exist outside her chambers anymore. But this text from Nya reminded her that she did.
Shanti: I think my mail was misplaced because I never received any invites. I’ll look into it. In the meantime . . . if you need a friend I suppose I can help.
Nya: Yay! I’m so excited. I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you soon, friend!
Shanti shoved the phone stiffly into her pocket and headed for the exit. In one night she’d gained a husband who acknowledged her existence and a friend.
As she passed the small altar to Ingoka, she clasped her hands together and nodded her thanks. Then she snuck out into the night, and merged into the hustle and bustle of the capital city outside the palace’s gates.
Chapter 4
Sanyu stared at the speech that had been written for his next address to his subjects, trying to memorize it as quickly as possible so he could go back to ignoring this most hated aspect of his job. Giving speeches every few weeks was bad enough, but reciting words that were exactly the same as those written for his father made him feel even more ridiculous.
He began reading aloud again.
“Welcome, my dear citizens of Njaza. We are a glorious kingdom, strong as the mountains that lift us up, dangerous as the depths of our great lakes, and relentless as the currents of our raging rivers! Today, I, your mighty king—oh hell.” Sanyu dropped the speech cards onto his desk, wanting to break out in hives from how ridiculous the whole thing was. Why should he have to refer to himself as mighty? Why couldn’t he just say, “Hello, fellow Njazans? How do you do?”
He grimaced, leaning back in his chair away from the speech he was sure was written explicitly to make him feel foolish. Why did he have to give these speeches at all?
Because Musoke decided it should be done.
Well, maybe he’d just stop. He’d hide in Shanti’s quarters—Musoke never ventured into the queen’s wing, so he’d never look there.
He thought back to the first night he and Shanti had met, when he’d scoffed at the idea of her protecting him, yet here he was fantasizing about just that.
Sanyu grimaced even more deeply, spinning back and forth in the chair to discharge the itchy energy that made him think, Run, run, run. Running wasn’t an option.
He couldn’t figure out why he’d struck his bargain with Shanti. She was an unnecessary annoyance, one that he’d managed to successfully avoid close contact with for months. He could’ve kept walking past the corridor that led to her room—he should’ve never been in that wing to begin with. But then she’d opened the door and the scent of her had beckoned him—shea butter and a heady floral perfume.
And then she’d dropped her gaze. Yes, it was how a Njazan queen was supposed to greet her husband, but it was so at odds with the woman he’d first met and who had reemerged at the advisory meeting—fierce, intelligent, and full of surprises. The good kind of surprise, not the “Musoke is siphoning money from charity funds” or “you have to give a speech to a thousand people” kind of surprises he’d received of late.
He’d liked sitting with her, and the way her tone was cool but her words left a burn in their wake when she was annoyed. Her talk of teamwork didn’t match what Sanyu knew of Njazan marriage, though it was said that the True Queen could—
No. He caught himself before he trod down that path. There had been no True Queen since the resurrection of the Njazan monarchy fifty years earlier, or during the occupation by Liechtienbourg that had lasted for eighty years before that. If his father, great man that he was, hadn’t been able to find his True Queen—his equal—in all the dozens of wives he’d gone through, how could Sanyu imagine he’d find her in his first wife, a woman chosen at random from a website and who wasn’t even Njazan?
Besides, the True Queen would be the one who stayed forever and ruled by his side. Happily ever after. That seemed as probable as Musoke being proud of Sanyu about something.
He would go to his wife at night, not with any expectation for more, but because he was a king who’d been taught to make use of the tools he had at hand. Shanti was like a can opener, if can openers were endowed with beauty and intelligence and spectacular asses.
There