“Matthias!” Hunyadi barreled over, clapping his hands on the young man’s shoulders. Matthias’s answering smile was as carefully styled as his hair.
“Father.”
“Matthias, I wanted you to meet Lada Dracul.” Hunyadi turned back to her and gestured at Matthias with unabashed pride. Matthias’s answering whisper of a sneer made Lada wish to run her sword through him.
He gave her a perfunctory bow. “So you are the feral girl of Wallachia he has taken under his wing.” The men around him laughed. One made an obscene gesture behind Hunyadi’s back. Their opinion of her relationship with him was evident. Lada sensed that Matthias had never been privy to his father’s idea of marrying them.
“Lada single-handedly defeated a whole Bulgar contingent. Saved my life. And she grew up with Sultan Mehmed. Invaluable insight. Very clever.” Hunyadi smiled at Lada with the same level of pride as he had shown for his son, and something inside her broke.
“Is that so?” One of the men leaned forward, leering. “Tell me, is it true what they say? That he has one thousand women in his harem, and another harem made up entirely of boys?”
Lada felt the familiar stab of anger that always accompanied mention of the harem, and a brief spike of fear. A male harem? Was such a thing possible? Was Radu … She shoved those feelings down with an unexpected defensiveness on her brother’s behalf. How must Radu, already tormented by the impossibility of his love, feel when he heard such insinuations used as slander?
Besides, these men did not know Mehmed. How dare they speak of him this way? She raised an eyebrow coolly. “If you are so interested in male harems, I can introduce you to the sultan. Though you are not quite pretty enough for his tastes.”
The man’s face turned a dangerous shade of red. Hunyadi let out a barking burst of laughter and clapped Matthias on the back. His son cringed, then carefully reset his face. “I believe Elizabeth would like to speak to you,” he said to his father.
Hunyadi groaned.
The leering man spoke again. “I believe she would like to do more than speak with you.” Matthias pretended outrage, but it was all in jest. Hunyadi was embarrassed. Response was impossible. He could not impugn Elizabeth’s honor, nor did he want to criticize Matthias’s friends.
Lada could bear no more. “The room is too warm. Will you see me out?” Hunyadi nodded graciously, offering his arm. She steered him once more toward the door and grabbed a bottle of wine on their way. She handed it to him wordlessly. They walked through the center courtyard, then over the bridge, descending the bank to a bare weeping willow. Hunyadi slipped several times, nearly taking them both down.
Lada’s thoughts were on Mehmed. It was so strange, hearing accounts of the Mehmed that the world saw—seemingly infinite versions of the same person, each distorted and exaggerated. But she knew the real him.
Or did she?
He had spied on her. He had sent her to Wallachia with his support, and then supported her rival. He had married and fathered children, all while professing his love for her. And through it all, he had never taken his sights off Constantinople. He would not, could not. Not even for her.
Could she really consider fighting for Constantinople, knowing it would be going directly against Mehmed and everything he had been to her? She did not think she could raise a sword against him. As much as she loved Hunyadi and hated the Ottomans, it would not be the Ottomans she would truly be fighting. It would be Mehmed.
She remembered those warm nights together, cocooned in her room, plotting and planning the attack on the city. It had felt like playing pretend. But it had never been pretend for Mehmed. Constantinople was his dream, the one thing he would not give up. Everything was to that end. Including supporting her rival on the Wallachian throne. He had sacrificed her dreams for his.
Maybe she would go to defend the walls.
“Did you see him?” Hunyadi said, once they were sitting.
Lada startled out of her thoughts. “Mehmed?”
Hunyadi laughed. “No! My son! He looks like a king.”
Lada thought that was not a thing to be proud of. She weighed her next words as judiciously as she could. “He is nothing like you.”
Hunyadi smiled, nodding. “I know. I do not understand him. But I have worked with blood and sweat my whole life so he could have access to everything that I never could. My sword has cut a way to the courts for him. He never has to do what I have done. I gave him that.” Hunyadi lowered his head, closing his eyes. “I think he has a chance at the throne. Can you imagine? I am the son of peasants, and my son could be king. Everything I have done, all that I have lost, all the struggle and death. It was for him.”
Lada remembered the look of pride he had given her. Matthias did not deserve Hunyadi. “I wish you had been my father,” she said. If Hunyadi were her father, everything would be easier. She would jump at the chance to crusade with him, to fight at his side.
If Hunyadi were her father, she would never have known Mehmed, never had her loyalties twisted and tugged into strange new shapes. And her heart would not have to constantly shield itself from the part that missed Mehmed so desperately. Hunyadi would have protected Radu, too. And Radu would have appreciated him in a way Matthias was incapable of.
Hunyadi patted her arm with his heavy hand. “Do not wish away what you are. If you were my daughter, I would have extinguished your fire long ago. I would have given you the best tutors and the finest clothes and made you into a pretty doll to be traded away in marriage. I did the same with my son; I made him into someone I do not know, and it fills me with both pride and sadness. That is the best we can do for our children—turn them into strangers with better hopes than we ever had. Your father was a fool and a coward, but his choices shaped you into the fearsome creature you are. I do not want to imagine a world in which you are not you.”
For years Lada had nurtured only hatred for her father, to take away the pain that loving him had left her with. But that night in her tent as she drifted to sleep, she let some of it go. Because she, too, was grateful for who she was. She would not wish any part of herself away.
Which meant she was still left with the question of what to do with the parts that loved Mehmed and the parts that wanted to fight at Hunyadi’s side.
15
Late March
THREE HOURS AFTER leaving Edirne, Radu, Cyprian, and Nazira heard a horse galloping madly toward them. They pulled their horses to the side of the road. Cyprian drew his sword, and Radu copied him, though he could not imagine who might be pursuing them. Certainly not Mehmed’s forces. Perhaps one of the ambassadors had somehow discovered their deception, and was riding to warn Cyprian?
The horse, lathered and shivering, was drawn to an abrupt stop in front of them. “He has killed them!” the rider shouted.
“Valentin?” Cyprian sheathed his sword. It was the thatch-haired boy who had helped them in the stables.
Valentin tried to dismount, but fell roughly to the ground instead. “He killed them!”
Cyprian jumped from his horse, grabbing Valentin. “What do you mean? Why are you here?”
“He killed them! At the party. The sultan killed them. He killed them all.”
Cyprian looked up at Radu and Nazira in horror. “Did you know?”
Radu shook his head, numb with shock. He had not known. This, then, was Mehmed’s declaration of war. Radu knew that lives would be lost—of course they would, that was the price of a siege—but this felt so personal. So … excessive. It felt more like murder than war. He had no doubt Mehmed had his reasons, and if Mehmed could explain them, Radu would understand.
Unbidden, the image of the ambassadors lying on the gleaming tile floor, blood pooling around them, came to Radu’s mind. Sour acid rose in his throat, threatening to come out. Surely there had been a reason. “I did not know,” he whispered.
Cyprian cradled the boy, still looking up at Radu and Nazira. “Your timing saved my life. I owe you everything, and will call you friends to my dying day.”
Nazira and Radu looked at each other as the full weight of what they were in the middle of finally descended on their shoulders.
Three days later, Radu’s assumption that Nazira would require a lot of help on the road was heartily disproved. She had packed not only her essentials but also provisions. Radu had not even thought of it, a fact that was not lost on Nazira. She batted her eyes slyly at him as she started a fire effortlessly and pulled out food from a saddlebag. “We wives are very useful things to have around,” she said.