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.