“Which is why you are the right person.” Nazira’s gaze was intense with the confident assurance that carried her through life. “Not because you feel like it is owed you. You would take the throne as a true servant to your people. The prince they both desperately need and deserve. Not a violent warlord, and not a spineless noble. An actual prince.”
Radu shrugged, but his smile was a challenge to her sentiments. “Alas! The position has already been filled. I will do what I can for him and for Wallachia. And then we are going home.” He squeezed Cyprian’s hand and felt the warm rush of reassurance as Cyprian squeezed back. “All of us. Permanently.”
Nazira’s full lips drew down at the corners. “Your people deserve better than Aron.”
“You are my people. My people are the three people in this room with me right now.”
Only Fatima looked pleased by the sentiment. Nazira’s frown did not lift. And Cyprian made a noise in his chest that sounded unsure.
“We will get to Lada before anyone else does. We will send her back to the empire where she will spend the rest of her days in a prison. And then Aron can find his way as prince without me.” Radu spoke with all the authority and confidence he did not feel, willing it to be true. He did not want to have to shoulder the burden of Wallachia. Let it take care of itself as it had never taken care of him.
39
Hunedoara
LADA SAT ON the floor, her back to the door. The cell that had been cold and dank was now oppressively warm and humid as spring shifted into summer. “I think I am dying.”
“Nonsense,” Oana chided from the other side. She rapped her knuckles against the wood. “You are not allowed to die. Besides, I have taken one of the cooks as a lover.”
“You what?” Lada sat up straighter.
“The nights here are long. And it seemed an easy way to make certain your food was safe. He is definitely not poisoning you. First, because no one has told him to. And second, because if you died, I would have no reason to stay here. Poor fool adores me.”
Lada did not know whether to laugh or to cut off her ears in an effort to remove the information she had just received.
Oana continued as though none of this was odd. “Now, to be quick. Stefan says there are always at least five guards. The key is kept upstairs in a locked room that also has several guards. He can probably kill the guards on this floor, but he is not certain he can get the key and then come down here and kill them all without raising an alarm. That would make it impossible for you to slip away once the door is opened.”
It was still amazing to Lada that the greatest assassin she had ever known had been working as a cleaner for more than three months. He had made himself a fixture of the castle. No one noticed him; he could do whatever he needed to so long as he kept up his duties. She would never look at her own castle servants the same. Assuming she ever got a castle again.
Lada scratched her head, then stared at her filthy fingernails. “So I need to figure out a way to get the guards to open the door themselves.”
“While Stefan is here. And he cleans this block only once a week.”
Lada wrinkled her nose at the ever-present miasma. “I am aware. Unfortunately, ever since I killed three guards with my bare hands, they have not been willing to open the door.” Lada had to pass her chamber pot out through the small hole in the door. That was also how she got water for drinking and washing, food—which after three eternal months still almost always made her throw up—and anything else they saw fit to send her. Usually more rats. She did not have the energy to bother displaying them anymore.
“You will think of something. When you do, we will be ready.”
“What if this is it? What if I never get out? I will disappear just as he planned, and he will win. Mehmed will win. All the men will win. I cannot bear it, Oana.”
“Who am I speaking to?” Oana reached a hand through the hole and blindly groped for Lada’s head. She found it, tangling her fingers in Lada’s hair. “It feels like my Lada, but it certainly does not sound like her. Will you really let this king with his fine clothes and his oiled beard and his gilded lies get the best of you? You are a dragon.”
Lada nodded. But here, in this sweltering cell, far from her people and her land, she did not feel like a dragon.
For the first time in a long time, she felt like a girl. It terrified her. Because there was nothing in the world more vulnerable to be than a girl.
These past three months Lada had spoken only to Oana, who was permitted to visit her once a day for a few minutes. She suspected Mara was behind that kindness. For a while she had wondered if Mehmed would send for her. But she had tried to kill him, and if he transported her all the way to Constantinople, word would get out, ruining Matthias’s goal of having her fade from Europe’s consciousness.
So when Matthias came to visit her the next day, Lada was happier to speak with him than she ought to have been.
“It pains me to see you like this,” he said.
“Let me out and I will show you what pain is.”
Matthias laughed. “You are very bad at negotiating. But it is no wonder that my father preferred you over me. You speak the same language. Did you know, he wanted me to marry you?”
“Yes. I knew.”
“You did?” A flicker of confusion passed over his face. Lada assumed it was because he could not fathom any woman passing on the opportunity to wed him.
She yawned, stretching her arms over her head. “I felt it would be disrespectful to your father to marry his son and then murder my husband in his sleep. Though I probably would have murdered you while you were awake, for the satisfaction of watching the look on your face as my knife cut your soul free from your loathsome body.”
Matthias leaned closer, peering through the hole. “Why do you make your life so much more difficult than it has to be? You could have been in a house. With servants. With comforts. I would have taken excellent care of you out of respect for what you have accomplished. I am not a fool; I know you have done great things. But you made so many enemies along the way. Does it not trouble you that I have held you these last three months and no one has come looking for you? No one has inquired about your location.” He twisted his face in mock sympathy. “No one cares that you are gone. You have been replaced on your throne without fanfare or struggle. You may have sent the Ottomans out of your land, but this is your reward.” He sighed as though feeling actual pity for her. “I cannot kill you. I do not know if I want to, but even if I did, it would put me at odds with those who admire you. Besides, it is much easier to simply keep you. To let you stay here until everyone has forgotten you. Until your only legacy are the lurid woodcuts and terrifying nighttime stories of the Saxons. You will fade into a monster, a myth. And when that happens, I will be kind. When everything you accomplished has disappeared—and it will not take long—then I will take you out of this cell. And I will let you die.”
He paused, considering. “Or I may let you live. I do not think it matters much, either way. The world was never going to permit you to continue. You should have made someone a repulsive wife, had an heir or two, and lived out your life in quiet misery.”
Lada lifted an eyebrow coldly. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Matthias nodded without emotion. “He probably would. I will have to live with that. And I will live. I have my crown. I will rule my people, and my reign will be long and fair and touched with glory. And you will be less than a notation in the triumphant history of my life. Who knows, maybe you will have a few lines in the sultan’s history as well? You can always hope.”
Lada wanted to find words that would do as much damage as she knew her fists could. She wanted to cut this small man to his very core.
But she knew that even though she was better, smarter, stronger, even though she had already done more for Europe than he ever would, even though she had worked and fought harder than he was capable of, he was probably right. He would be rewarded and remembered and respected.