Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)
Kiersten White
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this thrilling finale, Lada realises that it is only by destroying everything that came before – including her relationships – can she truly build the country she wants.
Claim the throne. Demand the crown. Rule the world.
To Wendy Loggia, darling sunshine in human form, who saw what these books would be from the very beginning and helped me every step of the way
1
1454, Wallachia
LADA DRACUL HAD cut through blood and bones to get the castle.
That did not mean she wanted to spend time in it. It was a relief to escape the capital. She understood the need for a seat of power, but she hated that it was Tirgoviste. She could not sleep in those stone rooms, empty and yet still crowded with the ghosts of all the princes who had come before her.
With too far to go before reaching Nicolae, Lada planned to camp for the night. Solitude was increasingly precious—and yet another resource she was sorely lacking. But a tiny village tucked away from the frosted road beckoned her. During one of the last summers before she and Radu were traded to the Ottomans, they had traveled this same path with their father. It had been one of the happiest seasons of her life. Though it was winter now, nostalgia and melancholy slowed her until she decided to stay.
Outside the village, she spent a few frigid minutes changing into clothes more standard than her usual selection of black trousers and tunics. They were noteworthy enough that she risked being recognized. She put on skirts and a blouse—but with mail underneath. Always that. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to mark her as prince.
She found lodging in a stone cottage. Because there was not enough planting land for boyars to bother with here, the peasants could own small patches of it. Not enough to prosper, but enough to survive. An older woman seated Lada by the fire with bread and stew as soon as coins had exchanged hands. The woman had a daughter, a small thing wearing much-patched and too-large clothes.
They also had a cat, who, in spite of Lada’s utter indifference to the creature, insisted on rubbing against her leg and purring. The little girl sat almost as close. “Her name is Prince,” the girl said, reaching down to scratch the cat’s ears.
Lada raised an eyebrow. “That is an odd name for a female cat.”
The girl grinned, showing all the childhood gaps among her teeth. “But princes can be girls now, too.”
“Ah, yes.” Lada tried not to smile. “Tell me, what do you think of our new prince?”
“I have never seen her. But I want to! I think she must be the prettiest girl alive.”
Lada snorted at the same time as the girl’s mother. The woman sat down in a chair across from Lada. “I have heard she is nothing to look at. A blessing. Perhaps it can keep her out of a marriage.”
“Oh?” Lada stirred her stew. “You do not think she should get married?”
The woman leaned forward intently. “You came here by yourself. A woman? Traveling alone? A year ago such a thing would have been impossible. This last harvest we were able to take our crops to Tirgoviste without paying robbers’ fees every league along the road. We made two times again as much money as we ever have. And my sister no longer has to teach her boys to pretend to be stupid to avoid being taken for the sultan’s accursed Janissary troops.”
Lada nodded as though hesitant to agree. “But the prince killed all those boyars. I hear she is depraved.”
The woman huffed, waving a hand. “What did the boyars ever do for us? She had her reasons. I heard—” She leaned forward so quickly and with such animation half her stew spilled, unnoticed. “I heard she is giving land to anyone. Can you imagine? No family name, no boyar line. She gives it to those who deserve it. So I hope she never marries. I hope she lives to be a hundred years old, breathing fire and drinking the blood of our enemies.”
The little girl grabbed the cat, settling it on her lap. “Did you hear the story of the golden goblet?” she asked, eyes bright and shining.
Lada smiled. “Tell me.”
And so Lada heard new stories about herself, from her own people. They were exaggerated and stretched, but they were based on things she had actually done. The ways she had improved her country for her people.
Lada slept well that night.
“Did you know,” Lada said, scanning the parchment in her hand, “that to settle a dispute between two women who were fighting over an infant, I cut the infant in half and gave them both a piece?”
“That was very pragmatic of you.” Nicolae had ridden out to the road to meet her. Now they were side by side, their horses meandering through the ice-glazed trees. This winter was preferable to last, though, oddly, she found herself missing the camaraderie of camping as a fugitive alongside her men. Now they were scattered. All doing important work for Wallachia, but any chance she had to reunite with them, she took. She had been looking forward to this time with Nicolae.
He guided them toward the estate that had formerly belonged to her advisor, Toma Basarab. Before Lada’s rule, Toma had been alive and well, and these roads had been nearly impassable without an armed guard for protection. Now, Toma was dead and the roads were safe. Both of those—death of boyars and safety for everyone else—were patterns of Lada’s rule so far.
The frigid air stung her nostrils in a way she found bracing and pleasant. The sun shone clear, but it was no match for the blanket of ice that Wallachia slept under. Perhaps that also contributed to the safety of the roads. No one wanted to be out in this.
Lada preferred it to the castle with a fierceness that was as sharp and pointed as the icicles she passed beneath.
She waved the parchment with the story of her unusual methods of solving family disputes. “The most offensive part,” she said, “is that the story is unoriginal. The Transylvanians got that one from the Bible. The least they could do is make up new stories about me, rather than stealing from Solomon.” She should print the stories the woman and her daughter had told last night. Spread those rumors instead.
Nicolae gestured to the bundle of reports he had given her. “Did you see the new woodcut? Very skilled artist. It is the next page.”
She was sorting through as best she could while riding, dropping each page to the road as she finished. None had been anything but slander. Nothing important. Nothing true. Her thick gloves were not suited to manipulating thin sheets, but she shuffled until she found the illustration. “I am dining on human flesh amid a forest of impaled bodies.”
“You are! Meals in Tirgoviste have changed since you sent me out here.”
Lada adjusted her red satin hat, a jeweled star in the middle representing the falling star that had accompanied her ascension to the throne. “He got my hair wrong.”
Nicolae reached out and tugged one of her long, curling locks. “It is difficult to capture such majesty with simple tools.”
“I have missed you, Nicolae.” Her tone was acidic but her sentiment sincere. She needed him where he was, but she missed him at her side.
He gestured to the star in the center of her hat, beaming. “Of course you have. I dare say I am one of the brightest—nay, the very brightest—point of your existence. How have you scrambled in the dark these long six months without me?”
“Peacefully, now that you mention it. Such blessed quiet.”
“Well, Bogdan’s strength never has been conversation.” Nicolae’s smile twisted, puckering his long scar. “But you do not keep him around for talking.”
Lada gritted her teeth. “I can kill you. Very quickly. Or very, very slowly.”