Lada let her face go underneath the water. A mother. A nurse. Even a friend. Perhaps if she had more women in her life, she would not feel so outraged at the physical and social demands of being one.
She thought of needlework. Of the weight of layers of dresses and the pinching of shoes. Of downcast eyes and well-timed smiles. Of her mother. Of Huma, Halima, and Mara. All the ways to be a wife, all the ways to be a woman.
No, more women in her life would change nothing.
And she could still learn to shoot a bow better, breasts be damned. She put her hands on either breast and squeezed until they hurt, trying to figure out what Ivan had wanted. What could possibly be the allure of the fleshy mounds? And then she screamed, as a body half landed on her, pushing her underwater. Choking, she clawed her way to the surface.
Only to find Mehmed’s smiling face inches from her own.
Her anger at being startled was washed away, carried in rivulets down her face and hair. He looked different. He had aged in the months he had been away. While the changes that growing had carved into Radu’s face made her brother more beautiful, the changes in Mehmed’s made him look harder. Distant. Less like the crying boy she had met at the fountain, and more like what she felt a sultan should be.
But now, so close to her, the hard planes of his face softened into familiarity as he flashed the smile that had not changed since he was a boy. His lips were soft and full and welcoming, but his eyes were sly.
It was his lips she found herself unable to look away from.
“Did you miss me?” he teased.
Sincerity betrayed her, tumbling out of her mouth in a whisper before she could rein it in. “I did.”
He put his hands on her waist, as he had done so many times last summer, pulling her under, pushing her, playing. But this time he left his hands there. They were warm through the thin material of her underclothes. His voice was husky, lower than it had been. “I missed you, too.”
He pulled her closer, and Lada warred within herself. Her inclination was to push him away, to cut him with a clever, sharp remark, to find something, anything to do with her hands, her worthless hands that floated uselessly at her sides.
Huma’s words echoed in her head. Set him free. Did she truly hold him that way?
Did she want to?
As though heeding her desperation but heedless of the confusion and fear ringing through her like the clash of blades, her hands lifted and grabbed the back of Mehmed’s head, tangling in his wet hair. And then her lips, from which nothing but poison had ever dropped, found his and were baptized with sweet fire, reborn into something new and wild. His mouth answered hers, lips parting, his teeth catching hers, her tongue meeting his.
It felt like fighting.
It felt like falling.
It felt like dying.
“Mehmed?” Radu called, his voice muffled and indistinct, as if Lada’s head were still underwater. She and Mehmed paused their mouth-to-mouth combat, and Lada realized her legs were wrapped around his waist, his hands around the backs of her thighs, their chests pressed together.
She pushed him away, dropping beneath the water and swimming to the other side just as Radu appeared from the trees and jumped into the pool between them. He burst up, water raining from his hair, droplets of sunshine glittering in it. His laughter matched, ringing with joy. Mehmed’s laughter was not quite so genuine. His gaze burned into Lada’s. His eyebrows formed a question or a promise—she could not tell which.
“Mehmed is back!” Radu shouted.
“I think she noticed,” Mehmed said.
“Lada.” Radu swam over and pushed her shoulder playfully. “The pool is not that cold. Why are you trembling?”
Lada tore her eyes away from Mehmed’s. “No reason.”
RADU LAUGHED, BREATHLESS, AND dropped his wooden practice sword. “I am finished.”
Lazar’s lazy smile belied the perspiration beading on his forehead and upper lip. “You have gotten quite good.” He adjusted his long white cap, a few strands of dark hair peeking out.
Lazar was one of the happiest parts of Radu’s life, second only to getting Mehmed back the month before. Although at Mehmed’s suggestion Radu had been training with the Janissaries for a couple of years now, having a familiar face among them made it enjoyable rather than a chore. Lazar always volunteered when Radu visited the barracks looking for a training partner. Quick with a sword and quicker with a laugh, Lazar was the same bright spot he had been in Tirgoviste. Their ten-year age gap seemed so much smaller than it had when Radu was a boy.
Lazar set his sword next to Radu’s. “Very soon you may even best your sister.”
Radu leaned against the wall, shaking his head. “Do not let her hear you say that, or she will spend even more time training than she already does. I never see her as it is.”
Lazar raised a black eyebrow. “And that is a bad thing?”
“She is my family.”