Tortoises with large candles melting onto their backs made a circuit through the garden. Pools of light crept slowly along to illuminate different groups of people, like snatches of conversations overheard in passing. The flowers surrounding them, black in the night, would suddenly bloom into brilliant color before slipping back into silhouette.
As one of the tortoises labored past her, Lada felt as though she were rising from the darkness, a burning brand. She burned far more brightly inside, though, knowing Mehmed was nearby. She had partaken of too much wine at dinner, troubled by Mara’s questioning. She did not want questions tonight. She wanted something simple. Something physical. Something real.
A song began, the singer telling the tale of Ferhat and Shirin.
Standing alone, motionless as a mountain, Lada let the candle tease her location. She kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she could feel Mehmed watching her, even if she could no longer see him. Then, a smile pulling her lips at the memory of feeling his, she stepped into the shadows, backing deeper into the garden’s secret corners where the tortoises had not yet made their leisurely trek.
Even the music was muted by the dark, drifting in snatches, twisted and distorted by the wind into mere rumors of a tune. She felt alone. It was no longer a feeling of desperation, but rather one of anticipation. Mehmed would leave the pavilion he shared with Sitti Hatun and find her. She knew it down to her toes. It was foolish and reckless, and that made it better. Lada wanted no careful thoughts of the future. Tonight, the future was only as long as it took him to follow her.
She found a sheltered spot under a tree with branches arching overhead to create a roof, and tucked herself against its trunk, relishing the feel of the bark against her skin. As much as she used her body as a tool, she had never truly appreciated skin before.
“Lada,” Mehmed called, his voice a rough whisper carried on the heavy night air and trailed by the scent of broken flowers.
She could see him, backlit by the distant garden party. He turned one way, then the other, searching. A giddy thrill went through her, seeing him desperate to find her.
The memory of the last few weeks was as sharp on her tongue as the taste of him, and so she said nothing. Let him wait, let him search, let him be alone. She would go to him when she chose to, just as earlier in her bedroom she had let him touch her only where she allowed.
But his head turned in her direction, and he walked forward, steps tentative, posture searching. He reached out and found her face without fail.
“How did you know where I was?” she asked, disappointed and thrilled in equal measure.
Mehmed’s laugh was a silent exhalation. “This is the best area of the garden tactically. Your back is protected, but you have an open view of everything going on, while remaining hidden. Of course you are here.”
Lada’s scowl at being predictable was erased as Mehmed’s mouth met hers with greedy intensity. He pushed his body against hers, pressing her back into the tree. She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, pinning him there. He smiled against her mouth, and she bit his bottom lip, hard enough that he startled. He twisted his fingers in her hair, pulling her in tighter, his mouth leaving hers and finding her neck. Everywhere he touched burned with feverish heat, aching and tender. He put his hands around her wrists, then paused. “What are these?” he murmured against her neck, feeling at the leather braces beneath her sleeves.
Her heartbeat was almost as loud as her breathing, and she closed her eyes to hold her breath and focus on—
There was a noise behind her. She smashed a hand over Mehmed’s mouth, muffling his own heavy breathing. Turning so her back was pressed against him, she squinted out into the night.
A shadowy figure crept toward them. He wore no Janissary cap. A predatory angle to his body eliminated his being a servant. Servants walked with submissive, downturned lines. This man prowled with hands held at the ready. An errant ray of light flashed like a beacon off something metal in one of those hands.
Lada slipped both daggers free of their sheaths. The hunter was directly in front of them, leaning forward in an attempt to see into the deeper darkness beneath the tree.
Lada leaped out, one arm blocking the hand that held a weapon, her other dagger finding its goal with a wet whisper of success. The hunter was still for one eternal moment, then, with an agonized scream escaping his lips into the night, he crumpled to the ground. Lada stood over him as his life pulsed frantically from his neck. Two twitches, and then nothing, where once a man had been.
It was only when Lada realized she could see well enough to notice the deep red of her target’s blood that she looked up. An enterprising tortoise had finally made its way to the depths of the garden. She was illuminated—dagger winking playfully, hand covered in blood, Mehmed standing behind her.
“Lada?” he asked. His eyes were fixed on the body.
But the rest of the garden party, including Murad himself, stared in horror right at her.