Radu understood the words, but they had no meaning. He shook his head, trying to clear it. His father. A high laugh echoed through the room, and only when he put his fingers to his mouth did Radu realize it was coming from him. “Do you know, I cannot even recall what he looked like? Only how he made me feel.”
Mehmed took Radu’s hand. “How did he make you feel?”
“Like I was nothing.” Radu could not look away from Mehmed’s hand on his. “And now he is nothing.”
Mehmed was quiet for a few moments. Radu knew he ought to be sad, or ask questions, but he was more relieved than anything else. Vlad no longer existed in the world, and Radu could not consider that a bad thing.
“Would you like to know how it happened?”
Radu grunted his assent.
“It was Hunyadi, on behalf of the boyars. They killed Mircea as well.”
“Poor Mircea. I am certain that must have upset him.”
Mehmed’s face drew closer to Radu’s, interrupting his view of the ceiling. His brows were pinched in concern. “Are you well?”
Radu put a hand to his forehead, pushing down against the lightness overwhelming him. “I think I am.”
“I tell you this because…because you are the heir to the throne. You are the next in line. And, as sultan, with Wallachia as a vassal state, if that was what you wanted…”
Radu felt the weight of the world crash back down on him. Wallachia, with endless dark trees and fists in the forests, with fountains that brought gasping, choking mouthfuls of water instead of beauty, with winters as cold as a father’s dismissal. Wallachia, with Lada back with Bogdan, not needing him, not seeing him, not caring. Wallachia, with no mosques, no call to prayer, no god that knew or cared for him.
Wallachia, with no Mehmed.
He grasped Mehmed’s shoulders. “I know it would help you, to have someone you could trust on that throne. And I want to serve you, to do whatever I can to help you gain Constantinople and be the sultan your empire has waited for. I will do whatever I can. But please, I beg you, do not ask this of me. I want nothing from Wallachia, as it never wanted anything from me. My home is here, with you. Please do not send me away.”
Mehmed’s face smoothed with relief, and he folded Radu into an embrace. Radu drew a trembling breath, breathing in Mehmed, steadying himself.
“Say nothing to Lada,” Mehmed said. Radu nodded against his shoulder, and this one time held on for longer than was safe because he could not bear to let go.
LADA’S SKIN WAS TOO tight.
There was not enough to contain everything she needed it to. It stretched and itched, phantom sensations crawling across her neck, muscles twitching in desperation.
Bogdan walked on one side of her, Nicolae the other, buffers against the chill of the evening. It was her first free night in over a week. Mehmed had demanded her presence every waking hour, constantly making some excuse for why he needed her, specifically, on guard duty. Or why he needed her advice. Or why he simply needed her.
Those particular needing sessions burned deep and low, and she shuddered.
“Are you well?” Nicolae asked.
She walked faster.
It felt right to have Bogdan next to her, like a return to how things had been. He fell into step without hesitation, her shadow, her right hand. Hers, as he had always been, even across the years.
But she was not the same person. She had grown, distorted, become something new. And the Lada she had been with Bogdan—the Lada she wanted to be around him—was not the same Lada she was with Mehmed.
Nicolae and Bogdan both stared at her, as though waiting. Waiting for what? She wanted to snap at them, to hit them, to make them leave with their constant unasked question: Why?
Why was she still here?
The question did not seem to exist when she was alone with Mehmed, but as soon as he was gone it covered her like boils, an itching plague upon her soul. Why was she still here? What had become of the girl who was the daughter of a dragon? Was this it, then? Had she reached the pinnacle of her potential? A command of fifty men in service of a man she loved, who ruled an empire she loathed?
“What more is there?” she snarled.
Bogdan and Nicolae both stopped, staring at her with confusion. “What more is there to what?” Nicolae asked.
She jabbed a finger into his chest. “Stop talking to me. Stop looking at me. Stop expecting me to solve this.”
Nicolae’s lips parted in a tentative, baffled smile. “If I understood anything you were saying, I absolutely would endeavor to obey. As it is, I think I will steer us toward a merchant who has a stock of juice that has been kept far too long and turned sour in the best possible way.”
An orange haze lighting the night gave them all pause.
Fire.
Four years ago, Lada had walked these streets, imagining raining fire down on them. Her heart leaped with joy, needing to be closer, to find the fire and feed it.
“Is that smoke?” Nicolae asked.