Namor heard the swift movements of the head of his guards, Captain Tozi, before she came into view. The council before him was not the catastrophic uproar one expected such as the hasty meeting after the first mining expedition was taken care of, though it was close. Namora, ever the one to critique perceived softness, spoke loudly and clearly, cushioning her blows only with rote deferences to his kinghood. Attuma was unusually quiet. Juana's aunt, Lucia, had her say, but she was still fuming from her niece's injury and unable to remain calm at an opportunity to press her luck in using it to barter for favor.
"She has brought nothing but bad omen to our people."
"Why are you here, Lucia?" Tozi asked bitingly. "This is an issue of security."
Namora nodded, her feathered headdress bobbing as she did. "We should have killed them the moment they arrived in these waters. For decades we have done this, with no exception, and in a matter of months we change our policies?"
"This is different, Namora. Talokan needs Wakanda and they need our help." Tozi and Namora rarely interacted. The few times they did usually ended with quarreling only an orca or Namor himself could stop. Namor suspected Tozi secretly enjoyed rattling one of his closest advisors.
Another council member nodded in agreement. "She saved our flower. We thought we had lost it for forever."
"She brought this thing made of vibranium and could have killed us all. How do we know she is not in cahoots with him?" Lucia's accusation sent a rush of cold anger down Namor's spine. To imply betrayal of that sort was akin to spitting on him.
"Alliances are built on trust. These people wish to see us fight each rather than fight them. Speak of her with respect," he responded coolly.
His cousin bristled. "And you trust her? They were military. The Princess knew and jeopardized this entire city's safety and undermined your authority —"
"I was aware." Namor interrupted. He repeated it when Tozi and Namora continued to argue. They finally ceased when he held up a land. "She informed me they were a mix of scientists, researchers associated with the military, and the head of their intelligence agency."
Namora was one sentence away from throwing her spear at him, god or no. Her expression contorted into one of exasperation, and the Feathered Serpent tensed for what would be a change of tactics. Five hundred years with the woman and unfortunately, she knew how to pour salt into his wounds.
She didn't disappoint. "The military almost killed this Queen of yours, and you acquiesced? Shameful how easily gods can fall."
The council quieted. Namora blanched after the last word left her lips, and Attuma watched her with something akin to admiration. Most of those present now had not been aware of Namor's ceremonious announcement in the prisonhold. Lucia screeched and three behind her joined. Their words were a garbled mess.
Namor felt the beginnings of a pounding headache. The fight had left him the moment Shuri had left the cave. The last tendrils of rage dissipated as he stood up from his throne and boomed into the half-destroyed throne room,
"Leave, my children, except Tozi."
Half of them turned purple but they all lifted their hands to open their palms before leaving. Namora fled without greeting him, and Tozi approached him with a sort of trepidation. She updated him on the status of the prisoners, taken care of but with extra security, the body of the vibranium man was being watched by no less than six warriors in case he returned to life, and two of the engineers were in Shuri's lab at this late hour seeking to analyze the components of her invention, despite the unlikelihood of being able to understand its functionality.
"Speaking of the...Princess," she ventured, "why did you lie about her excluding knowledge of the Americans' identities from you? And do you intend to make her Queen?"
He had no answers for either question that he could give her. When those damning words left her lips—keep me instead—all he could think of was betrayal. The spy that killed two of his handmaids and the one she tried to save, the start of a war where he kept his word to her mother, and her arms around him, seeking comfort in the very man who buried her heart. He thought of her body limp in his arms, the one body that should never, ever be so broken.
"You administered the flower to her."
His eyes flicked down to meet Tozi's dark eyes. "Yes."
Tozi flinched, water flowing into her gaping mouth. "I recognized the remaining leaves in this room after the fight and gave it to the gardener. When Zuma told me what she saw, and some of the others mentioned seeing her arrive without her suit, I realized...but why?"
The Captain had worked under him for seven decades now. He remembered her birth and the marks of Chac's many blessings as she quickly grew into a formidable warrior. Her whale-navigating exploits and humor were well-known among even the outer sectors. She carried out every command with little protest, but would occasionally seek out justification. He had come to respect her for this, because unlike Namora, she sought answers, not reasons to become angry.
"I saw her die today, and I am a god that protects his subjects."
"K'uk'ulkan, I have served you in the worst of times, spent months cleaning oil spills and ash from surface-dwelling warfare. I understand we must change as Wakanda does, and I admit I am charmed by the Princess and what she has done for us, despite her rashness, and she is good at whale-driving. I see how you look at her. I warn you that as you faced today, you will have to choose between being a good King and being good to her. Some in Talokan grow restless at your wavering. There have been murmurs..."
"Explain what it is that you wish to advise me, exactly."
"Not advise." She swam closer and he descended in tandem. His headdress was still in the catacombs above, so without its shade, he scolded his face into one of mild courtesy. "You assured me repeatedly that you trust her sincerity and judgment. You have no love for the surface world, and not one of us can forget what the anger of five hundred years. Will you continue to seek disproportionate retribution on the surface world that she has judged is worth loving?"
"Tozi," he warned dangerously.
"The world your mother loved and died in grief for?" Tozi shifted her decorated chest armor. "Chac's rain cover you."
She gestured and left before he could touch his forehead to hers.
Shuri stared at the reflection in her Kimoyo screen that doubled as a mirror.
The tops of her ears tapered into sharp ends.
That explained the strange looks, but that was the least of her worries at the moment, regardless of how much instinct insisted she run — swim — back to her lab and do a blood analysis. She had some guesses from previous analysis of Talokanil bloodwork: most differences between Talokanil and humans were internal, so Shuri wondered if the sudden need to consume copious amounts of water and raw fish was because of the blue in her veins or the simple matter of having fought a god again and drying herself out in the process.
Behind her, Zuma breathed in and out deeply through her watermask, the gurgling sound the only noise to come from her in the past hour. The injury on her jaw had turned a deep purple. The Talokanil had promptly called Atzi upon their return, who joined them in a frighteningly short time but did nothing but pace craters into the catacomb floors. She would look up at Shuri, breathe, and then pace again.
Shuri turned off her beads. "Do I have gills or something?"
Atzi threw her hands up with an accusatory glare. "You, Princess—Queen?—are far too calm. Why are you not panicking? I am panicking. I am very much panicking. Do you know the level of chaos probably ensuing in the palace right now?"
Shuri could imagine it, and yes, she was too calm. She wasn't sure if it was her body granting her some semblance of relaxation before the firestorm of a water-man arrived, or if it was, Bast help her, a sign that things would work out. She toyed with Nakia's bead in her pocket, itching to send a message to Wakanda. Night was falling and tomorrow, armies would be on Wakanda's borders.
But she needed to meet Namor first. They both made foolish mistakes that could no longer be tolerated. She thought of Nakia's warnings, of Namor's incessant heavy-handed approach, and her own vengeance that once drove her. She would have thrown Val into the lake herself, but Shuri was not a woman who's actions were hers alone. Strangely, it was M'Baku's booming voice, one that warned her about eternal war due to personal revenge, that lent her clarity now. Her own words joined the Regent King's, him talking to her, and her talking to Namor.
"You are water, but you behave like fire. Escalating for no reason, in the guise of protecting your people."
"Princess?" Atzi tapped her on the back, interrupting her reverie. Shuri turned and raised an eyebrow, and the Talokanil gasped. "Yours ears..."
"Don't say it."
"I was not lying." Zuma huffed. "She swam to the prison cave without her technology. Namora and the others saw it."
Atzi inhaled sharply. "Did you...the flower...did he..."
The 'he' in question broke through water and waded up the steps. Atzi and Zuma scurried into the lake despite Shuri's pointed looks otherwise and disappeared as Namor came to a stop in front of her. His disheveled appearance and stormy eyes were cause for concern, but she was too preoccupied between the choices of slapping him or wringing his neck out. And trying not to squirm under his scrutiny, the new title he'd offered her flashing across her mind.
Instead, she started with, "We need to get word out to Wakanda."
She held out the bead and explained in clipped tones told him everything: what had happened with Nakia, the information she had so desperately wanted to get to her country, and the sad tin-can of a man she impaled and prayed wasn't completely destroyed now. A cold fury slowly grew on Namor's face throughout her recollection. The corners of his lips pulled down into a deep frown, but he said nothing.
He turned and moved towards the office. Shuri followed, and when they settled into their seats, he dragged a hand across his face.
"Tell me honestly," he started, "am I to believe you wanted this?"
She frowned. "Wanted what?"
"I am serious, Shuri." He spoke slowly, as though every word pained him. "It was never my intention to keep you here longer than necessary, only long enough to resolve this problem and give you the time to restore our flower."
Her heart stilled. That was the highly-sought after question, one that even her heart couldn't fully articulate. "I'd have you on the ground yielding before letting you lay a finger on me with the intent to truly hurt."
"There's a striking pattern of you leaving those who seek to harm to you alone." He grimaced and a touch of red sparked on his face. "Excessive sympathy leads to demise."
"As does rage," she countered. Perhaps she was a person of extremes—now liberated from the need for vengeance, she sought to preserve every life in the shadows of her brother.
"The Americans will be fine. What I struggle to understand is sparing the woman who wished you dead and nearly succeeded."
Shuri flinched.
What had happened was nothing short of miraculous, her mother's own hand and Namor claiming her from death's clutches. The rush of the day's events had little time to process. It was only now that she contemplated properly: the herb she didn't have ready in time for her brother, but the flower that was ready for her.
She forced a shaky breath, willing her mind to focus. "I've met very few people more deserving to die at the bottom of the ocean, but we need her alive. She's the Director of the CIA."
Namor pinched the bridge of his nose. "They have loyalty towards their own, or is it that she has many secrets that pose a risk? If that were the case, she should not have come here."
"And they still took that risk, for whatever reason. Doesn't matter; we can force America's hand with it. I have made mistakes before, but my biggest was to send my people to battle for my vengeance. There were other ways to fix this situation, maybe." She shifted her eyes to him. His hands were flat against the desk in front of him, and stray droplets of water dripped from his hair and onto his shoulders. His expression would impassive to a stranger, but to her it was strained and exhausted. "But I calculated and offered the only thing you could not say no to."
"I said no to your offer in exchange for that scientist before—"
"That was before we battled."
He closed his eyes. "I will not barter with your life, yet you begged that I make you mine, in front of my people. How is a man to win against that?"
She leaned over the desk to grab him by his blasted neck adornments and yanked him towards her. His eyes flew open and amber irises darkened immediately. His blasted ear—so pointy—twitched.
"Not any man. Just you, a god." she said, satisfied at what she saw in him. "I don't beg. I made you yield. You said you would make me want you, but you forgot to worry about yourself." She stood up and left for the room, tapping a message into Nakia's kimoyo bead. A vibranium fly lifted from the inside and flew out of the cabin.
"What did you just say?"
Sam was halfway into his wing suit. "We got word that Vision was spotted flying across the Atlantic ocean towards Mexico. There's no time. We have to intercept him before SWORD does."
Bucky facepalmed. Around him, some of the Dora Milaje sheathed their spears and slipped into flight gear. A blue mask resembling an owl with wide eyes and a garish mouthpiece covered Okoye's face. "All of a sudden he appears? Out of nowhere?" Memories of camping out in Sokovia and driving a beat-down Subaru around the U.S. with the new Captain America flashed in his mind. Shuri owed him.
A flurry of footsteps skidded to a stop in the lab. "We received communication from Shuri!" Nakia shouted. "They were attacked. We need to go, now ."
Okoye and Aneka jumped out the window before she finished her sentence.
"And where is Ross? If he is too weak to take care of his ex-wife, I will."
Shuri spent the better part of ten minutes looking at her hands. A mere hint of a pale blue sheen glistened from some angles, but that could also be attributed to an assortment of vitamin deficiencies, lack of natural sunlight, or exhaustion. The lab and any furthering tinkering would need to wait, except the idea of sleep at this time was impossible.
Still, there was a calm in her heart, the very one she'd reclaimed those hours ago in a vast expanse of land that could only be called a dream, if Shuri were to disbelieve. But she didn't. She hadn't rejected the god since the heart-shaped herb showed her N'Jadaka, and today belief had become a permanent fixture of her being. She felt her mother ruffling her hair, in the water that carried her back to this cave, and in the damp breeze grazing the back of her hands. She clasped them together, squeezing her eyes shut and imagining the feel of Queen Ramonda's fingers between hers.
My daughter is no coward. I am so proud of everything you are.
Soft footsteps padded close to the archway. Shuri straightened and wiped a lingering tear from her eyes.
Namor...looked deflated, as though he was once a balloon on the verge of bursting but instead a small needle-shaped hole squeezed the anger from him until there was little of it left. He appraised her again in that way he had while cradling her wrist earlier, a form of thanks for her being alive.
"Earlier, you gave me a reason why, but you didn't answer if you wanted this."
She got up from the bed. "Define 'this' and make your conclusion." When he didn't answer, sweeping his eyes over her face and body with a twinge of relief, she continued. "Words are not the only way to communicate want."
He stared. She stared back. Her hands yanked the rope near the archway to dim the lights. She didn't trust herself to continue, and in the dark he could not read her face and body. Then she thought how a child who had no love and was revered by his people likely would not recognize it even if it stared at them.
So she said, "You saved my life."
"You did. You created the impossible." The sound of gold clinging against gold echoed in the room. "The remaining portion of the plant is with Tozi. She recruited a gardener to care for it."
In the dark, Shuri's panther-enhanced eyes discerned the shapes and colors of furniture around her without assigning them colors. Hoping this to be the end of the conversation, she slipped into the bed and pulled a blanket over her body. "Thank you," she said, for both saving her life and the care over her inventions. She rolled over, anticipating his usual response. She heard nothing. Assuming he left, she closed her eyes and promptly heard a crash.
"You can't see in the dark?" She stifled a laugh while Namor groaned from somewhere on the floor.
"My senses are painfully more mortal-like in air. Many on the council have insinuated I am more air than water over the years."
She couldn't help it; she broke out into guffaws. The space on the bed to her right shifted as his breathing drew closer. She noticed a distinct lack of the usual sea salt smell — her new mutant (?) organs were desensitized to the general murkiness of ocean water and it gave way to more subtle notes: some rich underwater spice, or a clean floral scent to him.
"I was terrified you'd hear Nakia lurking in the caves." Her laughter subsided into a final giggle as her eyes landed on the shimmering lake across the room, memorizing its shape and the coils of vines twisting into it. Where she would be in twenty-four hours, only Bast knew.
"Do you know," he started so quietly that his voice was almost subsumed by the ripples of the water, "why I say no need when you thank me?"
She blinked slowly, tracing the curls of the assortment of flowers woven into the vines with her eyes.
"Because you should never thank me. I have taken too much from you for you to ever say that." The weight shifted again as he laid next to her, his front to her back and voice millimeters, miles from her neck. His jewelry clanged noisily, but it was a beautiful sound, like water falling in Warrior Falls.
Tears pricked at her eyes.
She wanted to ask him about what he did to her people, what he did to her mother. If he ever thought of her as often as she thought of the handmaid she tried to save, or the Wakandans and Talokanil falling, dead before they hit the water. She heard her mother again; that she need not forgive because love and hate could exist as two parts in her whole, a panther and a serpent together.
She knew he knew what she hinted at by the pause of his breath at the one subject she would never let him enter or put into words for a long time. The pain was too precious and infinite to fit into something as small as syllables.
"I will never forgive you." She whispered.
"I do not dare seek it. I only ask that when we are at odds, you still see what I need to protect, Princess."
She willed him to move closer, but he wouldn't—not with the lights gone and her back to him and her words evasive.
"Princess?" She murmured, turning over. She reached out a hand and it met air. He was further away than expected. "Didn't you announce me as Queen?" The ensuing silence was consuming. "Or do I need to overthrow you for that honor?" She joked. The quiet worsened. She felt like how she withered under her father's scrutiny after she fumbled her first international visit.
A minute passed, during which she counted the number of glowworms hanging from the ceiling, before he responded. "Answer my question."
She extended her arm out fully and it connected with his bearded jaw. Her finger moved across it until it met his square jade earring and dipped into its carved lines. Jewelry suited his face. "We have matching ears. Why is that?"
He lifted a hand to still her wandering finger. "I do not have an answer for you. It may be because your body already holds one herb so it muted the effects of the other, as did my mother's pregnancy did me. It could also be that the flower is not an exact replica of the original and you created something entirely new."
"And dangerous. People may seek it like they seek vibranium to strengthen themselves. There was this one American hero, Captain America, who took a serum and —" She stopped. "Is that what you wished to use the flower for?"
"We have heard tales of this captain. Yes, to strengthen our warriors and protect our oceans."
"It saved me. Talokan could save so many others."
A sharp inhale. "Is that your philosophy or your brother's?"
She smiled despite herself. "Both."
"Excessive nobility does not protect when it can be taken advantage of."
"And isolation does, when it is so easily provoked?" She looked up at the dark ceiling, deep in thought. "I made a mistake, but you didn't make it easy for me to trust you."
She wondered how things would have changed, if they changed at all, had she told him. Would news of a formal invasion have sent him deeper in the depths of anger? Would he have remained eerily calm and directed her to leave? Or would nothing have changed, because she was Shuri an he was the Feathered Serpent God blessed, cursed, with the duties only broken leaders bore. She thanked Bast that no lives were taken today, and that she would airlift medicine herself from Wakanda to heal Zuma's face.
She attempted to put a hand over his mouth before he could rebuke her apology, "The apology is for your people. Many of them treated me like a friend."
Her hand landed over his nose instead, and he shifted under her until a small sneeze escaped him. The jade nose piercing tickled her palm. He lifted her hand and thread his fingers between hers, caressing them. He kissed them again, pressing his lips on the pads of her fingers and her knuckles and the back of her hand. Adrenaline raced, from the places where he poured over her, to the base of her spine. Her blood thrummed under her skin, under his touch.
But he could not see her, and she didn't trust herself to speak, so she had to move first. She scooted across until her shoulder hit his, then turned to face him fully. She wished to see the color of his skin and the shape of his nose instead of their general shapes, but it was enough to maneuver her face into the space between his jaw and shoulder.
"Do you want this?" he asked for a third time.
To be a Queen of Talokan when she was still an absent Princess of Wakanda? No. A young marriage was not unfamiliar to her as a member of the royal family, but she had always been content in her lab with only distant notions of courtship and the occasional romantic comedy to keep her occupied.
Yet she very much preferred this, whatever this was, over physical sparring and battle and going in circles and sleeping in Haiti with unfinished business casting a shade over her head. She definitely preferred this over maybe her maglev vibranium stabilizers, though whether it was better than trips to Oakland with her brother remained to be seen.
"Take me to the surface when my people arrive and I will decide," she whispered into the dark. In response, he shifted and entwined his arms around her, offering a small peck on her forehead.
"Are you sleeping here?"
He pressed his nose into her hair. It tickled. "The protector will be protected tonight."
Namor woke her mere hours later, announcing the arrival of her people with Atzi pretending not to stare behind them. Shuri thought about doors again, and then she smiled in anticipation to see Okoye and the others—though her hugs had a higher standard to meet now.
