy said, defending herself.

“Why would it matter to us?” Jenna asked, perplexed. She knew she’d told Excelyn that she was very attracted to Ryatt, and because she’d said it out loud, that meant that Ixy had heard her odd confession as well. All the same, Jenna was not going to pursue a relationship with Ryatt. She had already decided that she was doing quite well holding her position.

“I think he’s in love with you. Like L-O-V-E in big loopy letters. When you’re sleeping, he looks at you like you’re heaven. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know men had feelings like that. I didn’t know they were capable of adoring someone. All the men I’ve known will screw anything that moves like it doesn’t matter who they’re with as long as their crotch is satisfied. Ryatt does not want another woman. He never looks at Celestina and she’s worth looking at. He wants you and I think he’d wait forever for you to make up your mind to trust him, but we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Why not?” Jenna asked patiently. For Jenna, she had never allowed a man inside her walls to crumble her castle. The closest she had ever felt to doing such a thing had been for Sardius and she did that knowing that he could never hold her in his arms and make her vulnerable in every sense of the word. The idea of doing that for Ryatt, or any other man, was not something that had occurred to Jenna. Sleeping next to him had been one thing, like a sleepover, like a summer camp, like having someone in the hospital bed next to you when you were afraid the night before an operation. It didn’t feel like it had the possibility of becoming romantic love.

It was at other times that Ryatt crawled under her skin. Unexpected times, when he stood a little too close to her and she could smell him, see the cut of his jaw, and the surprising curve of his lips.

Okay… she liked him, but those castle walls were high and Jenna was good at controlling herself.

“Why didn’t you want to tell me about Fallcet?” Jenna prompted. “We need to fill another four posts.”

“Because,” Ixy said, biting her words off like they were tough like jerky. “Meeting Fallcet is going to screw with your brain. I thought if I gave you a day or two more, you’d cave and start something with Ryatt. And screw me, I want Ryatt to win.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Jenna said in a rush. “Why are you so convinced I’ll fall for this Fallcet guy?”

“Because he’s one of your eleven best matches according to the universal matching algorithm.”