Portia pressed her lips together, then moved to sit beside Nya, wrapping her in a hug. “Sorry. We’re just looking out for you. But you’re grown and sexy, and you deserve some fun. Just let us know what we can do to facilitate your adventuring. I, obviously, can hook you up with a sword. Finest quality Scottish steel, love.”

Nya hugged Portia back, hard.

“My dungeon is always available if he hurts you,” Ledi said. “And I can lose the key if need be.”

“I love you both,” Nya said, throat tight. She paused for a moment, a sudden choking happiness making her catch her breath. She had friends. Real friends, who loved her more than her imaginary childhood companions—constricted by the bounds of Nya’s imagination—ever had. “But I think this is one of those quests where I have to find my own tools.”

After they helped Nya pack, laughing and talking about highlights of the reception, like the king and queen being caught kissing behind a giant floral arrangement, Ledi and Portia went back to their own rooms.

Nya sorted through the correspondences in the basket beneath a slot on her door, an old-fashioned holdover at the mostly technologically advanced palace. There was one from a fellow teacher at the orphanage, asking Nya to stop by and chat.

Ah well, maybe when I get back.

The next envelope had her name in familiar flowing handwriting.

No.

She opened it, even though she knew nothing good awaited her.

My obedient daughter,

Have you truly forsaken me? Do you not understand that everything I have done, I have done for you? Every night, I sit in the silence of my cell and I speak to your mother. I tell her that what I always feared has come to pass—that our child has left me—and that I will soon join her and the ancestors because my heart cannot take such a blow.

Nya stopped reading, even though several more paragraphs followed, crumpling the paper into a ball as she fought the waves of panic rippling through her. She dropped the paper to the floor and curled up on her bed, heart thudding in her chest and nausea roiling her stomach.

She was ready to leave for Njaza. Now. Thabiso had warned that King Sanyu was frightening, but nothing scared her more than the effect her father’s words had on her.

The unfamiliar coolness of the ring Johan had slipped onto her finger grazed her face as she pressed at her cheeks, and she allowed it to calm her.

She already had the first tool she’d need for her quest, and she wouldn’t let her father hold her back any longer. She was going to travel, have fun, and not regret a damn minute of it.

Chapter 9

Jo-Jo Single No-Mo?

We’re hearing reports that Johan is leaving Thesolo an engaged man!! We’re waiting for confirmation from Castle von Braustein before breaking hearts around the world, though popping the question at someone else’s wedding sounds par for the course for a scene stealer like Jo-Jo. The globe-trotting prince is scheduled to visit Njaza next. Sign up for our Royal Watchers app to get updates about the trip in real time!

—The Looking Glass Daily, Royal Beat

Johan had spent most of the night in Thesolo, and their plane ride northeast across the Continent to Njaza, telling himself that this wasn’t perhaps the worst miscalculation he’d ever made. It wasn’t that he regretted this—oh no, he didn’t, and that was the problem.

He already felt despair pressing in at him each time Nya gave him a sweet smile or excitedly pointed something out as their car rolled toward the Njazan royal compound. She was so . . . open. He’d suited up, but she’d dropped whatever figurative armor she’d worn, as if his ring had cast off some evil sorcerer’s spell.

As if this was real.

If, when he’d first met her, she’d been the bud of a plant, curled in on herself, now she was unfurling, spreading her leaves. He wasn’t sure what he would do when she began to bloom in earnest, especially if it was for him.

“Look at how beautiful it is! On the news, they only show bad things from Njaza,” she said. “But this is just a place like any other.”

She sat with her face turned toward the window, her long braids spilling down her back. The tips of the bow she’d tied on her head wrap peeking up like cat’s ears. Her dress was a subdued Ankara print dress in orange and green, with capped sleeves and a skirt that went past her knees. A conservative “visiting royalty” dress that shouldn’t have made his heart hammer like it did.

“Sugar Bubble.”

“Yes?” She turned to look at him, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

Johan’s emotions splashed up, a storm surge that was met with the barrier of his resolution that he wouldn’t feel more for her.

“We should discuss how to handle this relationship. Since it’s fake.” There, it was out in the open again, that reminder that she shouldn’t expect too much from him. He thought the sparkle would leave her eyes, but instead she grinned.

“Yes! I’ve been thinking about this. It’s going to be so much fun!”

It bothered him, how she always seemed to defy his expectations, but it delighted him, too.

“And how do you suppose we handle this fun?” he asked, trying to keep his expression neutral.

Her face scrunched a bit, something she did when turning a thought over in her mind, he’d noticed. “We just have to do what we’ve been doing. Being friends. Isn’t that what a relationship is? Friendship?”