How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,17

He wore jeans and a green T-shirt instead of his formal robe. Lumu had either just returned from a personal visit in the capital, perhaps with his marriage partners, or he was thumbing his nose at Musoke. Either way, Sanyu would likely hear about it later.

“What’s up?” Sanyu asked, dropping some of the formality he now had to perform 24/7. Lumu was a few years younger, one of the guardsmen’s sons, and they’d been friendly for years after being paired as sparring partners in martial arts class. Sanyu was glad his advisor was someone who didn’t fawn over his every word, coddle him, or look at him with expectation in his eyes. Lumu was straightforward, and retaining him was the one thing Sanyu had insisted on since becoming king, though he hadn’t been able to prevent the man’s demotion to lesser advisor.

“The dinner plans for tonight have been changed,” Lumu said. “General Mbiji will be joining us again.”

Sanyu dropped his pen and sagged in his seat. “Really?”

Lumu twisted his lips and nodded. “Really. Musoke invited him to discuss the military parade to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of independence and of the resurrection of the Njazan kingdom that they’re planning.”

Sanyu pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “Does Musoke have military parade money?”

“The council has decided that a portion of the funds from the land mine recovery charity can be repurposed.”

Frustration clenched Sanyu’s stomach, and he reached for a tube of the chewable antacid tablets that he’d imported a case of. He should be used to this awful feeling, the one that gripped him whenever he realized he would have to confront Musoke. It’d been the same since childhood—arguing with a man touched by Amageez was like trying to swim through the swamps of Njaza instead of its lakes.

“I’ll talk to him,” Sanyu said, then crunched on the chalky tablet. “And the other matter?”

He trained his expression to blankness even though this was the only thing he looked forward to these days—and the closest he would allow himself to showing interest in the one matter he shouldn’t.

“Ah. The daily report,” Lumu said glibly. “You know you can just . . . talk to her yourself if you’re so concerned with what she does? I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you.”

Sanyu didn’t know that. On their wedding day she’d looked at him with the light of hope in her eyes, even after he’d warned her against it. It had filtered through the mourning shroud that had enveloped him, and he’d felt the urge to do whatever it took to make sure that light never went out. That urge, and the many conflicting urges that pulsed in him whenever she was in his presence, showed yet again how unfit he was for the job. He was supposed to take many wives over the course of his reign in search of the True Queen, and this first one had already intrigued him, with her faux-servile demeanor and eyes that flashed with sharp understanding—and something more dangerous than that.

Desire.

It was a trap, of course. If Sanyu gave in to it, he might take another step toward that thing most forbidden to him: love. If there was no hope at the Central Palace, there was certainly no love. The ground it might have grown in had been razed and used as a testing ground for strength. So he watched his wife. He wanted. But he didn’t give in—he wouldn’t.

She would be gone soon, and Sanyu had long ago stopped allowing himself to be hurt by the departure of a queen.

Lumu pressed on. “You might visit her in the queen’s wing of the palace. Check in on how the busywork you gave her is going, maybe? Marriage is all about communication after all.”

Lumu enjoyed this far too much. Having a husband and a wife of his own at home—as was common in Njaza before the Liechtienbourgish occupation and just starting to come back into fashion—he considered himself an expert on marriage and took every opportunity to remind Sanyu of his own happy arrangement. Lumu seemed to think that Sanyu thought all marriages were doomed to fail. Sanyu was only certain that any marriage he entered into as king of Njaza—a man required to have multiple wives unless he was blessed with a True Queen—would do so. A True Queen was rare. It was a decree of the gods. His father hadn’t found one in fifty years; why would Sanyu, unworthy of the crown, be blessed