How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,38
he would be able to fill his father’s shoes and please Musoke. If you didn’t barter for affection, why had Sanyu had to work so hard to earn scraps of it?
“That’s true in some ways,” she conceded. “Our marriage was arranged after all, with both of us seeing some use in the other. But that’s a situation, not an emotion. If you think I’ll work for your love like a dog does for treats, you’re mistaken. Although maybe there are other things to be traded.”
Her expression was serious, but her eyes were hot—her need blazing. Three months of marriage with no consummation. Much longer for him without mutual release of any kind. Sanyu couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to be touched so badly. And Shanti? She looked like she wanted to touch him.
He leaned forward, needing to close the distance between them, wanting his own wife so badly that it throbbed through him. “We can—”
“Tell me what you want for this kingdom and we can take it from there,” she said, leaning back in her seat, her voice husky but her resolve clear—business, not pleasure. “I know you have ideas of your own. I was there when you set up the land mine initiative with Prince Johan. What else do you want to do?”
He did have ideas. He’d had so many once that they’d overwhelmed him, but the ones he’d managed to share had been written off as too idealistic, too soft, even though all he’d wanted to do was make his country stronger. He’d watched Thabiso, prince of Shanti’s kingdom, work side by side with his parents, even as his own rejected ideas piled up high alongside Musoke’s critiques. Eventually, Sanyu had stopped trying.
No one had cared about his lack of input for a long time. Until now.
“I want . . . Njaza to break free of its isolation,” he said, making his voice firm even as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye to see her reaction.
She was listening attentively, no judgement on her face, but no approval either. “Yes, like you told Prince Johan. Go on.”
“I want it to become a kingdom where people are kept safe, but not caged.”
She nodded, and something in that tiny crumb of approval, freely given, moved through Sanyu like the aftershocks of a tectonic shift. “Excellent. What else?”
He cleared his throat. “I want us to invest in industry and establish new trade agreements. Starting with the Rail Pan Afrique project.”
“See? You want a lot of things.” The smile she gave him was radiant. “And you’ve come to the right queen for that. I’m going to help you get them.”
The problem was he also wanted her.
Some people liked their spouses; some even managed to love them. He knew that intellectually, just as he’d always known he’d one day be king, but for him marriage had always been a requirement of his job.
Sitting with Shanti didn’t feel like work, though. Or, it felt like he’d imagined work was supposed to feel when he’d playacted as king as a young boy—thrilling.
“And what do you want in trade for your time and skill?” he asked.
He went very still as her gaze traveled over his body.
“I want to know what happened to the previous queens of Njaza,” she said, and all of the heat in him went cold.
“I don’t know what happened to them,” he said, beginning to come to his senses. What had he been thinking, visiting her here? “They married my father and they left. I didn’t interact with them very much.”
Not after the umpteenth disappearance without a goodbye, when the true understanding of why his father and Musoke told him he must never love a queen that wasn’t the true one had set in: when you didn’t love them, it didn’t hurt when they left, and they had to leave. As Shanti would—Musoke had already stated that she wasn’t a True Queen.
Shanti’s brow rose. “You didn’t interact with them? Your mother—”
“I never knew my mother,” he said tersely. “She left me—left the palace, like all of the others. I don’t remember her, like I don’t remember the others. The last queen here was half a lifetime ago, and there were so many of them that I lost track. It’s not important.”
He waved his hand dismissively.
She looked at him in a way that made him think of the artwork of the god Amageez—cool, strategizing. Except women couldn’t be touched by Amageez. That was why none of them were allowed