by those he loved the most.
But Sanyu wasn’t his father—he’d always wanted a cat.
“Hello, Wife,” he said, keeping any warmth from his voice even though he felt it in his body as he looked down at her. “I trust you’re prepared for our meeting.”
Her smile didn’t falter but her gaze slid away from his.
“Of course. Come in.” She stepped aside and the scent of tea reached him—the nighttime blend he’d drunk as his father told him bedtime stories. It was a scent wrapped up with memories of his father’s love and his father’s expectation, and smelling it in this unexpected place made his throat go rough.
He subtly cleared his throat and walked toward the intricately decorated teapot with matching cups set up on a carved wooden tray resting on the table in her receiving area, feeling bulky and stiff when he sat. Shanti glided gracefully into the seat across from him.
They just looked at each other for a long moment, as they’d been doing for months—as if someone was still in the room with them.
But no one was with them.
They were alone.
Just him and sexy Pikachu.
“I’ll pour the tea,” he said suddenly, needing to do something with his hands. It was fine to be attracted to his wife, but he certainly wasn’t going to act on it.
“You’re my guest,” she said in a tone that was steel wrapped in silken velvet. “I’ll pour.”
“A guest who is king,” he reminded her. “The king can be served or he can serve. He does whatever he wants.”
Shanti held his gaze as she reached over, picked up the teapot by the wooden handle, and then poured tea first into his cup and then into hers.
“Do you take sugar?” she asked, as though she hadn’t just blatantly defied his wishes. He remembered that quiet strength he’d seen in her from their very first meeting—a strength that he’d sought his entire life but could only mimic.
Every time he glimpsed that set of her shoulders and raising of her chin, it confused him. He’d been told all his life that no woman was strong enough to be a True Queen. No wife was strong enough to stay—he’d seen that himself over the years. But maybe . . .
No. Shanti would leave in just a few weeks. He doubted he’d take another wife soon after—although he needed to produce an heir, so there would be at least one.
Even if there was only one wife there should be more than one child; bearing the weight of an entire kingdom’s future on your own shoulders was too much for one person. The one time he’d ever firmly spoken back to his father and Musoke was during a turbulent argument about whether it was safe for him to go to high school abroad. Musoke had been listing all the terrible things that could happen, leaving the kingdom without an heir, and Sanyu’s teenage temper had erupted in a shout.
“If an heir is so important, just have more children and let me live my life! What is the point of so many wives if not to have children?”
Musoke had taken a deep breath as if to bellow, but the king had sighed heavily. “You push the boy to be strong but expect him not to speak back? Leave him. He is right.”
Sanyu had expected to hear a birth announcement all throughout high school, but his father had never sired another child—the last queen arrived and left during Sanyu’s senior year. He never even met her; he’d stopped visiting the queen’s wing well before he’d left and had forgotten most of the queens. The only reason he remembered anything about the last one at all was because of the shock she’d caused by not telling anyone about her appendix pain.
But he was here now, with a queen who seemed like she’d be impossible to forget.
“Tell me how living in Njaza has been for you,” he commanded just as she slipped a cube of sugar into his cup. It landed with a splash as her gaze jumped to meet his, revealing nothing.
“I thought we were going to talk politics, Husband.”
“Your thoughts on my kingdom is politics,” he said. “Humor me.”
“It’s been . . .” She held out his teacup with one hand and made a gesture he didn’t understand at all with the other, a kind of circle, as if she were whipping cake batter.
He took the cup with one hand and mimicked her hand motion with the other. “What does that mean? Is