let his head drop back and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then met her gaze again. “Musoke tried to convince me you were a spy set on destroying the kingdom.”
“I’m not,” she said, though she could see how pieces could be sorted to make things look that way.
“You’re giving a speech on Njaza?” he asked. “Next weekend? As if you’re an expert? It went up on some website today and people began to contact the council if this means we’re resuming relations with Thesolo.”
Shanti cringed.
“I meant to tell you,” she said. “I got invited to the Royal Unity Weekend. I’ve spent my entire life dreaming of being invited, but I only got the invite today because my mail was being held. And how was I supposed to ask you when you haven’t even told me if you want me here next weekend or after? The trial ends in a week and you’re just leaving that carrot dangling in front of me. Until when? What do I have to do to be deserving of it?”
“Deserving?” Sanyu’s eyes widened with incredulity. “How am I supposed to ask you to stay and take on all this work for a country you think really sucks?”
Shanti’s annoyance grew. “You told me you didn’t want another wife. Do you know how cruel it was to say that if you don’t want me either?”
Tears of frustration, with herself and the entire situation, trickled down her cheeks and she dashed them away.
“And you told me that you didn’t care about love,” he countered. “You made that abundantly clear. Love wasn’t necessary to a good marriage, wasn’t needed as a precursor to sex, and wasn’t something that interested you, specifically. Even if you were a True Queen, how would I feel growing old with a wife who didn’t love me or my kingdom but only stayed to check something off her to-do list? You’d leave once you found a new goal—or a husband you actually loved.”
He held her gaze, and Shanti felt that annoying, painful sensation in her chest again.
“I didn’t care about love, or think it was necessary,” she said quietly. “Until I did. I don’t know when it happened but I—”
“Don’t.” The word was hard, but his eyes couldn’t hide that thing he’d told her didn’t exist in the Central Palace: hope.
She ran her hands over his shoulders, stroked his neck, his beard, feeling the smooth and rough and prickly textures of him that had become familiar to her over the past few weeks—that would change and become familiar again and again if four months became forever.
“I care,” she said. “When I was upset because you were looking for a new wife, it wasn’t because I was mad about losing my title. When I didn’t make you tell me why you didn’t want a new queen, it wasn’t because I didn’t care—it was because I hoped it meant you wanted me. Over the last few weeks I’ve started—I’ve felt . . .” She laughed helplessly and sniffled. “I don’t know if this is love.”
“Don’t you have some manuals or notes about marital relations somewhere to help us figure this out?” he asked, his voice gruff but with a hint of laughter underlying some other, deeper emotion.
She huffed out a chuckle, and his hands settled on her back.
“I thought love was an unnecessary source of problems in a marriage, and I wasn’t wrong about that,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, look at us.”
Sanyu laughed again and instead of loosening that pain in her chest, it made it tighter.
“But . . . this? What I feel for you. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Is it teamwork?” he asked, pulling her closer to him. Though it was already warm in the tunnel, the heat of him soothed her like she’d just come in from the cold.
“Yes,” she said as she laid her head on his chest. “I teamwork you.”
The laugh that boomed from him almost bounced her off of him, but she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.
“I teamwork you, too,” he said.
She lifted her head to look at him, and his arms squeezed her more tightly as he lifted her from the ground so that her face was level with his. As she was dragged up his body, his hardening penis throbbed against her belly, her mound, and came to a rest at midthigh.
“If I were a good king, I’d bring you to my office to discuss the meeting tomorrow,” he said, then grazed