Alone, stone pressing in, she knew: there was no heart in this mountain.
Wallachia was not her mother. Wallachia did not care what happened to her. And every single person who might have was either dead or trying to kill her.
Her feet slipped, and she hung by the tips of her fingers. Pain burned through them. “I am a dragon,” she whispered. It echoed around her, her own words coming back haunted and empty of meaning or strength.
She fell.
46
Poenari Fortress
RADU SAT IN the dim lantern light, his head leaning against the cold stone. In his hand he held one of Lada’s knives. Wrist, wrist, waist, ankle, ankle. He had taken them all.
Lada’s head rested in his lap, her eyes closed. Her breathing was even. Her arm had been bent at an impossible angle when he found her in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the long, dark tunnel leading to the fortress. She was not bleeding anywhere that he could see, but she had been sleeping for hours now.
He shifted, working circulation back into his legs.
Lada’s eyelids fluttered. Radu stroked her forehead, brushing away one of her tangled curls. She sat up with a start, then cried out in pain, grabbing her shoulder and scooting away from him. She tried to stand but one of her ankles gave out. Dragging herself away, she hit the far wall only a few feet from Radu and stopped, leaning back against it and breathing heavily.
“Hello, Lada,” Radu said.
With her good hand, Lada reached for her other wrist.
Radu held up the knife. In the lamp’s golden flicker, Lada’s black eyes looked dead, no reflection coming back to him. It was as though the light was sucked in, devoured whole, and disposed of.
“How did you know about this place?” Lada put her good hand on her ribs and grimaced.
“Did you think all I did that summer was cry because you and Bogdan would not let me play with you?”
Lada blinked, still dazed. “Actually, yes.”
Radu laughed, the sound ringing brighter through the space than the lamp’s light. “I did do a fair amount of that. But I also explored. I found this cave, and climbed all the way up to the fortress. As soon as I got out up there, I knew it was the secret you had been keeping. I did not dare climb back down, though. It took me until dark to hike back. You never noticed I was gone the whole day.” Radu smiled.
“Father did not notice when I found the fortress ruins the first time, either. I was so excited to tell him. But all he wanted to do was leave us.”
“That never changed.” Radu sighed, a soft noise lost in the breeze that wound its way back to this part of the cavern. “When I heard rumors of your fortress in the mountains, I knew this was where I would find you.”
Lada closed her eyes, another grimace passing over her face and then resolutely dismissed. “So you came down here after you missed.”
“After I missed?”
“Your shot. With the arrow.”
“I did not miss.”
Lada opened her eyes, narrowing them at him. “And yet here I am, free from arrow holes.”
“I hit my target.”
Lada struggled for words. “You—you meant to kill Bogdan?”
It had not been an easy decision. Radu had sighted Lada first. But Cyprian’s belief in him made him pause. If he had Cyprian at his side, he knew he could do anything. And if Lada had Bogdan at her side, he knew she would never give up. She would have to be stripped of everything she had claimed over the years. And so Radu had killed Lada’s oldest friend. The son of their beloved nurse. Not an innocent man by any measure, but still, Radu would carry his murder with him until the end of his own days.
He had to break Lada before the end. And so Bogdan died. “I needed you to understand the cost of this. To feel loss.”
“Or you simply hated Bogdan.”
Radu rubbed his ear against his shoulder self-consciously. It was true. He had hated Bogdan. But hate had not motivated his actions. “You have to lose.”
“You took him from me.”
Radu’s own anger flared at her accusations. “You murdered my brother-in-law!”
“He took you from me!” Lada lurched forward, then gasped in pain, collapsing back again. “I am not sorry.”
Radu fought back his anger. She was trying to provoke him. “I know.”
“You can tell Mehmed that. Tell him I was not sorry. Tell him my only regret was that he did not die under my knife.”
Radu held up a hand and mimicked writing a letter. “Dear Mehmed,” he said, his voice singsongy. “My sister sends her regards, and wants you to know how much she admires your blood and wishes she could have seen more of it. All of it, in fact.”
Lada let out a shocked burst of laughter, holding her ribs and doubling over in pain. She panted, easing herself back up. “Finish it. I always said I would kill you. I never imagined you would kill me.”
Radu did not take his eyes off his sister. “So you see, then. The result of your struggle. You are alone, in the dark, with no allies and no friends and no weapons.”
Lada’s face was as fierce and proud as it was drawn and pinched from pain.
“Was it worth it?” Radu whispered.
Lada lifted her chin. “Yes.”
Radu scratched the knife against the damp stone beneath him. “Do you remember the story of Shirin and Ferhat?”
“We are in the center of my mountain, Radu, and I see no heart.”
Radu smiled. “You are wrong. There are two. Yours, and mine.”
Lada let out a deep, shaking breath, and some of her pride fell with her shoulders. On her face was an expression Radu had never seen before.
Sadness.
“I wish it was not you,” she said. “I could take a blade happily from anyone but you.”
“You will never stop, though. Even now. If there was a way to go on, alone, stripped of everything, you would do it.”
Lada nodded, hand drifting up to the locket Radu had given her. “As long as I have breath, I will fight. Even when it feels like my own country does not want me to, I will fight. I cannot stop.”
“That is what I thought.” Radu stood, shaking out his legs, which were sore and numb from sitting so long. “You and Mehmed. I was always trying to protect you two, trying to shift your courses. I wish I had been able to. But if I had, you would not be the people you are, and I cannot begrudge you that.” Radu closed the distance between them. Lada looked up at him with fierce defiance.
He tucked the knife into the waist of his breeches. “You really tried to protect me during our childhood. To make me stronger. Every time you let me be beaten. Every time you were the one beating me. It was because you could see no other way to protect me.”
Lada lifted an eyebrow in confusion. “Yes.”
“Then let me protect you in the way that I know how. I will not stay with you forever—I cannot, and I do not want to. But I can help you for a little while so that you can continue making Wallachia free. I think you deserve each other.”
Lada frowned. “Is that an insult?”
Radu laughed. “I do not know. But you have seen what your methods have produced. Let me help you long enough to get you on stable ground. I can give you a throne without turmoil or threat so you can make your country healthy.”
“And then?”
“And then I will leave.”
“What about Mehmed?”
“Let me worry about him. Please. Let me worry about all the other leaders and nobles and boyars. I insist.”
“I do not need—” Lada stopped, shaking her head. “I do need your help. I always did. But you were not here. You did not choose me.”
Radu knelt in front of her, holding the knife out. Knowing that he had just killed her best friend. Knowing that he had stripped her of everything. Knowing that an injured, cornered wild thing was the most dangerous type.
Knowing that this was his choice. That it was not what Lada would do, or Mehmed. And that was why it was right.
Lada reached out, her fingers closing around the knife. She held it up, playing with the reflections of light. “You are mine again?”
“For a time.”
“And then?”