How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,73

off on you? Within the last hour you’ve let this kingdom be disgraced by not one foreign woman, but two!”

Sanyu sighed. “I’m fine. The advisor is fine. My wife will not display her staff skill again. The soldier who didn’t recognize his own queen has learned a lesson. There’s no cause for further discussion.”

Sanyu was still standing at attention, but didn’t look so tense that he might keel over anymore.

“Is that your decision as king?” Musoke asked mockingly. “You’ve certainly been making interesting ones lately.”

“It is my decision, Advisor Musoke,” Sanyu said respectfully. “Let’s debrief the guards now. Go ahead of me to the guard station, if you wish.”

Musoke turned angrily and walked in the opposite direction, and the advisors and the guards followed.

“I’ll go back to the queen’s wing,” Shanti said.

She looked down, unsure of what she should do. Wave? Kiss him? Glide away like an elegant ghost?

“Shanti.”

His fingertips whispered up her neck, briefly, and she looked up.

“I owe you an apology. I laughed the night we met, when you said you’d protect me. I’m trying to be better about admitting when I was wrong.”

“I wouldn’t call taking a swing at an advisor protecting you,” she said, her body growing warm as the rough pad of his thumb grazed her throat.

“Neither would I,” he said. “I still owe you an apology.”

He lowered his head and Shanti closed her eyes—his lips pressed into her forehead, of all places, and for some reason it still sent a shock through her as if he’d crushed her mouth with his. Why were her nipples hard and her body tingling from a peck on the forehead?

Sanyu turned and followed Musoke.

Shanti should have been happy. Her husband had taken his first giant step toward being the king his people needed him to be. Her goal was to help the people of Njaza, but as she watched him stride away, she thought of how he’d resisted telling her why he didn’t want another wife and she hadn’t pushed, even though not knowing left her at a disadvantage.

It wasn’t that she always pushed; she was an expert at judging when to press and when to pull back. Her instincts had told her to press. Her heart had told her not to because she’d rather not know the answer yet, and she’d listened to her heart.

She’d thought that convincing Sanyu to let her stay, to perhaps be his True Queen, was worth anything. But she had to be careful. She was working to secure her crown, not her husband’s affection. And she certainly wasn’t willing to lose herself in the process.

Chapter 12

Something odd happened at the following day’s meeting of advisors: Sanyu paid full attention.

His mind didn’t drift, and he didn’t retreat into the shroud of grief or fantasies of escape. Because he didn’t allow himself to get distracted, he remembered why he had checked out to begin with—having to listen to everything said at these meetings was absolutely torturous.

Musoke talked about the greatness of Njaza and the former king as usual, but nothing he said was useful. He spoke of past glory, and even when he spoke of the future it was so deeply rooted in protecting the past that there was no material difference. Musoke was in possession of his faculties, but Sanyu was beginning to understand that perhaps he lacked something more important than logic and the knowledge that came with it—foresight.

Foresight was in the charts and projections Shanti had showed him about the possibility for change in the country; it was how she spoke of Njazans as people with minds of their own and not just a will-less mass that had to be led for their own good. It was in the future Sanyu began to shape in his mind as he reeducated himself on governance. He had hopes and dreams for his country, behind the belief that he’d never live up to his father’s legacy. Behind the not-fear that plagued him and usually made him freeze like a marshbuck in the headlights in meetings and onstage.

When his thoughts did stray, he heard Shanti’s voice in his head, which had slammed into him like Omakuumi dropping a boulder from above.

“If he doesn’t want to abide by your outdated traditions, he can change them. He is king!”

Two sentences. Two truths that he’d known but never fully understood until she’d said them with the conviction that was such an integral part of her.

He’d only ever been taught to uphold what already existed because with change came