Radu patted her arm, waiting for her breath to go steady and deep. Then he rolled away, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.
The only thing coming here had accomplished was getting Radu far away from Mehmed and the rumors spread about them. Radu knew if that was what Mehmed needed, he should be glad. He should be willing to sacrifice himself to protect Mehmed’s vision, to protect his reputation. But he could not—would not—be willing to sacrifice Nazira.
He would stay the course. He would make something of their time here. And he would get her out alive, no matter what.
24
Early April
OANA—THE ONLY one who knew about Lada’s meeting with Mehmed—said nothing as Lada commanded her men to pack up camp the next morning. Lada was grateful to her for that. She could not have handled questions about the soldiers she should have returned with.
Bogdan stayed closer to her side than ever. He never asked where she had gone. At least his unquestioning acceptance of her actions had not changed. But even if he asked, she would never tell him.
Or anyone.
Lada’s mind chased itself in angry circles. Mehmed—whom she had always trusted—had deceived her. And he thought she would choose Constantinople after that? How little he knew her.
The next night, though, lying on the frozen ground, her mind betrayed her. Images of being empress next to Mehmed haunted her when she closed her eyes. It was the worst part of everything, knowing that, on some level, she wanted that much power, even at that cost.
She awoke, gasping and aching. No. The worst were dreams of Mehmed at her side in an entirely different fashion.
She made her men move before dawn. Sleep was not her ally. She drove them hard toward Hunedoara, reassuring herself that at least she had done some good for Hunyadi. Constantinople would fall—of that she had no doubts, whatever else she might now doubt and hate about Mehmed—and Hunyadi would have died there. Her duplicity had spared him his life. She could take comfort in that.
“I hate Hungary,” Petru grumbled, riding abreast of Lada, Nicolae, and Bogdan. “And that lord or noble or prince, Matthias? Whenever he is around me, he holds a handkerchief to his nose.” Petru ducked his head to smell under his arms. “I smell nothing.”
Nicolae leaned close, then feigned fainting. “That is because your sense of smell has killed itself out of despair.”
“Matthias is not a prince,” Lada said. “He is Hunyadi’s son.”
Petru’s expression shifted in surprise. “How did Hunyadi’s seed produce that weak politician?”
Nicolae’s cheerful voice answered. “The same way Vlad Dracul’s traitorous seed produced our valiant Lada!”
Lada stared straight ahead, numb. In that moment, she realized she was exactly like her father. Hunyadi had cautioned her not to discount the man who made her the way she was. Apparently her father had done his job well. She, too, had taken someone who trusted her and leveraged that trust for Ottoman aid—aid that benefitted her nothing. And she had been stupid enough to make it personal with Mehmed.
She was a fool.
“Lada?” Bogdan asked, his low, grumbling voice soft with concern.
She pushed her horse forward, outpacing them all so they could not see the first tears she had cried since she was a child.
Oana caught her, though. Lada wiped furiously at her face. “What do you want?”
“Where are we going?”
“Back to Hunyadi. He is my only ally.”
Oana made a humming noise. “Not your only ally. You have other family besides your father.”
“Mircea is dead, too. And none of the boyars are more closely related to the Dracul line than to the Danesti or Basarab.”
“Not that side. Your mother. Last I heard, she was alive in Moldavia. And she is still royalty there.”
Lada turned her head to the side and spat. “She is nothing to me.”
“Be that as it may, you might not be nothing to her. Blood calls to blood. You could yet find your path to the throne through the support of her family. If nothing else, it is a place to rest and regroup. You need some rest.”
Groaning, Lada rubbed her forehead. “I do not want to see her.” There was a reason appealing to her Molda vian relatives had never crossed her mind. Her mother had ceased existing for her years ago. The idea of welcoming that woman back into her life, even if it got her the throne …
Oana leaned closer. “It cannot cost you more than whatever happened with the sultan.”
“God’s wounds, woman, very well.” Lada ignored Oana’s pleased smile as she turned her horse around. “New plan,” she said when she rejoined her men.
“New plan?” Petru asked.
“Where are we off to now?” Nicolae asked.
“Moldavia.”
“Moldavia?” Petru said.
“Is there an echo here?” Lada glared at Petru.
Though he ducked his head and blushed, excitement animated his voice. “Are we burning Moldavian cities? Like we did in Transylvania?”
Lada had not forgotten Matei and the waste of his death, traitor or not. She would not lose men to petty vengeance again. Only to vengeance worth taking. She shook her head.
“What, then?” Nicolae asked.
“We go to appeal to my blood. We go to see my—” She paused, feeling the edges of the next word sticking in her throat, threatening to choke her. “My mother.”
“She is so beautiful,” Petru whispered, peering through the hedge they hid behind. “You look nothing like her.”
Nicolae cringed. “And that, Petru, is why your line will die with you.”
Lada did not—could not—answer as her mother rode elegantly toward them down the dirt path of her country manor.
The only clear memory Lada had of the woman was one of lank hair hanging over her face, sharp shoulder blades, bowed back. Crawling. Weeping. She had expected to come here and find the same broken creature. She had not been able to picture her mother standing, much less riding.
This woman was small and fine-boned like a bird. Her hair, pinned elaborately beneath her hat, shone black with hints of silver threaded through. Her back was straight, her chin lifted, a veil of lace over her face.
Lada had been apprehensive about trying to leverage her connection to her mother to get help from the Moldavian king, her grandfather. But it had been easier to think of her mother that way, as a stepping-stone. Someone to climb over.
Here her mother was not on the ground. She was higher than Lada.
“We should leave,” she said. “This was a bad idea.”
“We should at least talk to her,” Nicolae said.
“I do not even know if that is her. I have not seen her since I was three. Perhaps we were misdirected. My mother might be dead.”
Bogdan pushed Petru aside, taking over his vantage point. “That is her.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “I was older than you when she left.”
“By a year!”
He blinked at Lada, expression intractable. “I remember everything about our childhood.” He said the word our with uncharacteristic tenderness. It made Lada feel unsettled, even more than she already was.
Lada crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Jump out of the hedge and scream, ‘Hello, Mother!’”
Nicolae shook his head. “Of course not. She is not our mother. Only yours.”
“She is barely even that. She will not recognize me.” Lada would have to prove her identity to the woman who had fled when she was a child. She had no way of doing that.
“We could bring my mother,” Bogdan said. “She was your mother’s companion for many years.”
They had left Oana at camp with the rest of the men, hidden along the mountain pass where they had crept into Moldavia. The whole journey Lada had longed to turn around, to flee, to go back home. But she could not. She needed help.
She hated needing.
“Fine.” Lada stood and pushed through the hedge. She struggled out from it right as her mother’s horse passed.
“God’s wounds!” Vasilissa shouted, using Lada’s father’s favorite curse. “Where did you—” She stopped, her fingers going to her mouth, pressing at the veil.