that I am the king,” he said. “How quickly you’ve forgotten your speech to Musoke about dictating versus advising.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m a child of Ingoka, not Amageez, and my goddess does all things except tolerate foolishness. See yourself out if you want to pretend you don’t understand why I’m hurt when I’ve just explained it to you. I feel sorry for you—you spent your entire life wanting to escape from this kingdom only to become exactly what you were running from.”
He stared down at her, and she stared back, hoping against hope that he would realize how pointless this was. That he’d soften, apologize, ask her to officially be his queen so that she wasn’t on the edge of a plank waiting to see whether he would decide to push her off—and so that he could let her know that he cared for her and not just what she could do for him.
Sanyu turned and walked stiffly out of the room.
Shanti sucked in a breath as the door slammed, holding it for a long moment as she waited for him to come back, for this argument that had dashed all of her dreams to be over.
There was a knock and she inhaled.
“Yes?”
“Are you okay, Your Highness?” Kenyatta asked from outside the door.
“I’m fine,” she said, and surprisingly she sounded the part.
“Do you need anything? My shift is over in a few minutes, but I can stay if you’d like,” the guard said. “Or go trip the king so he falls on his face.”
“Thank you, Kenyatta,” she said, then laughed shakily. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, or commit a breach of your Oath of Guard on my behalf. Have a good day.”
“All right, my queen.” She heard the sound of three taps against the floor of the hallway—Kenyatta giving her the royal salute.
She stood for a moment, the sound echoing in her ears, then nodded to herself.
Okay. That had happened. The fight, all the awful things that may have been said out of spite or may have been what he’d thought all along.
The end?
She shuffled numbly away from the door; the thrumming excitement that had filled her in the lead-up to the meeting was a frozen nothing in her chest now.
She showered in scalding hot water that went cold before it could thaw her. Then she treated herself to the luxurious lotion she’d been saving for when she finally felt like a queen, because waiting for someone else to make her feel special while she spent her energy doing the same for Sanyu and the kingdom was for the birds.
She wasn’t one for rumination, but she couldn’t get over how unfair it was. She’d technically achieved every goal she’d laid out for herself but somehow she had failed.
It was when she sat down at her desk, muscles sore and heart more bruised than she wanted to admit, that she realized something was amiss. Not just the weird smell—vinegar? Everything looked the same, but she was observant, and knew that things had been moved. Someone had searched her desk. When she opened her laptop and tried to turn it on nothing happened. She picked it up—beneath it was a pool of liquid.
She placed it back down, anger and violation making her want to scream. She opened each normal drawer in the desk to find her paperwork and belongings similarly doused with a reddish liquid that at the very least wasn’t urine.
She remembered Musoke’s smug expression as he’d entered the meeting late and knew he had done this. Maybe he and his advisors had been searching for something to support their claims of treason, but most likely this had been driven by pure pettiness and a need to put her in her place.
She’d done nothing but try to help since she’d arrived, and had been repaid with mockery, derision, and erasure. She’d spent months telling herself to just hold on, that things would change, that they just needed to understand—and then that Sanyu would come around—but she’d just run face-first into an ugly possibility that had never occurred to her.
What if she couldn’t change things? What if some people and places didn’t want to change for the better, and punished you for showing them the ways in which they could?
In that moment, every hope to remain Njaza’s queen, every ridiculous spark of desire and too much more that she felt for her husband, were weighed against her self-worth, and they lost.
She opened the last secret compartment she’d discovered, which had