“Wallachia is not well liked. It will take her time to get traction within Europe. You should attack her,” Mara said. “Immediately.”
Radu opened his mouth to disagree, but then he paused. His own hesitation had cost so many lives in Constantinople, on both sides of the wall. He had not acted aggressively, and was haunted by what might have been if he had. If he had assassinated Constantine when he had the chance, perhaps he could have saved tens of thousands. He had not because he cared about the emperor, and because he cared about Cyprian. He still did not know whether he had made the right decision.
He suspected he had not. Could he stand idly by while more innocents died? It was not his fault this time, but—
Or was it? Lada had asked him to join her. Without him by her side, there was no one to temper her, no one to guide her from her first impulses. Without Radu to gently push her in new directions, she was turning into the most brutal version possible of herself.
He had chosen Mehmed over Lada, and this was the result. More death. Always death.
There had been no response to Mara’s suggestion of attack. Radu looked up. Everyone was watching him. Kumal with compassion, Mara with expectation, and Mehmed with agitated turmoil. Finally, his fists relaxed and his shoulders slumped.
“I do not want to,” Mehmed said, his voice soft. “I do not want to destroy her.”
Radu nodded, his head leaden. “I will go speak with her, then.”
Mara jumped in, still as poised and elegant as a painting, though a line had formed between her brows. “What good will speaking with her do? You cannot release Wallachia from vassalage. It sets a terrible precedent. If we can think of nothing short of total independence that she might be willing to bargain for, we have nothing to offer.”
“If she continues to push on this, she will be killed.” Kumal lifted his hands as though weighing two choices. “I do not mean that as a threat. I mean it as truth. You have said yourself that she will never back down. Her actions threaten everyone in our empire. Instability creates cracks through which death seeps in. Our responsibility is to keep our people safe, and to address threats to their well-being. Radu, I know she is your sister, but if she will not compromise, this necessarily ends in her death.”
Radu felt a pressure behind his eyes like tears he would not release. Kumal was right. Lada was courting death, and would drag untold numbers down with her on her bloody journey. He had failed her before. He would not fail her this time. But to protect her, he would have to betray her. Betrayal was quickly becoming the only skill he had to offer anyone.
Radu nodded. “She will not compromise. When she comes to meet me—as she must, because I am her brother and it aggravates her that I have belonged to someone else these last years—I will bring her back here.”
“She will never come back,” Mara said.
“Not willingly.” Radu waited as his meaning sank in.
“No,” Mehmed said. “I cannot make her a prisoner. Not like my father did. It would …” His voice broke as he trailed off.
“It would kill whatever love she has left for both of us.” Radu crossed the room and took Mehmed by the shoulders. He saw his own sadness and exhaustion reflected in his friend’s eyes. He hated this decision, even as he felt it was the right one. The only one. “Maybe, someday, we can fix it. But right now, people are dying because of her. Your people. Our people. Can we let them die because of our history with her?”
Mehmed’s eyes tracked back and forth, as though tracing potential futures. Doubtless he searched for one in which he might have Lada the way he wanted her. The future he was seeing did not revolve around Radu. “Bring her back,” Mehmed said. “Bring her home.”
Whatever they had here, whatever they might possibly move toward, it would end if Lada was back, no matter how unwilling she was. She always came first. But it did not matter. Radu had not known what to hope for, but all hope had disappeared when Mehmed did not hesitate to send him away again if it meant getting Lada back.
It was the door, swinging shut. Radu knew the momentum had started the day he ran away from Edirne with Cyprian and discovered that some hearts were more worth breaking for. And very soon, he sensed, the door would close forever. He could still acknowledge his feelings for Mehmed while knowing they were nearly done.
Radu dropped his hands from Mehmed’s shoulders, smiling because he did not know what else to do. He had held on to his love for Mehmed for so long. It had been his first, and he could not imagine anything ever taking its place. He had been wrong.
He would let this impossible love slowly end, then. Forever.
9
Tirgoviste
LADA WAS HIDING.
She preferred to think of it as a strategic retreat, but the truth was she needed a few minutes surrounded by the warm scent of baking bread and nothing else. She stuck her finger in a jar of fruit preserves, taking out a glob and licking it off.
“Have some manners,” Oana chided, but her words had no sting. She hummed, bustling around the cavernous kitchen. Lada was transformed into a child again, and for once in her nineteen years, she did not mind. She crawled under a table and huddled close to the warm ovens, closed her eyes, and finished off the jar of preserves.
“Have you seen Lada?” Nicolae asked. He had stayed with her after Bulgaria, his presence needed more at the castle than at the training grounds. Lada froze. She could not see him, but that did not mean he could not see her. “There is a dispute between two landowners, and they are here demanding she settle it. We also have several petitioners asking to be granted land before the planting season starts, and a few dozen recruits for her forces to be approved, and we need to discuss how we will collect taxes from the regions without boyars. And we have had more letters.”
Oana shifted so that her skirts were blocking Lada’s nest. “Maybe she is out riding.”
“In this cold?”
Oana harrumphed. “I am not her nurse anymore, as she is so fond of reminding me. I do not know where she is. Now get out of my kitchen or start helping. Damn castle cannot feed itself.”
Nicolae beat a hasty retreat. Oana’s hand appeared beneath the table, holding another jar of preserves and half a loaf of still-steaming bread.
Lada would be prince again in an hour. But for now, she allowed herself the luxury of letting her former nurse take care of her. “Thank you,” she murmured. Oana’s happy humming indicated Lada’s presence was all the thanks she desired. Perhaps they never really grew out of their roles. Oana would always be a nursemaid. Lada, her charge. Bogdan, the loyal playmate. Radu …
She pressed the warm bread against her cheek and decided not to think about anything at all.
Her older brother, Mircea, had been buried alive in dirt. Sometimes Lada feared she would be buried alive in parchment.
She shuffled through a new mound, squinting against a headache, missing the warmth of the kitchens. Spring kept promising it was coming, only to be met with a frost icing the stones of the castle.
“The fortress at Bucharest is almost done,” she said. Nicolae wrote it down, waiting for further information. “Poenari Fortress on the Arges is almost complete as well. I wish I were there right now.” Lada rubbed the back of her neck, dreaming of the cold stone of the peak, the deep green of the trees, the sparkling ribbon of the river far below. Of anywhere in Wallachia, her mountaintop fortress felt the most like home. But Tirgoviste demanded her presence with the nagging insistence of a hundred daily petitioners and dozens of urgent letters.
“Do we need to focus on any other fortifications?” Nicolae asked. “The city walls here could use some attention.”
“We will not win anything by barricading ourselves in.”
“Defending a well-fortified location is easier than meeting in the open.”
Lada put her feet up on the table. “Tell that to Constantinople. No. We will fight in ways no one has ever seen. That is how we will hold our land.”