How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,115

have to, but she had asked him for respect on that first day. While he knew that marriage would have its ups and downs, he could think of nothing more disrespectful than making her regret any of her valuable time that she chose to spend with him.

The next step of his plan had been a planning session with the former queens, where he explained the changes he wanted to institute.

“Are you saying you want us to do all the work?” Marie had asked testily.

Sanyu had understood her frustration. “I will do the work, too. Asking anything of you at this point is unfair, but I also don’t want to make decisions on your behalf. I was born the lion, but the counsel of the aardvark is just as valuable.”

“What are you talking about, boy?” Josiane asked.

“I believe our queen has also been sharing her favorite quotes with him,” Marie said, then looked at him. “We’ll think about it.”

The next step was harder—letting Shanti return to Thesolo to prepare for the conference and see her family and new friends.

“Don’t look like that,” she’d said when he dropped her off at the small airport for a specially chartered flight. “I’ll be back after the conference. Or you can come to Thesolo! I’m friends with the princess now, I bet I can snag you a royal audience.”

He laughed and hugged her close. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Prince Thabiso would probably be open to discussing the Rail Pan Afrique stuff, and I’d like to see where you grew up and meet your family.”

“You want to meet my family?” she asked.

“Well, not really, because the thought makes my stomach hurt, but since they’re important to you, yes. I’ll bring my antacid.”

“You’re so romantic, my king,” she’d said, and Sanyu didn’t even think she was making fun of him.

Then it was time for the hardest part of all.

When Sanyu returned to the palace, he couldn’t find Musoke anywhere. His panic, which he’d been able to ignore while he was away, ballooned in him as the places the advisor could possibly be began to dwindle.

Musoke is old. I hurt him. Maybe he’s left me, too, like Father did.

When he finally found the old man sitting on a pew inside of Omakuumi’s temple, with his eyes closed and so still that he barely seemed to be breathing, Sanyu jogged over to him.

“Musoke!”

The advisor opened his eyes slowly, but didn’t look at Sanyu. “Oh, you’ve decided to return to your responsibilities? I’ve spent my life imagining the ways you’d disappoint us, but flouting tradition and then running off after a foreign woman wasn’t one of them.”

Sanyu wasn’t sure if he himself had changed or Musoke’s heart just wasn’t in it, but the scorpion stinger wavered lethargically and its venom was diluted.

“I met Anise,” Sanyu said. “She sends her greetings.”

Musoke’s gaze flew to him, and Sanyu went utterly still as tears welled in Musoke’s eyes and spilled down the man’s cheeks at the mention of the first queen’s name.

“Anise? Our Anise? She’s alive?” Musoke’s thin chest heaved, and Sanyu felt something in him crumble—the pedestal he’d placed Musoke on, or perhaps the idea that the man was all-knowing and invulnerable. He’d never seen Musoke cry before; it was Musoke who had told him tears were weakness—emotion was weakness—but now he openly sobbed from the shock of Sanyu’s words.

Sanyu had expected a nasty, painful fight. He’d been ready to tell Musoke all of the terrible things he’d done and how he’d hurt Sanyu, even if Musoke ridiculed him for it. But what he was witnessing was a different kind of pain, and even though some might have reveled in the man who hated weakness drowning in his own emotions, it gave him no pleasure to see Musoke like this. His own throat was rough with unshed tears as he moved onto the pew beside the old advisor, whose frail body was shaking, and offered himself as a life preserver.

Musoke coughed and let out a sound that seemed almost like a wail of pain as he clutched Sanyu’s arm.

“I wish I didn’t know,” he said a moment later, his voice strained with what seemed like panic. “She left us, and it was so painful—we convinced ourselves she must have died since she didn’t come back. We tried to erase everything that reminded us of her because the pain . . . it was unbearable. Sometimes we felt her with us just as I felt my lost limb, and then