And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1)(3)

Radu immediately burst into tears, burying his face once more in the nurse’s shoulder and shoving his hand beneath her cap to wrap it in her hair.

Vlad’s lip turned up in disgust. “This one takes after his mother. Vasilissa!” he shouted, so loud that Radu was terrified into silence interrupted only by hiccups and sniffles. The nurse did not know whether to stay or leave, but she had not been dismissed. Lada ignored her, wary eyes fixed on her father.

“Vasilissa!” Vlad roared again. He reached out to snatch Lada, but this time she was ready. She scrambled away, crawling under the polished table. Vlad rapped his knuckles on it. “Very good. Vasilissa!”

His wife stumbled into the room, hair down, wrapped in nothing but a dressing robe. She was worn thin. Her cheekbones jutted out under grayed, empty eyes. If the birth of Lada had nearly killed her, Radu’s had drained whatever life she had left. She took in the scene—Radu tearstained, Lada under the table, and her husband, finally home—with a dull gaze.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Is that how you greet your husband? The vaivode of Wallachia? The prince?” He smiled in triumph, his long mustache lifting to reveal thin lips.

Vasilissa stiffened. “They are making you prince? What of Alexandru?”

“My brother is dead.”

The nurse did not think Vlad looked much like a man in mourning.

Finally noticing her daughter, Vasilissa beckoned to her. “Ladislav, come out from under there. Your father is home.”

Lada did not move. “He is not my father.”

“Make her come out,” Vasilissa snapped at the nurse.

“Can you not command your own child?” Vlad’s voice was as clear as a blue sky in the freezing depths of winter. The sun with teeth, they called those days.

The nurse shrank further into herself, shifting so that Radu, at least, was out of Vlad’s sight. Vasilissa looked frantically to either side, but there was no escape from the room. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “Back to Moldavia. Please let me.”

“Beg.”

Vasilissa’s tiny frame trembled. Then she dropped to her knees, lowered her head, and took Vlad’s hand in her own. “Please. Please, I beg of you. Let me go home.”

Vlad put out his other hand and stroked Vasilissa’s lank, greasy hair. Then he grabbed it, wrenching her head to the side. She cried out, but he pulled tighter, forcing her to stand. He placed his lips against her ear. “You are the weakest creature I have ever known. Crawl back to your hole and hide there. Crawl!” He threw her down, and, sobbing, she crawled from the room.

The nurse looked steadily at the finely woven rug that covered the stone floor. She said nothing. She did nothing. She prayed that Radu would remain silent.

“You.” Vlad pointed at Lada. “Come out. Now.”

She did, still watching the door Vasilissa had disappeared through.

“I am your father. But that woman is not your mother. Your mother is Wallachia. Your mother is the very earth we go to now, the land I am prince of. Do you understand?”

Lada looked up into her father’s eyes, deep-set and etched with years of cunning and cruelty. She nodded, then held out her hand. “The daughter of Wallachia wants her knife back.”

Vlad smiled and gave it to her.





1446: Tirgoviste, Wallachia




RADU TASTED BLOOD IN his mouth. It mixed with the salt from the tears streaming down his face.

Andrei and Aron Danesti kicked him again, their boots sharp against his stomach. Radu rolled onto his side, curling in on himself, trying to become as small as possible. The dried leaves and rocks littering the forest floor scraped his cheeks. No one could hear him out here.

He was used to being unheard. No one heard him in the castle, which, after six years, still felt like a home only when he was in his room with his nurse. His tutors were engaged in a constant power struggle with Lada, and Radu’s exemplary work often went unnoticed. Lada was always either studying or off with Bogdan, and she never had time for him. Their older half brother, Mircea, forced Radu to seek out hiding places to avoid his blunt comments and even blunter fists. And his father, the prince, went entire weeks without acknowledging his existence.

The pressure built like steam until Radu did not know whether he was more terrified that his father would never notice him again, or that he would.

It was safer to go unnoticed.

Unfortunately, today he had failed at that. Aron Danesti laughed, a sound sharper than his boots. “You squeal like a piglet. Do it again.”

“Please.” Radu covered his head as Aron slapped his cheeks. “Stop. Stop.”

“We are here to get stronger,” Andrei said. “And no one is weaker than you.”

At least once a month, all the boys ages seven to twelve from boyar families—boyar was a word for nobility, to be said with a twist of the lip and a sneer if Lada were speaking—were left deep in the forest. It was a tradition, one most of the adults laughed at indulgently. A game, they called it. But they all watched with narrowed eyes, seeing who emerged first, looking as though he had been merely out for a stroll rather than tired and scared like a normal boy.

The Danestis, who had traded the throne back and forth with the Basarab family for the last fifteen years, were particularly interested in how Aron and Andrei, both a year older than Radu, fared. They were not overfond of the Draculesti usurpers.