by Alyssa Cole
“Do you know anything about the civil war in Njaza?” Sanyu asked, looking down at Johan. There was a carefully controlled grace to his movements, though he was a large man. Behind them Shanti, willowy and with doleful eyes, spoke quietly with Nya, and a retinue of three royal guards and two advisors hovered behind them all.
Johan almost said “of course” but it wasn’t a matter of course. He’d had to research on his own because Liechtienbourg’s treatment of Njaza had all but been written out of their history books. His country had done a great many good things in the past, and it seemed that this was the shame they preferred to overlook. “I’ve read about the various factions that struggled for power after independence was won, but I always welcome more information,” he said.
Sanyu came to a stop and Johan followed suit, peering into a room with several children playing—no, they weren’t playing. Well, not just playing. It was physical therapy: several of them were wearing prosthetic limbs, and some raced around in wheelchairs.
“I can give you information, but only one thing is currently relevant. Land mines. Land mines lie in the earth of Njaza and, like much of history, one wrong move sets off a powder keg.” Sanyu gestured to the children, and his expression was lined with fatigue. “After Njaza won its freedom by force, we were blacklisted. Strapped down with sanctions and boxed out by tariffs.”
Johan breathed deeply and blinked. As always, the unfairness of the world was something that cut into him quick and deep.
I know it’s not fair, my Jo-Jo. We cannot right every wrong, but we can’t be crushed by that fact. We help where we can, liebling. Others help, too. And it makes a difference even when it doesn’t feel like enough.
“My father was a proud man. He responded to the shunning by doubling down, by telling the world we didn’t need their help and turning away the aid of even our neighboring countries.” Sanyu exhaled deeply, like a bodybuilder readjusting his hold on the overloaded barbell he was charged with lifting. “I have been away for a few years, and now that I’m back I’m working on many, many things, but my country has been cut off from assistance for years. I’m tired of seeing my people injured, von Braustein. You spoke of making things right when you contacted me? I don’t give a damn if this is just good publicity for you. If you want to help, this is where it starts.”
Johan gazed at the children, then nodded. “Okay.”
Sanyu glanced at him sidelong. “That’s it? You’ll just wave your magic wand?”
“Well, no, we have a lot to talk about and set up, but that will take some time. I am saying okay, I am committed to helping, no matter what happens during the referendum, and I believe King Linus and Prince Lukas will also pledge their aid.” He made a silly face at a boy who was giving him a puzzled look through the glass. “Some of the children are pointing at me and laughing, so I think we should go say hello.”
“I believe I will go help plan the evening meal,” Shanti said woodenly, turning and walking away before anyone could reply.
“Let’s go in,” Sanyu said, a frown on his face as he pulled the door open. The children crowded toward them, ignoring their therapists as they moved toward the door.
Johan sat down on a chair so he was closer to eye level with the children. This was one thing he didn’t have to worry about faking. A bold little girl with two afro puffs walked up to him.
“Are you from Liechtienbourg?” she asked.
“Yes,” Johan said. “But I came to visit my friend Sanyu, and he brought me here because he said you were the coolest people in Njaza.”
The girl crossed her arms. “My mother says never to trust a Liechtienbourger because they’ll steal your land from you while handing you a lollipop.”
Sanyu laughed and Johan grinned while patting at his pockets.
“Your mother is very smart. I ran out of lollipops, though, so your land is safe.” He waggled his fingers to show empty hands and the girl smiled.
Nya came and knelt beside him. “What’s your name?” she asked the girl.
“Angela. And yours is Nya.” Angela patted Nya’s leg. “We saw it on the news. They say that you will be a princess!”
“She’d make a very beautiful princess, don’t you think?” Johan cut in, seeing Nya’s surprise and hesitation.
“Yes!” Angela cried out. Nya settled on the ground beside him and they passed the next half hour that way, playing with the children, before being escorted to visit with other older patients and to talk with hospital staff.
At the end of the long day, they shared dinner together.
Shanti bowed her head after everyone had been seated. “I hope everyone enjoys the selection. I cooked it myself to honor both the newfound relationship forming between Liechtienbourg and Njaza, and to welcome the sister of my land and to . . . congratulate her.”
“Super,” Johan said, keeping his tone from being overly warm. “We appreciate your kindness and your hospitality.”
“Yes,” Nya added. “Oh, you made goat stew! Thank you!”
“Thank you, Wife,” Sanyu said, but as he lifted a spoon to taste, one of the aides behind his chair, who had followed him everywhere throughout the day, stepped forward.
“Taste test, Your Highness.”
Sanyu grudgingly held out the spoon. The man sipped at the broth, spit it into a napkin, and shook his head. Another aide surged from behind him to pull the plate away. “It does not meet royal standards. The meal from the royal chef will be brought out.”
Sanyu sighed, and Shanti placed her own fork down.
“Well, I think it’s delicious,” Nya said brusquely. “And I bet you worked very hard, Shanti. Thank you.”
She shot Sanyu a pointed look.
“Yes, Wife. Thank you,” Sanyu said in his gravelly voice.
Shanti nodded, but kept her gaze down as she excused herself from the table.
Sanyu continued the conversation smoothly, and Johan went along with it as they discussed other possible ventures Sanyu had planned. Sanyu couldn’t hide how he glanced at the empty seat, and Johan felt a bit of pity for the man.
Love really could be terrible. Good thing he was an expert at avoiding it.
Chapter 10
The bedroom prepared for Nya and Johan was luxurious bordering on excessive, but then Sanyu’s father had been very into visual displays of power. He hadn’t started charities for children and pressed for help reentering the national stage in order to gain allies and help shore up his country’s infrastructure, as Sanyu had discussed over dinner.
As Johan sprawled on the bed, large enough to hold a football scrimmage on, he was dismayed to find that he might actually be growing to like Sanyu. He was really going to have to stop this liking people business.
Nya came out from the shower, sporting a plush-looking bathrobe that was much too large and threatened to slip off her shoulders. Johan didn’t want it to—if he was given the chance to see her body, he wanted it to be her decision. The robe, not caring about what Johan wanted, suddenly slid down, revealing the thin spaghetti strap of her nightgown and the smooth curve of her shoulder.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked.
“Druk. A Himalayan kingdom and Njaza’s main trade partner,” he said. “Are you glad you got to see your friend?”
She stretched out on the other end of the much too large bed. She wasn’t even within arm’s reach, which was perhaps why she had flopped down without trepidation. That and she was probably exhausted.
All of this had started with sharing a bed, on the private jet, and an accidental cuddle. When she’d listed the scope of their relationship, cuddling hadn’t been included, which was disappointing but probably for the best.
“Shanti? We weren’t friends before, though I hope we are now. I didn’t have any, really, and I don’t think she did either. All I know of her is that her family was determined that she would marry royalty and she spent most of her life training to be the perfect political wife.” Nya sighed.
“That, and the fact that Ledi threw up on her during her illness.”
“Hmm.” Shanti had seemed more like the perfect Stepford wife, but he considered that he might be misunderstanding some cultural aspect of her behavior.
“She’s miserable,” Nya said.
No, he’d understood perfectly.
“What do you make of Sanyu?” he asked.
She pursed her lips in concentration and Johan looked away from them. “I think Sanyu will make a good king one day,” she said diplomatically. “I’m not sure if he’ll ever make a good husband.”
Johan sighed. “This is why I don’t believe in marriage.”
“You don’t either?” Nya asked sleepily, surprising him. “At least Shanti can leave the marriage at the end of the Njazan wedding trial if she wants. Not everyone is so lucky.”
“Wait. You were the most emotional guest at Thabiso and Naledi’s wedding. Every time I looked—” It wouldn’t be good to reveal how often he had looked at her over the course of that night. “You seemed very into it.”
“I am into it. For other people,” she said. “I spent my whole life cooking and cleaning and doing what I was told, and that’s what most marriages seem to be. I see no reason to willingly trap myself in such a situation.”
Her voice turned hard, like when she’d kicked him out of the jet’s private bedroom or when she’d stood up to her grandmother. Her kindness made it easy for him to forget that she’d had a difficult life. When someone was so open, it was easier to think that they’d never gone through hardship, because if they could come through it in that way, why couldn’t other people?
Why couldn’t he?
Johan had taken his kindness and buried it beneath parties and suits and reams of tabloid covers. He felt a kind of awe that Nya had gone through something so difficult she could barely speak of it but hadn’t let it harden her. He felt a perplexed joy that she had shared even a little bit of that pain with him.
“If you want to talk about your father, my confidant services sign is always flipped to Open for you.”
She rolled to her side so that her back was to him. “I don’t want to talk. Right now I want to pretend that he doesn’t exist. And I want to pretend the guilt I feel over wanting that doesn’t exist either.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m a good listener, but I’m even better at ignoring inconvenient feelings.”
“How do you do that?” she asked.
“Focus on other, more cheerful things,” he instructed. “Like the inevitable extinction of the sun, and the supervolcanoes lurking beneath the surface of the earth waiting to blow.”
“Phoko.” She looked back at him with those huge brown eyes and Johan wished, not for the first time, or even the second, that their game was real. That he could show her how he felt with his lips and his hands, but mostly that he could hold her.
“You did great today,” he said. “You shouldn’t be nervous. You stood up to one of the most feared royals in the world twice.”
Nya shook her head. “That wasn’t standing up to him. I just pointed out when he was impolite.”
“Nya, the man has people trailing him all day whose express purpose is to kiss up to him. Pointing out the old king’s impoliteness had some people thrown in prison.”
Nya’s eyes went glossy and Johan realized what he’d said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
He reached out and brushed his fingertips over the back of her hand. “You should get some sleep before our flight tomorrow. Try counting sex goats if counting sheep doesn’t work.”
She giggled and rolled back in his direction, reaching out and thumping the empty space on the bed between them playfully, her worries seemingly gone. “Good night, Phoko.”
“Good night, Sugar Bubble,” he said.
He reached for his tablet to catch up on work, then remembered he wasn’t alone. That realization shouldn’t have warmed him as it did.
“Do you need me to turn off the light?” he asked, but she was already asleep, arm still stretched toward him.
His mother’s ring glinted on her finger, a reminder of all the reasons he didn’t want a partner, no matter how good it felt in the moment. This was only temporary, and then they would go their separate ways. If they stayed together, they’d eventually have to go their separate ways in a more permanent fashion. Johan was aware that his worry wasn’t normal, but he didn’t think allowing yourself to just love without thinking of where it inevitably led was normal either. Till death do us part—just the thought of it made anxiety tickle his scalp.
He looked back to his tablet and opened the spreadsheet Greta had updated, created a new cell for the Njazan Land Mine Recovery Organization, and began adding the information he’d learned that day.
He then began drafting an email to Thabiso, discussing the situation overall in Njaza and wondering if his friend had any thoughts.
His email inbox was full of initiatives he had to approve, and he tackled those next.
He had work to do, work that would be there waiting after Nya had gone.
He got to it.
Chapter 11
ONE TRUE PRINCE, TEXT MESSAGE MODE
Hanjo: Nya, I dreamed about you last night.
Nya: (A) About me? How odd! What happened?
Hanjo: I’m not sure I can tell you without scandalizing you . . . besides, I’d rather show you.
The mattress was soft—almost too soft—and Nya awoke from a dream that the marshmallow man she’d seen in a film as a child was trying to chew her with his soft teeth. She’d been frightened, but embarrassingly, it had also felt kind of good.
Her phone vibrated in the sheets beside her—likely a message from Hanjo.
Across the bed, Johan was still awake. He sat with his back propped against the dark wood headboard, legs crossed to support his tablet.
He was scanning the screen and typing on the thin keyboard attached to it, focused and intent, a pair of black-framed reading glasses perched on his nose. He was working, which was not something she’d ever imagined really. He was Bad Boy Jo-Jo; his job was supposed to be spending his days lounging and his nights living to excess, but here he sat in blue sweatpants and a white tank top, looking studious. After a day of engaging in charitable endeavors with small children.
She wondered what his fans would think if they saw this side of him, hair wild and lips pursed in concentration, scrolling screen reflected in his lenses. She’d never found him to be more attractive, which was a problem given that they were sharing a bed.
He took off his glasses to rub his eyes, and then stretched.
“What are you working on?” she whispered, reaching for her phone. He paused with his hands high above his head and his back arched, musculature on full display, and tilted his head to look down at her.
“Did I wake you?” He finished his stretch and dropped his arms. “Sorry.”
“No. The bed was trying to eat me,” she said. His brows knit in confusion, and she shook her head. “And I have a message.”
She squinted at the screen.
Hanjo: My dearest Nya, whenever you’re close to me, I don’t think of royalty and rebellion. I think of this strange ache in my chest.
Nya:
You should get that heartburn checked out.
Ache? What does that mean?
The rebellion is the most important thing right now.
She selected B because she was asking herself the same thing, and then put the phone down and looked at Johan. “You didn’t tell me what you’re working on.”
“Just a hobby of mine,” he said. He laid his glasses on the bedside table and then dropped back onto his pillow.
“What kind of hobby?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a bit hard to explain.”
“Try me. You might be surprised what I’m able to understand,” she said, slightly annoyed. That was something people had always said to her, unable to imagine she could grasp complex ide
as. Even at the orphanage, her suggestions for growth and expansion and bettering the lives of the children had been questioned, and then eventually reworded by others who took the credit.
“No, it’s not that,” he said. “I know you’ll understand. It’s just . . . my hobby is funding charities. Boring stuff. Hard to explain.” He shrugged, but it wasn’t as nonchalant as usual.
She leaned up on her elbow, fascinated. “Funding charities? So that’s why you were asking so many questions about the operations of the land mine retrieval group today?”
He nodded, but didn’t look at her, as if he hoped her questions would stop if he didn’t make eye contact.
“How many charities does this hobby of yours involve?” she pressed.
“Not very many. Forty-nine? Fifty after today, I suppose.”
“Phoko.” She reached her arm out across the bed, scooching forward so she could poke him in the side. “Are you going all pink in the cheeks because I’ve discovered that you’re a secret philanthropist?”
“I’m not a philanthropist. I just give some of my money to organizations that help people in need of assistance,” he said.
“Mmm-hmm,” she replied, her smile so wide that the air-conditioning in the room chilled her teeth.
“And it’s not a secret,” he said grumpily. “It’s just not discussed very openly, and I use a variety of techniques to prevent people from finding out about it.”
She felt suddenly warm, talking with him like this. It was the middle of the night and he was telling her about his work. About what he valued. It felt . . . intimate.
“Wow.” She shook her head. “Now that I think of it, I’ve seen so many photos of you at charity events. I just assumed you were there for–”
“For the alcohol?” Johan cut in drily.
“For the, ah, admirers,” she admitted.
His gaze dropped away from hers. “See? I don’t even have to hide it, really. People’s assumptions do the work for me.”