by Alyssa Cole
He disconnected the call as Thabiso reached him, sporting the smile of a contented man in a world full of cause for discontentment.
“I haven’t seen you in denim for ages!” Thabiso said, walking in an exaggerated circle around Johan and stroking his beard. He gave a nod of approval. “Looking très rugged, meng ami.”
Johan felt strange in the stiff blue jeans he was wearing for the day’s activities, paired with the official wedding T-shirt he’d found in his room: soft-pink cotton emblazoned with #BisoVelcroLedi in black print, some inside joke between the couple, he assumed. His uniform outside of the gym, beach, and bed was at a minimum an oxford shirt and slacks, designer wear that fed into his playboy persona, but apparently what was in store today would require getting dirty.
Thabiso wore the loose-fitting purple linen tunic that was emblematic of Thesoloian royal sporting wear. As the summer sun beat down on Johan, he wished he had opted for the same.
“I thought about doing double denim, but I didn’t want to get anyone too hot and bothered,” Johan said. “Mostly myself.”
Thabiso laughed. “Speaking of that, are you sure you’re up for today? It’s okay if you need to rest,” he said as they walked through the ornately carved wooden front doors of the palace. “The traditional wedding hunt is, well, tradition, but I’d rather not visit the royal hospital ever again.”
Johan straightened, puffing his chest a bit. Sometimes he forgot that Thabiso had known him for half his life, before the muscles and the fancy haircuts and the models. Thabiso had met Bad Boy Jo-Jo 1.0, awkwardly posturing as he tried to fit in at a school full of rich boys who had nothing in common with the boys of his childhood except for their ability to sniff out weakness—or emotion, which was the same as weakness to them.
Thabiso had been there in the aftermath of Johan’s loss and, though they didn’t speak of it often, knew why Johan was out of sorts.
“I’m feeling much better, and I made sure to eat breakfast and hydrate,” Johan said as they approached the small cluster of people near the palace’s grand fountain, abstract cubes beneath steady flowing water, meant to emulate the breathtaking waterfalls the country was known for. “I should be able to stay upright as long as I steer clear of small, abnormally hot rooms.”
He had no idea how long he’d sat in the sauna the day before. After swimming laps with Thabiso, reenacting their swim team years, he’d gone in to sweat out anxiety about Lukas and memories of his mother. He’d fallen deep into thoughts about his family and the future of Liechtienbourg. Then Nya had come in, and leaving hadn’t even occurred to him.
Then he’d fainted on top of her.
Super.
“Oh. What does phoko mean?” he asked Thabiso. He knew conversational Thesotho, but had never come across the word.
Thabiso stroked his beard. “Rumor? I guess that’s the closest translation.”
“Oh,” Johan said. “That makes sense.”
He’d been a bit giddy when Nya had bequeathed him with a nickname, but this felt worse than other insults, though it made sense. That’s what came to mind when people thought of him: rumors of his wild and wicked deeds. It was the bed he’d constructed for himself, purposefully and with great dedication, and Nya had simply laid him in it.
“Perhaps you misheard?” Thabiso asked, as if sensing that hadn’t been the answer Johan wanted. “There’s also phokojoe. It means fox. We have children’s tales of Phokojoe, a trickster god. He would turn himself into what people desired most in the world to lure them into his mystical lair.”
Johan grinned and nodded appreciatively. “I see.”
That made sense, too.
“It sounds bad, but it’s a fairy tale.” Thabiso clapped him on the shoulder. “It has a happy ending.”
Johan had been obsessed with fairy tales as a child; his mother had given him a big book of them, and he’d read them under her desk in the royal secretary’s office, back when she’d been single and her dealings with royalty had been in an official capacity, as an employee. When her time at work had been regulated by workers’ rights protections. Queens had no such protections, it turned out.
The stories in that book were why Johan had been terrified when the king had fallen in love with his mother. They were why he’d tried to sabotage their love up to the day of the wedding. Not because King Linus was evil, but because everyone had started to say their love was a fairy tale, and it had seemed to Johan that a curse was being laid down, by tabloids instead of an evil witch.
He’d known how the fairy tales he’d memorized played out—there was unnecessary pain and suffering caused by the human need for love and shelter. And he’d known how they ended—with sadness and longing, and mothers dead and gone.
Thabiso was fond of Disney, though—Johan had been dragged into many a rewatch of childhood classics in Thabiso’s dorm room—so Johan didn’t give him his TED talk on why fairy tales didn’t mean happy endings. He just nodded.
When he glanced at Thabiso, he realized his friend hadn’t seen his agreement because he was staring down the long, columned walkway that stretched along the front of the palace. Johan tracked Thabiso’s gaze to Naledi. If he looked at his friend very closely, he was sure he could make out little hearts fluttering about Thabiso’s head like an InstaPhoto filter. If he looked at himself closely, he could make out the pool of dark-green churning envy that had opened up at his feet.
What would it be like to be able to love like that? Openly, without fear that it would be snatched away? Thabiso had never lost anyone he cared for. Johan didn’t wish that for his friend, ever, but he couldn’t help but be jealous of it.
“Hey, Biso.” Ledi stepped joyfully into Thabiso’s arms. Naledi had lost people she loved, but it’d happened so long ago that she couldn’t remember. She could only think about what she’d gained: family, friends, and a people she would help lead.
Johan was happy for them. He didn’t want to feel envy. He didn’t want to feel anything and that’s how he went about his life because, as with everything, if Johan did something he did it excessively.
“Why is the boy crying under your desk again, Laetitia?” King Linus asked with concern.
“My Jo-Jo is very sensitive, Your Highness. Some of the boys at school don’t understand that–”
“Mamm, don’t tell him!” Johan glanced up apprehensively, waiting for Linus to explain that Johan was eight and too old for such behavior, like Johan’s teachers did.
His mother’s cool fingers brushed against his cheeks, wiping away his tears, and she looked down at him with understanding in her eyes because she always understood these things.
“It is a gift to feel so much, Jo-Jo. It is what makes you special. Don’t forget that.”
“Mmoro, Phoko.” When Johan looked down, pulled from his memory, Nya stood before him. She wore a pink head wrap tied into a bow, her bun of braids poking through, and her lips had been swiped with a sparkly nude gloss. Her outfit was the same pink T-shirt he wore, but in a scoop-neck style, paired with curve-hugging blue jeans and pink trainers.
Her clothing accentuated her curves, but it was her wide brown eyes that stopped him. There was a bit of the shyness he’d thought was her most noticeable feature, but there was also playfulness and a kind of probing concern that skewered him. “Are you doing better?”
She’d asked him the same at dinner the evening before, but her grandmother had come and pulled her away, telling her that there were people she had to greet so as not to seem rude.
“Ouay,” he answered carefully. There were few people who inquired about his well-being and meant it. Most of them were in his peripheral vision—Thabiso, Tavish, Ledi, and Portia. For some reason, their inquiries didn’t make him feel like this. There was something about Nya that pulled at him—a pull he had been fighting successfully for a year and a half but, in the wake of their recent run-ins, was starting to feel like a losing battle.
His control was slipping again.
If he�
�d only wanted to sleep with Nya, it would have been manageable. Lust was basic and could be ignored. But his attraction swelled each time he saw her, ballooned each time he heard her voice, and because he most definitely would not indulge it, had been all he’d thought of since the plane had landed in Thesolo.
Oh là là.
“Here,” she said, and pressed something smooth and rectangular into his hand. “In case you feel woozy again.”
He looked down at the juice box he now held, decided the illustration of a dew-speckled peach on the box was not a hidden message, then looked back at her.
This might have been a joke at his expense—fainting wasn’t manly after all, and being saved by not one woman but two was even less so. Johan had grown up being told so many of the things he did weren’t manly. He’d chosen playboy as his public persona because he could hold a grudge and enjoyed petty revenge as much as the next person.
However, if it wasn’t a joke, then that meant Nya, the woman who had captured his attention completely as she stood quietly trying to make herself smaller, and whom he’d been rude to for months, had worried about him. This morning, she’d thought of him and searched out a juice box, specifically to give to him. It was a kindness. It was a connection.
Oh là là là là.
He’d been wrong about her, had seen her as some timid woodland creature who might skitter too close to him if she wasn’t careful, and get caught in his snare if he wasn’t even more careful than her, but in fact she was simply kind. Nothing so benign as nice or pleasant, but kind. There was nothing soft or gentle about that trait in a world that specialized in crushing it.
If he were a superhero, a kind woman would be his kryptonite. Good thing he wasn’t one; it meant he could fight the urge to say something deliberately cutting and crude just to, figuratively, hurl her into the sun.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem!” She smiled at him once more, revealing two front teeth that were slightly too large. Johan had seen her teeth before, had never paid particular attention to them, but now he felt a throb in his chest and his brain shouted that those two teeth were somehow extremely cute.
Oh là là là là là là.
She walked over to Portia and Tav, who were chatting with a palace guard about his scimitar. Likotsi, Thabiso’s assistant, and her wife, Fabiola, had shown up, and apparently neither had received the memo about dressing down, as Likotsi was wearing a linen suit and leather loafers and Fabiola looked like she’d stepped out of a pinup calendar right into a pair of six-inch heels. Each of them pulled Nya into a hug, and they each kept a hand on her arm as they talked to her.
Nya grinned and seemed to fawn over Fabiola’s shoes—Johan refused to imagine what those heels would look like on Nya. He slipped the juice box into his backpack and walked over to his friends.
“Let’s take a selfie,” Portia said, grabbing him and placing him next to Nya, then pulling out her selfie stick. Everyone huddled together, and though Johan mostly avoided impromptu photos unless he had staged them to be impromptu, he moved closer to Nya, resting his hand on her shoulder on one side and his cheek against her braids on the other.
She smelled good, like ylang-ylang and the musk of whatever oils she used on her hair, the same scent he’d gotten a whiff of when he’d awoken on the plane. And she was warm, but not soft—she’d gone stiff at his touch.
“Sorry,” he murmured, beginning to move his hand away, but she reached up to stay him. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, but she was looking at Portia’s cell phone, lips slightly parted.
“Say ‘hashtag Thesolo forever’!” Portia called out.
Johan didn’t say anything because all of his attention was on Nya’s hand atop his. It was hard enough tearing his gaze from her to look toward the phone, but he finally did.
“Perfect,” Portia said, scrolling through the photos as everyone broke apart.
“Attention guests!” The commanding, unignorable voice of Thabiso’s mum, Queen Ramatla, boomed over the small gathering and they all turned to her. She was flanked by her husband the king on one side and Nya’s—and Naledi’s—grandparents on the other. “We thank you all for making time in your busy schedules to see our beloved Thabiso and Naledi joined before Ingoka and the goddess legion. Now, on this day before the wedding, we will have our traditional wedding hunt.”
“And you made fun of my fixation on medieval hunting after I found that book at Mary’s,” Tav said smugly, grinning at Portia. “Now my useless information gets to save the day.”
“You know I love all of your useless information, honey,” Portia said warmly.
“Enough, you two,” Johan said lightly. “Save it for the hunting trail.”
Portia raised her hand, as if they were in class. “So by hunting . . .”
“Of course, times have changed, and we will not be asking you to actually harm any animals,” the king said.
“Thank goodness,” Portia exhaled. She slid her arm through Tavish’s and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Johan felt the pool of envy lapping at his toes again and looked away. He flexed his hand, still tingling from Nya’s brief touch.
“You are here because you are closest to the hearts of our beloveds,” Queen Ramatla said loudly.
“And because we are too old to be bothered with such sport,” Makalele added, drawing laughter from the group. He tweaked Naledi’s elbow and she beamed at him.
“The tradition used to be that the bosom friends of the beloveds would form hunting parties of two, sent out to bring back meat for the next day’s feast. But, as our kitchen is well stocked, the goal is simply to bring back a living animal of the type required.”
“Wait, we still have to capture live, wild animals?” Portia exclaimed.
“They’re domesticated, not wild,” Ledi corrected.
“Now, you must break off into pairs,” Annie said, ignoring Portia. She raised her hands and surveyed the small crowd. “Well, it appears that is already done. Ledi and Thabiso, Portia and His Grace, Kotsi and Fabiola, and . . .”
Her hands dropped and she fixed Johan with the look. The look that said I’ve heard about you. He ran a hand through his hair, scruffing it to make himself look younger and less threatening, and then gave her his most dazzling smile.
She twisted her lips. “. . . Johan and our Nya.” She paused. “You, boy. Listen.”
Johan pointed at himself innocently. “Me, Auntie?”
Thabiso groaned even though he was the one who had taught Johan the honorific. Annie looked even more suspicious.
“I expect you to behave properly with our precious granddaughter, even though you will be alone, unsupervised, and—”
“I’m a grown woman, Nkhono,” Nya said, cutting her grandmother off. “I can handle myself, just as I did living alone in one of the biggest cities in the world. And Johan is . . . a friend. You don’t have to worry.”
Johan wasn’t surprised by much, but Nya’s use of the word friend did just that. He had friends, and even more people who claimed him as such. But after over a year of purposefully ignoring her, then crudely asking her to join him in bed, then collapsing on top of her, she would call him friend?
His heart beat a little bit faster.
“Yes. We’re friends,” Johan added, hoping to quell any fears, and because he liked saying it out loud.
Since when? Portia mouthed at him, her thin eyebrows drawn together speculatively.
“Only friends.” Johan stepped in front of Portia, eclipsing her from Annie’s view. “Nya is safe with me.”
He glanced at Nya, hoping she felt reassured, too, but she’d pulled out her phone and was staring at it intently, lips screwed up in a way that showed annoyance but was also entirely kissable. He waited for her to look over at him, but apparently whatever was on her phone held her attention.
“You are saying you won’t debauch my granddaughter?” Annie asked bluntly, apparently determined to draw this uncomfortable m
oment out.
“Never,” Johan said, placing his hand over his heart. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“I would worry a little bit,” Makalele said, with a twinkle in his eye, teasing his wife. “He’s a handsome lad. He reminds me of that Liechtienbourgish soldier on leave from Njaza who tried to woo you away from me all those years ago. Doesn’t he resemble him?”
Annie shot him a different kind of look. “I have no idea what you mean, as I did not consort with colonizers. But if I had to remember, I do believe it was you he was trying to woo, no?” Makalele shrugged sheepishly and Annie looked back at the group, her gaze jumping from Johan to Tavish. “Not that you are colonizers. Not currently.”
“It’s a nasty addiction, that colonizing. Glad we were broken of the habit,” Johan said smoothly.
“Okay, I like this boy,” Makalele said, shaking his finger in Johan’s direction. “Come now, Annie. Relax.”
Annie still looked suspicious, but finally nodded. “You will be led to animal-specific ‘hunting’ grounds, cleared with the landowners, where you will spend the morning finding your quarry. And that’s it. No funny business.”
She darted a final warning glare at Johan.
“What? I was promised there would be funny business.” Fabiola pouted.
“I have an exemption,” Likotsi said. “You shall have all the funny business you desire, my lady.”
“Johan has already made it clear that I’m not the type to inspire debauchery, Nkhono,” Nya said stiffly, staring at her phone. “It is unnecessary to press the issue.”
Johan glanced at Nya and saw a message pop up on her phone:
I got no response to my last message, cherie. Do you not have time for me? I thought we had something special, but perhaps I was wrong.
She angled the phone away from him, frowning as her fingers tapped at the screen, then tucked it into her pocket.
A feeling that Johan hadn’t experienced since the moment he’d peered out from under his mother’s desk and saw her and Linus staring at each other in starry-eyed wonder gripped him: jealousy. This was different from amorphous envy at his friends’ relationships.