How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,63
king’s personal gym swung open, Sanyu jumped awake from the nap he’d slipped into while sitting on a bench after his workout. He was exhausted from late nights with Shanti, followed by reading everything he could find about the governance of kingdoms. Reading and rereading, rather. He’d studied many of the books long ago, back before he’d understood the difference between theory and practice.
He found that certain concepts jumped out to him now, like the free flow of ideas and checks and balances on leadership. Before, he’d always been overwhelmed by ideas of how to run a kingdom and the possibilities that stemmed off exponentially from them—so many paths that might lead toward Njaza’s doom if he chose incorrectly. But something in his brain’s filter had refined as he discussed things with Shanti. He hadn’t changed, but before he’d taken everything in at once because his only parameter had been “what a king of Njaza must do to prevent disaster.” Now he was able to sort ideas by whether they related to “what King Sanyu II will do to create change for the better,” which wasn’t a small task either, but cut down on the overwhelm of considering every possibility.
“Musoke wants to see you in his office,” Lumu said, with none of his joviality.
“Now?” Sanyu sighed. “I’ll go after I shower.”
He began to pull himself up, the aches and twinges of his body giving him a momentary sense of accomplishment.
“Make it fast,” Lumu said. “He’s in his office with some woman who was found trespassing on palace grounds, and this could go very badly.”
All of the tension Sanyu had just thrashed out of his body returned. He took the shortest shower of his life, sloppily wrapped his robe, and bounded off to Musoke’s office.
The old advisor was seated across from a stranger in a black suit with thick dark hair cut into a bob; he stared at her in a way clearly meant to intimidate. As Sanyu walked round the desk to stand beside Musoke, he saw that the woman had brown skin and eyes that were huge and hazel behind the round wire-rimmed glasses she wore.
She was staring back at Musoke.
She wasn’t blinking.
“Is this the person found trespassing?” Sanyu asked when neither said anything.
“I wasn’t trespassing, I was creatively entering in an effort to carry out our contract,” she replied, keeping her wide-eyed gaze fixed on Musoke. Her accent was one Sanyu had never heard before—a mixture of clipped consonants paired with singsong vowels.
She unbuttoned her blazer with a tight flip of her thumb, reached into an inner pocket to pull out a card, then handed it toward Sanyu’s general direction without breaking her gaze away from Musoke.
“Are you two having a staring contest?” Sanyu asked, reaching out to grab the card and read it.
BEZNARIA CHETCHEVALIERE
JUNIOR INVESTIGATOR
WORLD FEDERATION OF MONARCHISTS
“It appears we are,” she said, resting her hands on her knees. “I’m here to investigate the status of Shanti Mohapti, whose marriage was brokered through RoyalMatch.com. All requests for follow-ups and quality-of-life checks have been ignored, and so I came to ensure said quality of life. Your advisor responded to my questions with staring. Unbeknownst to him, I am Ibarania’s Official Staring Contest Champion.”
“Your country has official staring contests?” Sanyu asked. It was a small island in the Mediterranean, even smaller than Njaza. Maybe there wasn’t much to do there.
“That depends on your definition of official,” she said, hinging forward as if adding the pressure of her athletic frame to her gaze. “At the very least I was regional champion, in the region that is my family’s home.”
Sanyu blinked a few times, wondering if this woman was a spy and this strange behavior was some kind of psy-op.
“She was found scaling the fence, Your Highness,” Rafiq, the head of the guard, said. “A donkey cart full of cabbages had been left in the middle of the main road.”
“You have no right to enter the private property of the royal family of Njaza,” Musoke said.
“You have no right to deny me information about Shanti Mohapti’s well-being, unless the rumor about the dungeons beneath the Central Palace being full of dead queens is true.”
She grabbed the edge of the desk and half stood, her gaze still boring into Musoke’s.
“Ms. Chetchevaliere,” Sanyu warned.
“You blinked,” she said matter-of-factly to Musoke, lowering herself into her seat with an expression of relief. “I won. Bring me the queen.”
“What?” Musoke’s voice was choked with anger.
Ms. Chetchevaliere poked her glasses up the short bridge of her nose,