raised her brows. “I was the one who matched you with her. We don’t use an algorithm for such high-level arrangements. I thought she’d make a good partner for you because of her brilliant mind, both of your backgrounds, and Njaza’s needs. Imagine my surprise when she disappeared and things in the kingdom started to trend downward.”
“I . . . like her. I’ve only just started to get to know her, though, after the mourning period, and I don’t think I’m doing that great in either the husband or the king department.”
Sanyu didn’t know what was wrong with him. He’d gone so long not telling his fears to anyone, and now he was sharing them with anyone who would listen?
“Have you read the Royal Match Arranged Marriage questionnaire?” she asked. “Ha, just kidding, I know you haven’t. I have it memorized though so we can go through the questions. Do you spend quality time with your arranged marriage partner? Yes or no.”
“Yes,” Sanyu said. “I have for the last week or so.”
“Out of three months? Wow, that’s not good, King Sanyu, sir.”
“Ms. Chetchevaliere.”
“Do you actively inquire as to your spouse’s happiness in and satisfaction with the relationship?” she continued.
“Yes. Kind of.”
“Do you actively inquire as to your spouse’s happiness in and satisfaction with life in general?”
Sanyu began to open his mouth.
“Yes is only applicable if you’ve done it more than once, King Sanyu.”
“No.”
“Do you do nice things for your spouse?”
“I spend time with her,” Sanyu said.
“So that’s a no. Do you actively ask about and encourage her interests—”
“Yes!” Sanyu nodded as if he’d just slam-dunked on her.
“—that are not related to the work of the kingdom?” she finished.
Sanyu groaned.
“Yikes,” she said. “Look, I get it, relationships are hard. Trust me, I’ve seen it all doing the investigations for the arranged marriage division, the marriage counseling division, and the royal divorce division. Humans are terrible, and somehow think they will get better just because they have a ring on their finger from another terrible human.”
She laughed to herself.
“Are you certain you really work for the Federation and for Royal Match? Don’t tell me employment is a social construct.”
She frowned. “But it is.”
Sanyu began to stand. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll take you to the library where you can see she is fine.”
What if she wasn’t fine, though? Was a couple of weeks enough to make up for months of really, really sucks?
“There is something else. Maybe I shouldn’t share this with you, though.”
Sanyu rolled his eyes. “Why stop sharing inappropriate or top secret things now? Go on.”
“After I got dumped by my latest girlfriend, my father sat me down and told me three surefire ways to make your partner happy since I was clearly so bad at it. One, if she says something pisses her off, do the opposite of that. Two, if you piss her off, apologize. Three, if she likes kissing, kiss her a lot. Four—”
“Didn’t you say it was three surefire ways?” Sanyu interrupted, his amusement starting to shift to annoyance.
Ms. Chetchevaliere clapped loudly and then pointed at him. “Four, pay attention to the details when she talks. See? You’ve already got this.”
Chapter 11
Shanti found that she couldn’t pretend to be interested in the scanning of dusty documents while working at the archives. She was fidgety and annoyed.
Her time was running out, she had a presentation to plan and a kingdom to save, and maybe—just maybe, if what had passed between her and Sanyu meant anything—a marriage to save as well, and she was wasting it sorting through literal garbage. The fact that Njaza had a long and rich history that she could have been immersing herself in but was instead given only the least important things to look through seemed like cruel irony. She was happy to have found the file on the queens, but most of the papers seemed less like archival material and more like a prank.
She huffed and grabbed a stack of papers from the ones Josiane had all but dumped in her lap with a glare, and snatched a paper that looked like the front page of a dissertation. She didn’t read the words until they appeared on the screen of the scanner:
On the ancient deities of Njaza: Omakuumi of War, Amageez of Wisdom, and Okwagalena of Peace.
A bolt of curiosity—and surety—went through Shanti. She’d never heard anyone speak of this Okwagalena, never seen mention of the name in all the materials she’d sorted.
She searched for the rest of the dissertation, but everything