How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,5
he’d been taught of love nipping at his heels.
“Wives will sap you with their needs and demands, if you let them,” his father had told him. “If you let one close, she will try to rule you, and that will be our kingdom’s downfall. I don’t worry about that, though. You are my son, and would never be foolish enough to fall in love with your own wife.”
His bride-to-be was gorgeous in the way of beauty pageant contestants, and likely just as superficial. Still . . . there was something in the set of her shoulders and the way her fingertips trembled before she clenched them into fists. How her gaze was lowered but her chin was raised. There was something solid about her, substantial.
If Sanyu didn’t already know that no wife had ever been strong enough to be a True Queen, he might have thought that this woman could do it.
No. It’s a trick of the light.
She turned to face him, then bowed low as he approached her; the movement was so excruciatingly graceful that it couldn’t be classified as the submissive action it was supposed to be.
His stomach clenched and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. She hadn’t even spoken yet, and he was drawn to her as if she’d lassoed him and pulled the knot fast. He approached slowly, and when she raised her head and stood straight, the imaginary rope squeezed even more snugly around him. Her eyes were a deep brown, dark like the tilled earth of Njaza’s terraced farms, and fertile with unbloomed possibility.
“It is pleasureful to meet you, Princess Sanyu,” she said. “Me called Shanti.”
Sanyu was almost amused at her terrible Njazan, but her voice . . . it was powerful and soothing at once, like the warm jets of his royal spa beating against his aching muscles after a long, stressful day. He wanted to hear her say his name again with her curious accent, and that was another hook she’d dug into him; he couldn’t allow this strange, intense interest in the woman who’d be his wife.
“Desire is fine in moderation, but if left unchecked leads to attachment, which is weakness. The king desires only the respect of his people; a wife is an accessory, like a scepter or a crown. He must be as strong without his accessories as he is with them.”
She took a deep breath when he stared down at her but said nothing, and then continued in English accented by the soft singsong of her native Thesoloian. “I am most grateful to be chosen as your queen, and I will do my best to honor and protect you and your people.”
“You will protect me,” he repeated darkly, anger wiping away any amusement.
“Yes,” she said, her thin brows twitching together briefly in confusion. “Of course, I will.”
Already she disrespected him—as if the king needed the protection of a mere wife. Sanyu would put an end to this now.
“What do they say about a child who behaves badly in your kingdom?” he asked, his voice honed into a sharp thing that would send her running from the jab of it.
Her nostrils flared softly, but she didn’t hesitate.
“They used to say ‘he’s been switched at birth for a Njazan,’” she said stiffly. “No one says that anymore. It was cruel and wrong.”
“What do they say of a man who gets angry and uses his fist before his brains?”
“That he must have Njazan blood. They used to say that.” She straightened her back a little more. “Not anymore. The queen and king made it clear that such talk was not acceptable.”
“And what do they say about Njazans themselves? In Thesolo and elsewhere on our great continent?”
Her back was so ramrod straight now that her chest thrust forward; he kept his gaze above her shoulders. She didn’t answer, so he did for her.
“They call us the savages of the Serengeti. The heathens of the Kukureba Highlands. Yet you intend to marry me.” He walked in a circle around her, leaving enough space between them to let her know he wouldn’t actually touch her but close enough that she wouldn’t be able to ignore his size or his words. “A man you don’t know. A man who might be cruel and quick to anger, as the rumors say. Surely, you’ve heard of the Iron Fist of Njaza, of the wives who disappear and are never seen or mentioned again.”
He’d been asked countless times at his boarding school if they had a dungeon in