How to Catch a Queen Read online

  Dedication

  For those who push to make the world better, even when it’s determined to be worse.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from When No One Is Watching

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Also by Alyssa Cole

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Search ‘How to erase my identity and start a new life,’” the heir to the Njazan throne spoke calmly into the evening quiet of his bedchamber in the Central Palace.

  “Searching, Prince Sanyu,” came the reply from his cell phone’s virtual assistant. He had a human assistant as well, but he doubted his advisor, Lumu, would perform this task without follow-up questions.

  As Sanyu waited for the results to load—Njazan internet was ridiculously slow in the evenings—he carefully stuffed passports from five different nations, money in three major currencies, contact lens solution, shea butter, a tattered square of colorful crocheted wool, and enough clothing to last a few days into a large, sturdy backpack. The bag had been his father’s military rucksack, and it had accompanied Sanyu on his trips out into the world since he was thirteen.

  He hummed his song as he packed—literally his song; it’d been written about him when he was a toddler and still played on local radio stations in his small kingdom. The earworm had been stuck in his head for most of his thirty-two years of life. Sometimes it was a slow acapella lullaby, but more often the upbeat drum-driven radio version with full backing band.

  Sanyu II! Even fiercer than his fa-ther!

  Our prince! One day our mighty king!

  Enemies! Of Nja-a-a-za—

  Sanyu II, he will vanquish you!

  It was a catchy little tune, and a good reminder of what his father, Sanyu I, and the royal advisor, Musoke, had been drilling into him for years: Njazan kings were fierce, mighty protectors. They didn’t experience fear, panic, or distress. The not-fear that twisted Sanyu’s innards every time he had to speak before a crowd, to take stock of his kingdom’s many problems, to even think about making decisions that might destroy his father’s legacy—the suffocating sensation that banded him now as he triple-checked his bag and then slipped into the escape tunnel connected to his room—had to be caused by something else.

  Likely indigestion. He rummaged around in the side pocket of his backpack, then popped an antacid into his mouth.

  Njazan kings didn’t feel anything but fierce pride and the drive to protect their kingdom from those who would weaken it, from without or within. This wasn’t a guess on Sanyu’s part—his father had reinstated the monarchy himself after the uprising that had driven out the Liechtienbourger colonizers. The former king had put an end to the civil wars that cropped up in the power vacuum and united his people under one benevolent iron fist.

  His father.

  The former king.

  The man who currently lay in the gigantic gold-gilt bed in the king’s chamber, where death lurked among the wooden statues of warriors delivering killing strokes with their spears; behind framed artwork worth enough money to support a Njazan family for life; and in the folds of luxurious window treatments blocking the crumbling kingdom outside the window.

  “I am no longer strong enough to rule, my son,” his father had told him that afternoon.

  Those words had meant something else.

  I am dying.

  They had meant another something else, too, something only slightly less soul crushing to Sanyu.

  You are now king.

  Sanyu had nodded his acquiescence, as he always did; not out of fear, like everyone else in the kingdom, but out of respect and love for the man who’d protected their people for fifty years, if not for the methods he used to do so.

  Then he had recounted the tale of Njaza’s rescue from the brink of destruction and the resurrection of the kingdom, the same story his father had told him after tucking him into bed when he was a child. He’d spoken softly, but loud enough to be heard over the old man’s labored breathing, and his voice hadn’t broken once, even when he’d remembered what his father always said after the nightly retelling. He could feel his father’s big calloused palm resting on top of his head, even as he held the man’s frail hand in his own. Could hear the words his father had thought were comforting but had often kept him awake at night.

  “And one day you will save the kingdom as well, my son. I know Musoke is hard on you, but you do not understand what war is. You will be king one day, and you must be strong enough to protect Njaza’s future. Are you strong enough?”

  Sanyu’s honest answer, the one he’d never dared to speak out loud, had been the same then as it was now: no.

  “You will be a great king,” his father had murmured weakly as Sanyu held his hand, his already watery eyes filling with tears as he looked up at him. Sanyu had never seen his father show this kind of emotion. And then the old man had gripped Sanyu’s hand with an almost desperate strength, a reminder of why he’d gained the name the Iron Fist. “The best. Strong. You have to be.”

  Sanyu’s heart had squeezed in his chest, mashed between the gears of grief and resentment. Even with the end drawing near, this was still all his father could speak of.

  “I will be,” he’d said. “You do not have to worry, Father.”

  When the king’s eyes fluttered shut, the wrinkles of his face settling into a peaceful smile, Sanyu had watched him, mind blank and an unfathomable grief coating him like a layer of petrol that wouldn’t sink in. His father slept and soon he wouldn’t wake up, which was impossible.

  Sanyu couldn’t imagine a world without his father’s booming laugh and bravado and secret winks when everyone around him cowered in fear. He couldn’t imagine a Njaza without the man who was the backbone of everything the kingdom was; even if Sanyu technically possessed all of the necessary skills to take the throne, he was not a king in spirit.

  After a few hours of vigil had passed, he’d kissed his father’s knuckles and said a prayer to Omakuumi, warrior god and the first mighty king to rule Njaza so many generations before.

  Then he’d calmly walked to his room and begun to pack.

  Now, as he exited the passageway with his randomly selected belongings stuffed into his backpack, he forcibly blocked out all thoughts of his father. His soles sank into the peaty soil of the royal gardens and his heart pounded against his rib cage, as if it also surged toward escape. Sweat beaded along his brow, even though the temperature had dropped to a cool seventy degrees.

  As he crept through the shadows of the garden searching for the secret side exit in the fence of reed and iron that surrounded the palace, three sentences repeated over and over in his head, vaguely matched to the tune of his song.

  They want me to be king!

  I have to be king!

  I cannot be king!

  The song was annoying as ever, but the blaring repetition in his skull blocked out the reality of what he was doing, of the action driven by the crawling sensation on
his skin and the tension in his muscles and the whispers in his mind that said he wasn’t fit to rule Njaza, and thus if he didn’t become king, his father wouldn’t die.

  Yes, he had to leave, and quickly. Then nothing would change.

  Spiny plants caught in his clothes and scratched his skin as he lumbered through the fog-swirled darkness; their sweet fruits were crushed under his shoes as his search along the fence grew more frantic. Everything would be fine if he could just find the damn door and pass through it.

  He’d been running from Njaza for half his life—as a teen, he’d convinced his father to send him to the Alpine boarding school where so many royals sent their children. After that, he’d been accepted and planned to go to Howard University in the US, but his dreams had been dashed when it was decided it was too dangerous for the future king to be away for another four years. He’d had tutors, and for a decade had been allowed a spring break of sorts where he traveled with his longtime friend, the prince from Druk. He’d tagged along on Anzam Khandrol’s international quests for enlightenment, or sometimes he’d quietly tended goats on a steep hill in the mountainous kingdom. Those trips away from home, where no one but Anzam Khandrol knew who he was, no one pointed out his flaws, and his future seemed larger than twenty thousand square kilometers, had sustained him.

  He’d returned home after each one, but the suffocating atmosphere of the palace—and the constant reminders of how lacking he was—sent him scrambling away eventually, gasping for the air of “anywhere but here” until Musoke had put an end to the trips for good, stating security concerns.

  But now his father was dying. Sanyu would be king. He would never again work a simple but fulfilling job, never dabble in all the rich new experiences life had to offer. Instead, the limited smorgasbord offered by Njaza’s isolationist politics, lack of capital, and stubborn resistance to change would be for breakfast, lunch, and supper every day.

  Worse, he would be in the spotlight every day, too, paraded before the people to receive adulation he didn’t deserve, and he would have to pretend to love it.

  No.

  The need to escape ballooned, filling the hollow place inside him that should have been the reservoir of his royal strength.

  All he had to do was make his way through the fence and into the bustling streets of the capital, and then to the airport or, if there was a search, across the border by land or sea. The latter was more perilous in a kingdom bordered by rivers, lakes, and mountains, not to mention the moors of Njaza, which were nearly impossible to pass through without a guide. And then there were the land mines.

  Njaza wasn’t a kingdom one escaped easily.

  But once he was gone, he’d live the simple life that had always appealed to him, traveling and working in places where no one knew who he was or cared how often he smiled, laughed, or showed that he was anything other than a marionette forged from iron.

  Maybe he’d go lie low in Druk—he hadn’t returned texts from Anzam Khandrol for months, but the prince was an amazingly forgiving guy. It was a requirement of the job when part of your extremely long title was “heir to the sun throne, most benevolent amongst humans, full of grace and peace.”

  “Prince Sanyu?” a familiar voice reached through the darkness and pulled him up by the scruff of the neck. “There you are.”

  Sanyu’s plans for the future retracted painfully, drawn back into the tight fist of the life that had been planned for him since he was born.

  Several bobbing circles of light landed on him as he turned, blinking against the dazzling brightness. Before his vision cleared, he imagined seeing the outline of a scorpion with its stinger poised to strike, an image that resolved itself into the man who stood at the center of the retinue of palace guards who followed him everywhere.

  Musoke, co-liberator of Njaza, Sanyu’s lifelong guardian, and the man who’d, over the last few years, generously taken it upon himself to shore up the king’s failing strength—and decision-making—with his own.

  He was short and wiry, clad in the ankle-length, waist-cinched robe of purple and gold wax print that denoted his importance to the kingdom as head of the Royal Council. It was a position that could be held only by a man touched by Amageez, the god of wisdom, strategy, and logic. Musoke smiled, though his eyes were unreadable as always. Sanyu had studied Musoke’s every tic for his entire life and was still unable to guess what the man was thinking when he watched him like this, though judging by Musoke’s actions, it was usually some variation of You’re a disappointment, but we’ll make do with you.

  Musoke’s words were clipped, the usual cadence of elders born during the occupation who were forced to speak Liechtienbourgish instead of Njazan in every aspect of life outside the home. “Where are you off to, my boy?”

  Musoke still called him “boy,” even though Sanyu was thirty-two and strong enough to break the advisor’s slim walking stick and the man himself in two with minimal effort. Sure, he’d been caught absconding like a sulking child with a cloth sack hung on a stick, but he was still an adult, dammit.

  “I’m taking a walk to clear my head and offer prayers for my father, king most noble and exalted, slayer of colonizers, he who forged chains into fists,” Sanyu said calmly, as if fear and grief didn’t have an anaconda’s grip around the barrel of his chest.

  “How odd,” Musoke said, fixing his gaze on Sanyu in that way that felt as if he was scanning and cataloging every fault. “One usually prays at the temple of Omakuumi the Fierce for such things.”

  Sanyu resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot, as he had when he was a boy and found himself the center of attention, usually because he had done something wrong. Something weak. He remembered what his father had told him once, after he’d humiliated himself by crying while getting dressed down by Musoke during combat training.

  “The true king does not feel weakness or fear, so if you do, simply pretend to be someone stronger who is never afraid. Imagine how they would act, channel their power.”

  “Is that what you do?” young Sanyu had asked, looking up at his father, a big strong man who, indeed, was never afraid.

  “I am the king. I don’t need to pretend. But if I had to, I’d channel the power of my father, who was not a king but was braver than any man I’ve known. You never met him though, so you can pretend to be me. What use is my strength if it is not also yours?”

  Sanyu came back to himself in that moment. Remembered who he was—son of the mighty Sanyu I—and what he was supposed to be—even fiercer than his father. He straightened all six feet five inches of himself, shifting the bulk of his muscle to look down at Musoke as his father had looked down at those who dared displease him, even after he’d shriveled with age.

  “Our great and bountiful land is a temple, and the strength of Omakuumi is present everywhere,” he countered, adding a thread of challenge to the bullshit he was trying to sell.

  “It is, indeed,” Musoke replied, his expression unchanging. “But your father requires something other than prayer from you.”

  Sanyu’s heart thudded in his chest, and the Central Palace, looming up behind Musoke in all its menacing glory, seemed to grow even larger.

  “Is he—did he—” Sanyu’s backpack became a weight that threatened to topple him over. Had he really been planning to run? As his father lay dying? Guilt and shame ripped through him, driving away the ridiculous thoughts of fleeing that had made sense only a moment ago.

  “Our king still lives,” Musoke said. He gripped the head of his cane so tightly that the tip pushed deep into the dirt.

  “And what does he require from me?” Sanyu asked as relief mingled with his guilt and shame, though the list of the things his kingdom required from him had been repeated without cease and added up to: everything.

  “Marriage,” Musoke said, watching Sanyu with a hawk’s attentive gaze.

  “Mar-riage?” The word came out in two choked syllables.

  “Yes. He requires your marriage. It is one of the p
rimary duties of a Njazan king, or have you not been paying attention the last three decades?”

  “I have, O learned Musoke, but . . .” Of course, he’d thought of marriage—his father had married more times than Sanyu could count. A parade of women who appeared for four months or so, and then, after having shown they weren’t true queens as decreed by Omakuumi and Amageez, vanished from the kingdom and Sanyu’s life forever.

  Despite the exorbitant number of wives, Sanyu was an only child, his singularity given as evidence that he was truly the heir to the throne, for Omakuumi had provided no alternative. He was born to his father’s twentieth wife—he couldn’t remember what she’d looked like, or what any of the wives had looked like. More had come after her, but they weren’t his mother and after the first few years, he’d learned to stop growing attached to them. Eventually, it’d been just Sanyu, his father, and Musoke.

  Sanyu had paid attention, and he’d learned that marriage was an exhausting, useless practice that he wanted no part of. That was why fairy tales always ended at the wedding—a bright happy event that was all for show and would eventually lead to a king who spent more time with his council than his bride and a queen sequestered in her wing of the castle until it was time for her to join the ranks of former queens of Njaza.

  And a young prince sitting alone, waiting for his mother to return or a queen who wouldn’t leave, and never getting either.

  “Why do I have to marry so quickly?” he asked when he was able to speak again. “There are more important things to attend to, like my father’s health and preparing for . . . the worst.”

  He’d thought of marriage as a royal duty he’d have to undertake far, far down the line, not when everything else in his life was being thrown into chaos. Just the thought of a lifetime of wife after wife, wedding after wedding, made him tired.

  “Because the king must wed at or before his coronation, as is tradition. And your father wishes to see you take his crown and a wife before he joins the ancestors,” Musoke said tightly. “Will you fail him in that, too?”

  That last word sank its venomous stinger into Sanyu’s will, weakening it.