Sardius paused.  

Then he smiled.

It was clear to Jenna that he did not understand what the flashing white light surrounding her meant, but he was still too far away for her to explain without shouting oddly across the empty space.  She needed to tell him that he couldn’t touch her, but something about his appearance stopped her.  He looked every inch the terrifying war lord.  She needed him to get closer so he became Sardius, the man she loved.

He took a few quick steps toward her and unexpectedly dropped to one knee.  “Dearest Jenna,” he began, his voice vibrating across the space.  He opened a tiny box in his hand, and revealed to her the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.  It was a ring that had been carved entirely from a pink diamond.  It looked like vines crossing each other in the most delicate way. 

Jenna let out an involuntary squeal.

“I couldn’t ask you to marry me empty handed,” Sardius explained with a charming flourish of his radiant smile.  “I had to prove to you that I could protect you.  To prove my worthiness for your hand, I have brought an army to secure your safety.  With this offering, I hope that I can become your first husband and the political ally you seek.”

Jenna took an involuntary step back.  She didn’t mean to, but she did not want to hurt Sardius with her forcefield and if he took two steps closer, he would be caught up in it.

“Sardius,” she said softly before motioning a dismissal to the men that were with him.  “A little too much has changed since you left.  We need to talk.”  She was clearly waiting for the men to leave the room before she said anything more.  

He turned his head and nodded slightly to give the soldiers with him the command to leave and then kept his head in that position as if to hear them leave the room.  His jaw was clenched as he waited to hear the door click shut.  When the sound finally came, he snapped the box shut and raised himself to his full height in a motion of controlled rage.

He was not looking at Jenna when he said his next words.  He had deposited the ring in his jacket pocket in the place at his hip that was least likely to bulge.  He stared off into space as he said the words, “I suppose you found it absolutely mandatory to marry someone in the place of a first husband while I was gone.”

“I did no such thing,” Jenna said through gritted teeth.  “I married Favel as a second husband, but you, and everyone in the known universe, knew that I was planning to do that.”

He glared at her.  “So what is the problem?  Please don’t tell me that I toppled thousands of my followers' plans only to find that you no longer love me.”

“Of course, I love you,” she said, outrage all over her face.  “I can’t touch you.  I’ve been trying to tell you that I can’t touch you and you can’t touch me.”

“Why?  Did you contract some weird disease underwater or something?” he asked, sounding bored and frustrated.  

Jenna lifted a finger and swung the jewel hanging from her crown.  It made a tinkling sound like a bell.  “This jewel creates a forcefield that cuts anything that comes too close to me.”

“Really?” he said, getting a daring look she had never seen in his too-blue eyes.

“Yes.  If the box my ring is in isn’t too dear to you, why don’t you try tossing it to me?” she dared.

Well, Sardius liked being dared to do things, so he removed the box from his pocket, removed the ring from the box, and did exactly as she suggested.  

The ring box broke apart in midair and fell to the white floor in pieces.

Sardius looked down at the broken box and a grin spread across his face.  “I can work with this,” he said, undoing the top button on his shirt.  He snapped his fingers and using an earpiece in his ear, he called for two chairs to be brought in.  

Apparently, he had assistants he used the same way Jenna had Ixy and the two men who had accompanied him into the room to begin with rushed in with skeletal armchairs.  

“Can we congratulate you?” one of them asked Sardius in a hushed voice as he set down a chair.

Sardius smiled and shook his head.  “Not yet.”  He no longer looked discouraged or frustrated.  “She’s not easy.  That’s part of her appeal.”

The man was too spooked to do anything other than steal a brief glance at Jenna before grasping the other man’s arm and departing.

Jenna kept her distance from the furniture until she and Sardius were alone, then she pulled her chair further away from Sardius and took a seat.

“You are more beautiful than I remember,” he said, looking her over and apparently finding new things to appreciate.

“I’m only this beautiful to torture you, since that’s all I can give you today,” she said languidly, letting her dress part more completely at the slit to show her leg.

“Before we get started, am I to understand that aside from this thing,” he said, motioning the forcefield surrounding her.  “Aside from this thing, you are completely willing to accept my proposal?”

Jenna nodded.  “If you put the ring on the floor over there, I’ll even walk over and put it on myself.”

“In a moment,” he said, holding her gaze with his newly blue eyes.  He was leaning into the armrest.  “What’s the jewel on your crown and where did it come from?”

Jenna did her best to explain.  She started by telling him about Fallcet and how she put him through the Hipposyphis test and how he and Rennett failed.

Sardius chuckled.  “Good girl.  I hadn’t yet figured out a way to get rid of Fallcet.  It’s fantastic you found a way to put him out all on your own.  Where is he now?”

Jenna shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know.  I’ve been a bit caught up in my own problems.”  She told him about how Firth, the Hipposyphis, had used that occasion to place the jewel on her crown, and what it did to her.  

“And Favel had no hand in it?” Sardius asked seriously.

“It honestly seems like he has not got enough allies within Octavian circles to win a vote.  If you want to know my thoughts, I think the only reason they asked him to be the chair of the Octavian Council was because they thought he would be the most pleasing to an Adamis, which is really all the Octavian Council is good for—working with the Adamis,” Jenna said, finally being able to confide her thoughts in someone she could trust.  It was a great relief.

“Do you think you should have held out for a better Octavian to marry?  Maybe a Hipposyphis?”

Jenna frowned.  “No.  I think Favel hits a decent middle ground that makes him perfect for me to use him and for them to use him.  I’m very fond of him and his size really makes him so that he doesn’t scare me to death.  If I had to do a wedding with a Hipposyphis, I might be accidentally drowned.”

“Hmm… so that means that Favel can’t get it removed.  Have you tried to remove it yourself?” 

She sighed.  “I haven’t tried very hard.  It seems like it should be easy to remove.  It swings when I touch it, but it’s close to the blades of the crown and when I try to pull it off, I always come dangerously close to cutting myself.”

“Well, a part of me is grateful that at least somebody besides me cares about your safety, even if it isn’t the government of the people you represent.  I would have been fit to blow up the galaxy if I’d arrived here and you’d been kidnapped again,” Sardius said coldly.  “Even if I am split in two that I can’t be married to you immediately.”

“We can get married immediately,” Jenna offered candidly.  “You just can’t kiss the bride.”

“Hmm… I take it you’ve done a collection of tests on this subject and you haven’t been able to have a person inside your forcefield?”

“We’ve done a few tests.  We’ve fired things at me, tossed things to me, thrown things at me.  It’s hard to imagine things would go differently if someone threw a mouse at me and absolutely no one wants to lose an arm.  Favel says that many tentacles were lost by the Octavians who used this technology for protection.”

Sardius looked her up and down.  “I’ll think about it,” he said roguishly like he was honestly waiting for a challenge like that to fall into his lap.

Jenna made a kissy face at him.  He might have been lying.  If he was lying, she was even more in love with him.  Getting more frustrated and more angry would not have helped a thing.  His bright-side, beat-the-hell-out-of-it attitude made her want him more than ever.  He wasn’t going to give up on her!  She was enchanted.

“What about you?  How did it go on Don Leo’s ship?  You’re here, so it must have gone well enough.”

He sucked in his breath.  “Do we have to talk about it?  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but one of the key points of my seducing you has been to keep my mouth shut about what I do in battle except for the key outcome—that I won.”

“Ixy said something about that.  She thinks it’s important for me to understand you, if I’m going to be in love with you.”

Sardius gave Jenna a sideways look, but he did not say anything.  

Jenna realized that he was not going to volunteer anything.  She would do better if she asked him a specific question.  “What did Brazel do to you before you got on the ship with Don Leo?”

Sardius grinned.  His smile was noticeably improved since she had last seen him.  He’d had his teeth worked on since the Don Leo incident?  He’d obviously had his eyes changed.  What else had he changed?  As it was, his smile was dazzling because he was pleased he could answer her question.  “I had Brazel add poison pellets to the muscle groupings in my limbs.  As I predicted, Don Leo cut off my leg at the knee and ate it with his followers… And it killed them.  From there, it was easy to escape my cell, kill the rest of the crew members who needed it, and get back to the Xypher Zone.  When I got home, I turned the ship over to the authorities and went right back into the surgeon’s chair, so I could get the remaining poison pellets removed from my muscles. Brazel did such a good job that they couldn’t really remove them, so I got new muscles, got my electric feet put back on and a collection of other body modifications done.”

Jenna nodded, trying not to show how uncomfortable she was hearing all that.  “You can’t pretend you didn’t have your eyes changed.”

“I wouldn’t want to pretend it.  It’s part of the admission price for coming here in this way to be with you.  I can’t inspire my followers with hazel eyes that don’t remind them of the days when we fought the government together.”

“You amassed this army to come to me to be my first husband?” she asked slowly.  “How are we going to pay your army?  I may have collected a whack of cash from Vinia, but I’m not going to be able to pay them.  You must know that.”

He scoffed and leaned back in his chair.  “Of course, I know that.  I have a business plan.  I bet there’s a wide collection of corporations and smaller civic governments who are unhappy with the security services they have available to them.  Did you know that the AAMC takes security contracts?”

Jenna sat up in shock.  “They do not!”

“They do too!” Sardius said back to her.

She breathed, putting more of the pieces together.  “You’re planning to replace the AAMC by stealing their security contracts?”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I am.”

Their eyes met and clashed.  “No one has ever told you no, have they?”

“You’ve told me no,” he said, getting up and walking to a place away from their chairs.  He took the pink diamond ring that had been resting in his palm and set it on the floor.  “If you want it, come and get it.”

Jenna waited like a haughty princess until he had stepped away from the ring and given her plenty of room to accept it.  When there was enough room, she stood up in a fluid motion and with as much poise as could be had, she went and picked the ring off the floor.  She slid in on her finger and then turned to him, “It’s too big for me.”

He turned around with a jolt.  “No, it isn’t.  I measured your finger.”

She smacked her lips in a smile.  “Just kidding.  It fits.  It just looks odd with two rings on my fingers.”  The pink diamond ring was next to Favel’s pearl.  

“You should wear Favel’s pearl on your other hand,” Sardius said with a glance at her.  “It’s less important.”

Jenna slid the pearl off the middle finger of her left hand and put it on the third finger of her right hand.  It didn’t fit as well there.  She wasn’t really a ring person and already, there was too much jewelry on her hands and while she was at it, there was too much jewelry on her head.  She wore a crown with a jewel hanging from it, and she had two earrings on her ear.  Her hand traveled there.

“What’s that on your ear?” he said, standing up and getting as close to her as he dared.  

“It’s an earring from Favel,” she replied.

“It’s an earring,” Sardius said.  “I should not be jealous, but why are you wearing two pieces of jewelry from Favel?”

“It’s not jewelry.  It’s a nanomachine meant to kill my fear response,” she answered, her voice slow and measured.  

Sardius was too charming and his charm was oozing everywhere.  “I’d ask him to make one for me as well, but I killed my fear response years ago.”