How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,3

to, I’d channel the power of my father, who was not a king but was braver than any man I’ve known. You never met him though, so you can pretend to be me. What use is my strength if it is not also yours?”

Sanyu came back to himself in that moment. Remembered who he was—son of the mighty Sanyu I—and what he was supposed to be—even fiercer than his father. He straightened all six feet five inches of himself, shifting the bulk of his muscle to look down at Musoke as his father had looked down at those who dared displease him, even after he’d shriveled with age.

“Our great and bountiful land is a temple, and the strength of Omakuumi is present everywhere,” he countered, adding a thread of challenge to the bullshit he was trying to sell.

“It is, indeed,” Musoke replied, his expression unchanging. “But your father requires something other than prayer from you.”

Sanyu’s heart thudded in his chest, and the Central Palace, looming up behind Musoke in all its menacing glory, seemed to grow even larger.

“Is he—did he—” Sanyu’s backpack became a weight that threatened to topple him over. Had he really been planning to run? As his father lay dying? Guilt and shame ripped through him, driving away the ridiculous thoughts of fleeing that had made sense only a moment ago.

“Our king still lives,” Musoke said. He gripped the head of his cane so tightly that the tip pushed deep into the dirt.

“And what does he require from me?” Sanyu asked as relief mingled with his guilt and shame, though the list of the things his kingdom required from him had been repeated without cease and added up to: everything.

“Marriage,” Musoke said, watching Sanyu with a hawk’s attentive gaze.

“Mar-riage?” The word came out in two choked syllables.

“Yes. He requires your marriage. It is one of the primary duties of a Njazan king, or have you not been paying attention the last three decades?”

“I have, O learned Musoke, but . . .” Of course, he’d thought of marriage—his father had married more times than Sanyu could count. A parade of women who appeared for four months or so, and then, after having shown they weren’t true queens as decreed by Omakuumi and Amageez, vanished from the kingdom and Sanyu’s life forever.

Despite the exorbitant number of wives, Sanyu was an only child, his singularity given as evidence that he was truly the heir to the throne, for Omakuumi had provided no alternative. He was born to his father’s twentieth wife—he couldn’t remember what she’d looked like, or what any of the wives had looked like. More had come after her, but they weren’t his mother and after the first few years, he’d learned to stop growing attached to them. Eventually, it’d been just Sanyu, his father, and Musoke.

Sanyu had paid attention, and he’d learned that marriage was an exhausting, useless practice that he wanted no part of. That was why fairy tales always ended at the wedding—a bright happy event that was all for show and would eventually lead to a king who spent more time with his council than his bride and a queen sequestered in her wing of the castle until it was time for her to join the ranks of former queens of Njaza.

And a young prince sitting alone, waiting for his mother to return or a queen who wouldn’t leave, and never getting either.

“Why do I have to marry so quickly?” he asked when he was able to speak again. “There are more important things to attend to, like my father’s health and preparing for . . . the worst.”

He’d thought of marriage as a royal duty he’d have to undertake far, far down the line, not when everything else in his life was being thrown into chaos. Just the thought of a lifetime of wife after wife, wedding after wedding, made him tired.

“Because the king must wed at or before his coronation, as is tradition. And your father wishes to see you take his crown and a wife before he joins the ancestors,” Musoke said tightly. “Will you fail him in that, too?”

That last word sank its venomous stinger into Sanyu’s will, weakening it.

Too.

Did his father think Sanyu had failed him, despite saying otherwise? Had he told Musoke, his closest friend, that?

“No,” Sanyu forced out. “I will not fail my father.”

“Good. I knew you’d see the importance of this. We’ve found you a most beautiful queen on RoyalMatch.com. She’s from Thesolo, unfortunately, that kingdom