T'Challa knows that she is dreaming. She has slipped into that consciousness before wakefulness, murky and grey, but with bursts and streaks of colour. Images swim by, most of them more memory than dream.

In her dream, she is with Nakia.

They are together, like they were years ago.

They are younger, too.

"T'Challa, T'Challa," hummed Nakia, in that sing-song tone she always used when she was being playful, "how are you so beautiful?"

T'Challa laughed, soupy and sated. "What do you mean, how?"

The sheets were damp beneath her. Even the pillow smelled of spilled sweat and perfume. T'Challa knew that she should get up, to wash away the dampness at the back of her knees, the dampness on her nape and scalp and between her breasts, and the other kind thick between her thighs.

She should also get up because she should have been getting ready. Tomorrow, T'Challa would fly with Baba to her first overseas summit.

A few more minutes, T'Challa told herself. She curled her toes. Languidly, T'Challa stretched.

Nakia was the one laughing now. She raised herself on one arm from where she had been sprawled on top of T'Challa. "Look at you. A pleased, pretty princess." Her thumb on T'Challa's cheekbone was gentle. It was a delicious contrast to how her thighs had been trying not to squash T'Challa's cheeks earlier, as Nakia rode her mouth. "Such a symmetrical face, too. Impossibly symmetrical. I don't think the figures exist in our mathematics books. Bast took her time with you, no?"

"What are you talking about, Nakia?" T'Challa couldn't help it, she knew she had a stupid grin on her face. "You are – you look like you are –"

"Yes?"

T'Challa cast around for something good to say. Something to capture what she felt. "Moonlight stirring and tugging the waves. You are moonlight personified," she said, lamely, "moving the sea." T'Challa paused, swallowed. "You are so beautiful."

But Nakia was smiling softly. "That is the loveliest thing. Thank you, darling." Then she grinned, the playfulness back. "So if I am the moon, it's time to say that your eyes are so gorgeous they look like stars."

They started giggling madly.

Nakia slumped back on the bed beside T'Challa. T'Challa kissed her on the nose. It had always been all right if T'Challa sometimes embarrassed herself with Nakia; not for long it would feel like she should not have been embarrassed after all. They had always been good friends before they started dating.

T'Challa did not say anything for several moments. Being with Nakia had always rendered her awestruck.

When she and Nakia had started attending the same political science lectures, T'Challa had immediately admired Nakia's hectoring and funny contributions in class. Nakia had boundless curiosity. She had always wanted to go to field trips to whatever country they were studying the government of. She was still completing her training as a War Dog, but to this day she still went after her mentors for extensive reading lists about various countries.

Nakia had boundless energy, too. T'Challa would never forget how Nakia had sat beside her in the library café one afternoon, bearing two glasses of cold mango juice, and told her, "Mind if I read here for a bit, Princess T'Challa? You have a calming presence, and I need to concentrate."

Then they had silently sat together for five hours, doing coursework, occasionally getting up for treats and to complain to each other.

Nakia always insisted that that was their first date, to T'Challa's vast amusement.

There had been others soon after. The two of them rambling through the market stalls, trying out each other's favourite foods. Going to braiding salons together, Nakia helpfully putting in a suggestion for T'Challa's attachments. Shopping for books together. Going to a mall together, T'Challa helping Nakia choose a shade of lippie, and afterwards T'Challa gleefully purchasing more pairs of sandals than she could possibly need whilst Nakia laughed and egged her on. And, on one very recent but memorable occasion, sidling into a sex shop together, where T'Challa, feeling very warm on the cheeks, stuttered out approving comments as Nakia shopped for a strap-on.

Being with Nakia always felt like T'Challa could be content just being. Just living the moments with Nakia, enjoying her company, not in any hurry to step out of the bounds of their bubble.

Bast. She really ought to get up and finish preparing for the trip.

T'Challa sleepily nuzzled Nakia's forehead.

After a while, Nakia said, "But my point still stands." She had her gangly limbs wrapped around T'Challa, like a very persistent octopus. T'Challa loved it. "So then. We are both beautiful, as it turns out. Perhaps we're one of the most beautiful couples to ever walk Wakanda."

Perhaps they were.

But the idea of beauty had never fully crystalised in T'Challa's mind until she stepped off the aeroplane the next day with Baba.

Beauty had always been a simple fact about someone. A happy, lucky fact to add to the list a person had about themselves, like name or eye colour or aversion to certain fruits.

At home, in Wakanda, T'Challa was always weighed with the expectation to do well. Will the crown princess be capable of governing and protecting us well? the headlines tooted the day she graduated. The public library and the national university have copies of Princess T'Challa's undergraduate thesis on….

In retrospect, growing up in Wakanda had always been about parents introducing their child and proudly saying: my child is skilled in this particular endeavor. W'Kabi's parents were like that with his rhinos and his eye for textile business. Nakia's parents were so pleased about her combat skills. Zuri gushed about his nephew's decorative metalwork.

And so T'Challa was bewildered when she saw the first foreign coverage about her, at the end of the summit's first day.

It was focused on her hair.

Wondering how it was all put together, how she washed it, if she washed it, if she combed it, if all those braids ever felt heavy piled on her head, and so on.

The next day T'Challa delivered her first foreign speech. She spoke about Wakanda's first few steps into the international arena.

She had expected some criticism on her diplomacy, for it was always the first criticism she received in Wakanda. T'Challa had never made it a secret how diplomacy made her impatient. She'd always believed that two people in a room could accomplish more, and in less time, than a hundred people trying to please everyone all at once.

But the criticism she received, first from the British press swiftly followed by the French and German and American ones, all said the same thing: T'Challa was "an exceedingly pretty princess", but was she "humble"?

She caught the words "snobbish and smug princess" in one of the articles, and somehow the word "princess" sounded different from how Nakia and everyone back home said it.

Then there were the articles with close-up pictures of her face as she delivered her speech, but they were about how she was wearing no make-up. Was the princess of Wakanda making a feminist statement? An anti-make up statement? Anti-capitalist statement? What were the make-up brands in Africa? What was her secret for still looking fresh-faced and stunning even without make-up?

"Whatever has this got to do with the summit?" T'Challa ranted at Baba.

"These people," Baba said, "they take their time to get to the meat of things." He reached out over the breakfast table and gently squeezed T'Challa's hand. "Have you ever seen an American red carpet coverage? It is always how they open events before the awards and speeches."

T'Challa went around Wakanda without make-up, had spoken in front of crowds without make-up, like so many others. And it was simply because she had a habit of biting and licking her lips. A habit that she had, for the most part, trained herself out of.

For weeks T'Challa wondered about the relation of being humble to the simple fact of being beautiful.

A few years later, Nakia told her.

Nakia had just returned home from a mission across the Atlantic. They were lounging in a palace garden, T'Challa lying on the grass, Nakia tracing feather-light patterns on T'Challa's forehead, the lemon tree a citrusy canopy above them.

"I think beauty is a requirement, outside home," Nakia said. "Especially for women. If she is beautiful, it's like she has accomplished most of her life goals. She is now a beautiful woman, the end. But she must be nice, and good, and kind."

"She has to be humble." T'Challa paused, wondering. "It sounds like because she is beautiful, she cannot be anything else. Anything else messy. Anything else human."

"Exactly."

"That makes no sense."

Nakia traced T'Challa's eyebrows. "Have you heard of their fairy tales? The evil beautiful queen is now ruling the kingdom, through some treachery or other. Maybe her husband the king died. Maybe she killed him. Often she's too ambitious, too proud, too aware of her own beauty. The heroine, younger and more beautiful and so very good and modest that she doesn't even know she's beautiful, will triumph over the evil queen. The end."

"Triumph how?" T'Challa had seen some remakes in foreign movies, but she often forgot how they ended.

Nakia shrugged. "Because she has a heart of gold? You know, I don't remember."

They gave each other high-fives. Both of them were often only casual fans of stories, of novels and movies and shows, unlike Baba who could remember all the details of his favourite movies and Mother who could say lots of intelligent things about themes and character arcs.

"The moral of the story," T'Challa said, with a wry twist of her mouth, "beauty can be threatening."

"And it should never be," laughed Nakia.

T'Challa wakes with a jolt.

Her chest is thudding. Nakia's laughter floats in her ears.

For a moment, T'Challa is disoriented by the strangeness of the ceiling. It is a spot she is unfamiliar with. It is still painted with the pale grey of early morning, with a hint of the glowing blue of a plasma partition –

Then she remembers why her chest is still wildly thudding.

T'Challa carefully shifts on her bed, and peers past the partition. A stretch of intricately tiled floor separates her from the bottom of the steps. Three steps up, and there is the queen's curtained bed.

When she was the queen T'Challa always shut the lace curtains when she slept, and she never had anyone inside the bedchamber with her before she woke up.

But now the curtains are always open. From this angle, T'Challa can see the rigid plane of the made covers, the neat stack of smoothened pillows.

Her cousin is already by the balcony.

It has been a week since that luncheon when Killmonger drilled into the council that T'Challa is a hostage. Attempt to kill the new queen and they might as well kill T'Challa. She has had some time since then to collect her thoughts, to attempt to reign in the roiling turmoil in her, and what T'Challa has thought of did not settle her that much. After all, the faded hope of Shuri's and Nakia's safety rests on the fact that Killmonger told her the truth: that they are safe, that they are alive.

T'Challa does not know much. She knows very little, in fact, try as she might. Killmonger has been keeping her in the dark.

What T'Challa does know is almost inconsequential.

She shifts her eyes from across the made bed, to the open doors of the balcony.

Every day of this week, T'Challa has noted that Killmonger wakes just mere moments before the sunrise. Her cousin will put on a loose shirt, covering the numerous raised scars on her body, before opening the balcony doors. She will watch the sunrise for exactly two minutes. And all the while, Killmonger will be standing just inside the threshold, on the thinnest shadows of the bedchamber only a hair's breadth from the spilling sunrise.

Killmonger is there now. T'Challa can only see her shadowy back, spine rigid, limned by the mellow gold of sunrise.

T'Challa knows all of this because she has not been sleeping well for the past week. That night after the luncheon, she lay awake all night and watched with tired, fascinated eyes as her cousin woke up and briskly made the queen's bed.

T'Challa had never seen a bed made before. She had never made a bed in her life.

Two minutes must be over. Killmonger is turning away from the balcony.

T'Challa quickly climbs out of her bed, so that she is on her feet by the time her cousin reaches her. Being eye to eye with the queen is a flimsy shield, but a shield all the same.

"Rise and shine," Killmonger says, punching in the code. The plasma partition melts away. "Breakfast with me."

She is so very tired. It feels like the last true rest she has had was the day before she flew with Baba to Vienna, weeks ago.

"No different from the other days, then." T'Challa adds, "Your Highness."

Yesterday must have been a good day with the council, because Killmonger only quirks her eyebrow. "Lippy. Well as long as you ain't treasonous."

Just as it takes exactly two minutes for Killmonger to watch the sunrise, breakfast takes exactly thirty minutes. T'Challa suspects that it might have been shorter if they were not sharing the same godforsaken spoon.

This morning they are sharing a bowl of –

T'Challa frowns. Blearily squints at the food. "What is this?"

"Shrimp fried rice," her cousin says in brisk tones. "Just eat the damn thing."

And T'Challa does. It is not as if she has any other choice. She eats what the queen eats, drinks what the queen drinks.

T'Challa eats the first spoonful under Killmonger's keen gaze. They wait for some moments. Her cousin puts in her ear buds, listening to whatever book or document that, most likely, she does not wish for T'Challa to see.

Meanwhile, T'Challa looks around the breakfast room.

It is a smaller chamber than the dining hall. A tall blue vase sits on the centre of the table, full of flowers brought in from the garden every morning. Even when they had guests, only the family attend breakfast here: Baba with his cocoa, Mother with her chopped fresh melons, Shuri talking animatedly about last night's lab tests as she had second helpings of everything.

Now there are only T'Challa and Killmonger.

Even T'Challa's wrist feels naked, without her kimoyo beads.

This is T'Challa's home, but it is as if it has been yanked and tilted at a sharp angle.

When she was the queen, even when she was still the crown princess, T'Challa's days were also regimented. Each day was mapped out with activities blocked out in specific times.

But it never felt this cold. It never felt this – this impersonal, this institutionalised, even in her university days. Always there was Mother's soothing palm cupping T'Challa's cheek. There were Shuri's cackle and jokes peppering the regimented days, just a kimoyo bead away. There was Baba's guiding voice, then seemingly as constant as Wakanda is. And in university there were the warm smiles of Nakia and W'Kabi and Okoye, and other friends, as familiar and comforting as T'Challa's favourite pillow back in the palace.

T'Challa wonders if Killmonger looks at the breakfast room, at the sunrise, and thinks of this as home.

But T'Challa only wonders briefly. A crushing swirl of sorrow, dislike, guilt, and indignity always follow whenever she wonders of such things, and she is much too tired, her soul much too heavy and her mind too foggy for that right now.

She eats another spoonful. The silver tastes vaguely of coffee.

Her cousin does love coffee.

It is perhaps the only good thing in this situation. T'Challa may be sleepless, but Killmonger's near obsession with coffee keeps T'Challa from keeling over.

She reaches for their shared cup, notes where her cousin has sipped.

The coffee is too strong. Too bitter doused with too much sugar, with only a thimbleful of milk. From behind the cup and beneath her lashes, T'Challa glances at Killmonger.

The queen is already watching her.

T'Challa does not let her own gaze skitter away. She lowers the cup, meets her cousin's eyes squarely.

"May I attend today's council assembly, Your Highness?"

Killmonger removes an ear bud. She taps the table, still watching T'Challa. "What makes you think today's any different?"

"I do not."

"But you still asked. Finish the last spoon."

T'Challa does so.

"You look dead tired, don't you, Coz?" Killmonger says with an indifferent expression. She has not displayed such intense anger towards T'Challa in days, unlike the day they first met. The closest thing to it was Killmonger snapping shut the jewelry case with more force than what was necessary, and not choosing anything from it.

Now, more often than not, Killmonger looks at T'Challa with a cold scrutiny.

But T'Challa sees the way her cousin's fingers tap on any surface, the way they twitch, as if at any moment they will clench into a fist. And she knows that the rage is only lurking just beneath the surface. That Killmonger is only wearing a mask.

"I am tired," admits T'Challa.

"A blind man can see it. You're not fit to attend council meetings. So I've got just the thing for you."

T'Challa hopes it is not anything inane or nefarious. "May I choose not to? I would sooner rest. Your Highness. I am tired."

"You will choose to."

This is torture, says the dull throb in T'Challa's temple. She is torturing me.

"Are you listening?"

"I always am. Your Highness."

A corner of Killmonger's lips tip up. "That's good to know. Anyway. Listen. You'll stay inside the partition today –"

Like all the days of this past week.

" – and when I return at five, you will tell me all about the tribes' leading families. All five tribes. The complete genealogies. All the branches and distant cousins and offshoots and shit. Be ready at five sharp."

T'Challa quickly runs through her mind what she knows of her cousin's routine. Five sharp, before supper at seven-thirty sharp. It is gym time.

"But Your Highness can read all of this in a book," T'Challa says.

"Already finished it. A couple of days ago." Killmonger grabs the cup and drinks the last of the coffee. "I just like employing all methods of learning, is all. How did you think I made it here?"

(2/?)