“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU feel well?” Salih leaned forward intently. His eyes, which turned down at either corner and made him appear perpetually mournful, wrinkled in concern. He was eighteen, only a couple of years older than Radu, kind and anxious and always eager to be in Radu’s company.
Radu nodded, unable to shake off his daze.
Mehmed’s lips.
Mehmed’s hands.
Mehmed’s heart.
Tangled up in Lada, not in him. Lada, who could not love someone else if her life depended on it. Lada, who had taken all their father’s attention, who had preferred Bogdan over her own brother. Lada, who had abandoned Radu to beatings and lonesomeness his whole life. Lada, who was cold and vicious and loyal only to herself.
Lada, who was not even beautiful.
“Am I not handsome?” Radu blurted out, the words spilling like tears from his mouth.
Salih’s eyebrows raised, making his expression almost comical with its mix of sorrow and surprise. “You—you are.”
“Am I not deserving of love?”
The surprise in Salih’s face shifted to something raw and terrified. “You are.”
Radu dropped his head. What did he know of love? This was not a love that he had heard of, this was not a love sung about by poets, celebrated in stories. This was something…else, something he had no words for. And who could he speak to? Who could tell him how to love another man?
Or how to stop?
Trembling, Salih’s stubby fingers alighted on his shoulder. “Radu, I—”
A servant knocked on the doorframe, interrupting them. Radu looked up, wearily, to see the thin, greasy boy he had paid yesterday. Yesterday, when he still cared about intrigue. When he still viewed himself as Mehmed’s protector.
Yesterday, before the world ended.
“Salih, there is someone to see you.” The servant bowed, waiting.
Salih’s face creased in consternation. “I am sorry, I—”
“Go,” Radu said, eyes on the floor. Their plates of food, his barely touched, sat cold and abandoned. “I will wait for you in your father’s study. He has a book on the Prophet, peace be upon him, that I wanted to look at.”
“I will hurry.”
As soon as Salih had left the room, Radu dragged himself down the hall, steps as heavy and leaden as the beating of his heart. He did not feel daring or clever. His efforts here would be for naught, just as his love for Mehmed. Just as his life.
He did not bother closing the door behind him. He slowly pulled out the chair at the elaborate wood desk, the top of which was inlaid with patterns of lighter wood and whorls of pearl. What did he think he would find, anyhow? None of it mattered. He really should look for a book on the Prophet, peace be upon him. God was the only thing left to Radu. The only thing he could not lose.
The only thing Lada could not take from him.
He pushed to stand up, knee jerking awkwardly beneath the desk, slamming against it. A curse stopped halfway from his lips. Something had shifted. He got down on the floor and looked up at the bottom of the desk. A false panel, jarred loose by his knee, hinted at something within.
Radu eased it free and pulled out a thick sheaf of parchments. They were written in Latin, dense script neatly marching down each page. He scanned as quickly as he could, his despair forgotten. Most of the top letter was about a man named Orhan, a claim, an allowance. It meant nothing to Radu, but he tucked the information away. He flipped through the pages, stopping with a shock at the end of a short missive. It was signed on behalf of Constantine XI.
The emperor of Constantinople.
Footsteps from down the hall set him panicking. He shoved the letters back into the hidden compartment, then slid the panel into place. It failed to line up exactly, but he was out of time. He threw himself across the room and stood in front of one of the book displays, trying to hide his guilty countenance.
The heavy door swung shut, and he did not dare turn around. If he never turned around, he would never have to see that he had been discovered.
A hand came onto his shoulder, not heavy and violent, but gentle.
“Radu,” Salih said, his voice as tentative as his touch.
Radu turned around with a shaking breath and a falsely bright smile painted on his face. Salih was standing close, too close, only one of those trembling breaths away.
Before Radu could form a question, his mouth was covered by Salih’s.
Radu tensed, shocked and confused by this attack. Salih’s hands gripped his waist, pulling him closer, mouth desperate and hungry against his own. Finally, Radu’s panic-soaked brain processed what was happening. He lifted his own hands, unsure what to do with them. He put them on Salih’s shoulders and pushed him back.