by Alyssa Cole
Ledi stopped talking because suddenly she couldn’t. She had filled in her parents’ faces on her mental family tree, and now her grandparents were there. Her imagination had this information, and while she didn’t consider herself particularly creative, there was one area in which it had always excelled before she’d forced it to stop: imagining what might have been.
Birthdays, shared meals, teen hormone-driven arguments followed by forgiveness . . . Ledi now had the base factors to imagine them all. The feeling of unfairness she hadn’t ever allowed to take hold began to get its hooks into her. In that moment, what she wanted more than anything was everything she’d missed out on, good and bad.
How could my parents take this from me?
Her grandmother’s face twitched a few times, and then her eyes fluttered open, focusing on Ledi’s face. A beatific smile lit up her features.
“Libiko.” Her voice was thick, her accent almost masking her single word, but the shock of her mother’s newly learned name went through Ledi like lightning. Her grandmother sighed and said something in Thesoloian that Ledi didn’t understand.
“What?”
Annie smiled and closed her eyes again.
“She said, ‘I knew you would return to us, my heart,’” Likotsi translated, her voice rough.
The beep of the machines keeping the elders alive filled the silence that followed her words, until the sound of Ledi’s sniffles joined in. What was going on? If she didn’t know these people, then why was her hand at her chest to stop the pain? Why were rivulets of tears coursing their way toward her chin? Why did it hurt to see them like this when she didn’t even know what they had been like before?
The tears began to wet through the edges of her face mask, and then a handkerchief was pressed into her palm and she felt Likotsi’s hand on her shoulder. She wiped at her eyes and cleared her throat before speaking. Emotions were a distraction, and she’d come to Thesolo on a mission.
“You said that you’ll assist me with anything I need, right?”
“Of course, my lady.” Likotsi drew herself up straighter, and Ledi thought she might salute. Instead, she pulled out her tablet from what had to be a custom-made pocket in the interior lining of her suit jacket. Her latex-gloved fingers hovered above the screen, ready to do Ledi’s bidding.
“I need to speak with their doctors immediately. I’d also like copies of all of Dr. Bata’s latest findings, and full access to the hospital records and a briefing on past epidemics, illnesses, and abnormalities over the last fifty years—to start.”
Likotsi nodded and looked up at her, and Ledi was surprised to see what looked like pride in the assistant’s eyes. “I will make it so, my lady.”
“Please. Call me Ledi,” she said. She turned and briefly placed her own gloved hand over her grandparents. She didn’t know what compelled her, but when she felt the cool skin of her grandfather’s hand she closed her eyes and made a pact with them.
I’m going to help find out what’s going on here.
Chapter 26
Ledi?”
Thabiso pushed open the door to Ledi’s suite when he got no response, expecting—or hoping—to find her still ensconced in the silk sheets and fluffy down-stuffed duvet. Instead, she was hunched over her desk, her back to him. The blanket he’d had made for her was draped over her shoulders and trailed onto the floor, and the papers spread over the desk were illuminated by an ornate desk lamp and the glow of her tablet screen.
For a moment, he thought she’d fallen asleep there, but then he noticed her right hand was scribbling furiously while her left hand traced a path down the printed page beside her. She shifted the page to another pile and her fingertips traced over the words on the next page.
“I brought you breakfast in bed, but it seems I’m too late,” he said as he moved across the suite.
“Too early,” she replied in a gravelly voice. Her hands stopped moving, and then reached up into the air as she performed a stretch that shifted the blanket completely off of her. She wore a robe made of thick, warm flannel, and the curves of her breasts and the bend of her back were silhouetted against the weak predawn light filtering into the large window in front of her. Seeing her displayed in such a way was a moving sight, but it didn’t inspire lust in Thabiso; instead, he felt a pang of sadness. The palace gardens and Thesolo’s mountain range served as a backdrop to her beauty, but, if everything went to plan, soon she’d never look upon them again, or he upon her. Was the desperate urge to go to her that struck Thabiso what Ledi had felt that night when she opened herself to him in her apartment?
No, not to him. To Jamal. Thabiso was simply the man who had crushed the fragile sprout of trust she’d been kind enough to offer. She would not have him. That didn’t stop him from savoring the memory of her in his arms after she’d fallen asleep during the welcome dinner. He’d had a preposterous thought as he’d carried her.
This is what our wedding night could be like. What kind of nonsense was that? Sentimental and as unlikely as him crawling back to Omega Corp. He’d compromised any future negotiations between he and Ledi, and they were simply fulfilling a temporary contract now.
He put the tray down on the bed and realized the sheets were still smooth and crisp, and the single eng flower the housekeepers laid on the palace pillows to induce prosperous dreaming hadn’t been moved away or flattened.
Now that he was closer, he could see that her eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles.
“You haven’t slept?”
“Sleep is for the weak,” Ledi said, then yawned again. “And for people not trying to help figure out a possible epidemic.”
He carried over the bowl of mealy pap and the cup of coffee and placed them on the desk. “We should reschedule today’s event at the temple so you can rest. I didn’t bring you here for you to work yourself sick.”
Ledi scoffed and grabbed for her coffee. She popped some kind of vitamin supplement into her mouth and washed it down with a sip of coffee. “I’m a grad student. Sleep is a bonus, but far from necessary. Don’t worry about me.”
Thabiso wanted to argue that she had been running on fumes from the moment he’d met her, but she wasn’t the type of woman to be tucked into bed and given a glass of warm milk. He hoped that after their meeting with the priestesses of Ingoka he could convince her to at least take a nap, but rest didn’t seem to be her style.
“Please eat. I can bring something else if this isn’t to your taste. And I’d love to know how your day was yesterday, if you don’t mind sharing that. I know seeing your grandparents must have been difficult.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your day, while I eat and caffeinate,” she said. Thabiso doubted she was really interested—she was a master at changing the conversation away from herself—but she picked up a spoon and tucked into the porridge and that was good enough for him.
“Well, after you and Likotsi left to begin your research, I was called into an emergency meeting with the finance ministers. Very unhappy finance ministers.”
“What were they mad about?” She spun her office chair around and leaned back, still annoyed but at least actually engaging in conversation. “Did you blow your allowance sending Mrs. Garcia to Puerto Rico?”
She took another bite, and Thabiso’s gaze followed the path of the spoon into her mouth, the way her lips pressed against the smooth metal and her tongue slipped over her lips afterward.
He lifted his gaze back to her eyes.
“No, that was a humanitarian mission, although Mrs. Garcia did quite enjoy the mini bar at the Ritz,” he said. That pulled a grin from her. “While I was in New York, I decided against finalizing a multimillion-dollar investment deal with a powerful company,” he said.
“Is that all? I mean, what’s several million dollars?” She chewed sarcastically, which Thabiso hadn’t even known was possible until that moment.
“Thesolo is wealthy nation, but hundreds of millions is still a lot,” he said. “I could buy m
any Italian special sandwiches with that.”
“Then why’d you tank the deal?” she asked, ignoring his reference. Her gaze dropped to her food, lashes fluttering down and hiding her eyes from him.
“Because even though I was told that this deal would usher Thesolo into the future, it felt like I was ensuring the destruction of our kingdom if I said yes. I decided against letting a company come to Thesolo, dig up our resources, and destroy our land, but the ministers see it as impertinence and overstepping my bounds.”
Thabiso thought of the raised voices and the accusations of incompetence that had been hurled at him. “It’s like they look at the other nations being robbed of their resources and think ‘Oh, they’re just stupid. That’s why they were fooled.’ These men are intelligent, but they ignore economic history, colonization, and globalization. They can only think in the moment, when we need to be thinking a hundred years ahead, and beyond for that matter.”
Naledi was looking at him now, staring at him like one of the large spiders that inhabited the dusty corners of the palace had just rappelled down from the ceiling onto him. He ran a hand over his head to the back of his neck. “What?”
She stirred her porridge and glanced away from him. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . you actually know stuff.”
Thabiso huffed. “I’m a prince. Of course I know stuff.”
“Well, when you see princes in the news, they’re usually just gallivanting around, riding horses or playing strip poker. But you know things.”
He groaned. “Johan really ruined it for all of us with that strip poker game. A good prince knows you always frisk for cameras and cell phones before getting nude.”
Ledi rolled her eyes.
“I’m kidding. Mostly.” He cleared his throat. “The horses and gallivanting are marketing, and they are part of the job in this day and age, no matter what kingdom you hail from. But while I’ve led a privileged life, and perhaps a sheltered one, I’ve been preparing to lead a kingdom since I could sit up in my crib. What I know, I know well.”
“I see that,” she said. “I’m glad. I thought you were just a fuckboy with a crown, but you actually seem to care for your people.”
Thabiso squelched the reflexive indignation that flared in him. “I don’t know what a fuckboy is, but my behavior toward you was less than honorable so I don’t doubt you for thinking the worst of me.”
“‘Less than honorable?’ That’s marketing. I suppose pretending to be a commoner in order to get laid is just part of your ‘job.’”
She said the words without emotion, but the implications hit Thabiso in the chest like a blow.
“You think I lied to you to get you into bed?”
She looked down. “You lied to me. You got me into bed. Am I missing something?”
“I can’t fault you for thinking the worst of me, but you of all people should know correlation does not equal causation.”
Ledi wouldn’t look at him, but he hoped she was listening. He had ruined everything, but she couldn’t think that he’d had sex with her as some fucked-up royal mind game.
“I meant to tell you as soon as I walked into the kitchen at the Institute. I had this whole speech planned out, demanding an explanation for why your family had run from Thesolo and never returned.” He moved his chair a bit closer to her now, looked down into the face that until just weeks ago had been a blurred curiosity at the periphery of his imagination. He remembered the moment when it had all come into focus.
“You’ve been this presence in my life since I was a child, you see. You may not remember me, but I was never allowed to forget you. You became a myth I couldn’t escape, a path that had been closed off to me. I wanted to find you and finally snuff out that silly hope I’d harbored for all those years. And then suddenly there you were, calling me Jamal and handing me kale, like that was completely normal. I had expected some rude, thoughtless woman, and instead you were . . . you.”
Ledi dropped her spoon into her bowl with a ringing clatter. “So, what, lying to me was some kind of revenge for me leaving? I hate to break it to you, but you’re late to the party. I’ve been paying for my parents’ decision for years. Pass the word on to your folks, by the way, since they didn’t get the memo.”
“Lying to you was a mistake,” Thabiso said, but then amended that. “No, that’s not true. Maybe part of me did want to punish you. Remember, most of my life has been spent hearing how your family betrayed mine. I rationalized my deception by using your family’s as a measuring stick. But mostly, when I saw you, I wanted to know you. And I’ve found it’s very hard to do that once you utter the words, ‘I’m a prince.’”
“You think this justifies what you did?” Ledi asked. Her face scrunched up into an expression of incredulous rage.
“No,” he said. “But knowing that if I’d told you the truth from the beginning means I would never have worked with you, or cooked with you, or ridden the subway and walked hand in hand in the park with you? That makes it very hard to say I would have done otherwise.”
Ledi opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away from him. He didn’t like how defeated she looked in that moment.
“I don’t get close to people,” she finally said. “It’s something I’ve been pretty firm about because of the whole defective Velcro thing.”
Thabiso had to have misheard. “What? Velcro?”
“No one ever sticks.” The words came out quiet. Small. Not like Ledi at all, or perhaps exactly like the Ledi that she hid behind all those walls of hers. But then she shook her head and the anger returned. “But for some reason, I felt like maybe you were—Jamal was—someone worth letting in. Someone who might stick. And it was all a lie. You expect me to forget that? No.” She shook her head. “Get out of here.”
She turned and took up her stylus again and stared straight out the window, waiting for him to leave. Thabiso couldn’t move; he was still reeling from her words. He hadn’t known how deeply he had hurt her, but he also hadn’t understood how deeply he cared that he had.
Someone who might stick.
She hadn’t known of his wealth or his fame, or anything of their past, and she had wanted him regardless. Thabiso tried to reconcile that with his lie, and what had happened because of the lie, and what would have happened if he hadn’t lied at all.
“I don’t expect you to forget. But, Ledi, what would you have said if I’d shown up at your job and proclaimed that I was a prince from some African kingdom you’d never heard of and you were my betrothed? Honestly.”
She kept her back to him. “Get. Out.”
“Exactly,” he said. He exhaled loudly and stroked his palm over his beard. “Look, we have this ceremony with the priestesses in an hour or so. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t want to be around me, and rightfully so, but we do have a charade to keep up, Bones.”
“Bones?” Her head tilted.
“You said that before, at your lab—” Thabiso was cut off by the thing he least expected at that moment—Naledi’s laughter. Just like that, her expression went from pinched to soft and open. She threw her head back as she laughed, and his cock jumped at the memory of her tight around him as she executed a similar motion. Goddess, she was beautiful, all the time, but even more so when she was too preoccupied to push him away.
“You’ve never seen Star Trek, have you?” she asked.
“That’s with the guy with the black helmet and the funny voice, yeah?” He knew better, but he wouldn’t pass up this opportunity to make her smile one more time.
“I’m pretty sure I told you to get out.” The words were firm, but there was no malice in them; there was the slightest hint of amusement. Thabiso would take it.
“Someone will come for you to bring you to the temple soon,” he said on his way out.
“Oh, I got an alert for that. Likotsi added it to my planner,” she said, picking up her tablet. Thabiso was sure Kotsi would be pleased that someone finally appreciated her attempts at modern pla
nning. Ledi swiped, squinting at the screen. “Purification ceremony. This isn’t going to get too weird, is it?”
“I think it’s just a blessing ceremony, shouldn’t be anything too extreme.”
She didn’t look up again, and after a moment Thabiso understood it was because she had already kicked him out three times.
Maybe his affection for her was futile, but if he’d hurt her more than anyone else, perhaps it was because she had cared for him more than anyone else. The minute chance that he was right meant he couldn’t give up. Not yet.
Chapter 27
After Thabiso’s departure, Ledi found herself unable to focus on the facts and figures before her. He’d broken her concentration, another thing to add to the list of reasons to hate him that she was compiling: liar, concentration breaker, shoddy cook, excellent kisser, master of making her toes curl . . .
Wait.
She was losing track of her thoughts. Perhaps pulling an all-nighter hadn’t been the smartest idea. That had to be why she was giddy instead of angry, why her fingers had been itching to pull up a video montage of a droll, intergalactic doctor for her and Thabiso to laugh over instead of shooing the annoying prince out of her door. She was glad she hadn’t asked him to stay; that would have been dangerous. She knew what happened when she watched TV next to Thabiso—or rather, what happened when she fell asleep watching television with him, and she was a few blinks away from slumber, despite her protests to the contrary.
She stood and stretched, almost toppling over from the rush of blood to the head. Yep. The all-nighter had definitely been no good. She grabbed her tablet and then moved slowly to her bed, where she perched on the edge to wait out her swimming head. She’d really underestimated how hard the jet lag would hit her, but her lack of travel meant she’d had no idea what jet lag even was. She’d be kinder to her lab mates returning from overseas conferences when she got back.
Because you are going back.