And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1)(47)

Lada shook her head.

“Exactly as it is supposed to be. My precious eunuchs, they make everyone so deeply uncomfortable. Men cannot stand to look upon them, tormented with imagining what they must have endured to become what they are. The eunuchs are slaves, just as I am, but they, too, have sacrificed. They have had something precious and irreplaceable taken from them, and in doing so, have created a place of power for themselves. They are everywhere in this country, in every important household; they are clerks, they are guards, they are mine.” Huma sat up, her movement so sudden and violent compared with her lazy, sensual motions that Lada jerked back.

“You see this”—Huma gestured to the room, the building, and finally to herself—“as a prison. But you are wrong. This is my court. This is my throne. This is my kingdom. The cost was my freedom and my body.” Her fine eyebrows raised, mouth playful, eyes hard. “So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?”

This was so different from what Mara had presented to Lada. Not an offering of oneself for the benefit of a bigger cause, but the offering of a portion of oneself for the pursuit of personal gain. “I—nothing, I—I,” she stammered.

“Would you sacrifice my son?”

“What? No! I protected him, I—”

“Would you sacrifice what you think your life should be for what it could be, were you to rule at my son’s side?” Huma paused, then laughed at Lada’s tortured expression. “So that is not your design. Very well. You may go now. But I want you to think on what must be sacrificed to secure a future where no one can touch you. I want you to think of Mehmed, and his future.” She waved a hand dismissively, and Lada fled.





ALL THE FEAR THAT had felt so overwhelming in the darkness seemed tempered the next day, as the brilliant sun illuminated a palace going about business as usual.

Huma had instructed Radu and Lada to act as if nothing had changed, but to draw no attention to themselves.

Radu took a deep, shaking breath, then slid along the wall toward Mehmed’s rooms. Returning to the scene of the assassination attempt was probably a bad idea. If there were soldiers in the hall, he would turn and run. Pretend to be lost. Pray they were not the ones who let this happen, since Mehmed did not know who had been on duty, and they could not very well ask.

But Radu wanted to be brave. Maybe Lada and Mehmed, in their terror, had missed something. If he went in, if he searched the…

Even thinking the words the body made him recoil. But he would. Huma wanted to pretend it had never happened. Radu wanted to know why it had. If he found some vital clue, he might be the one to rescue Mehmed this time. Radu might have gotten Mehmed to safety, but Lada was the one who had actually saved him.

That bothered him more than it should. And made him reckless.

However, when he turned the corner, the cavernous hall outside Mehmed’s rooms echoed with the absence of life.

Was the body still inside? Had no one discovered it? Huma had notified everyone that Mehmed was reveling in the harem. Perhaps no one had been in Mehmed’s rooms since. Sick with dread and a morbid curiosity, Radu slipped through the doors, past Mehmed’s waiting chamber toward his study. He held his breath, then stepped inside.

No blood on the gleaming tile floor. No discarded dagger. No lifeless assassin.

Someone had cleaned up after all. There was nothing to suggest the violence this room had held.

But no—that was wrong. A rug, one of Radu’s favorites, cheerfully blue and yellow, was gone. The only evidence was the absence of things that should have been there: the body, the blood, the rug, and Mehmed.

Radu walked to the desk, reverently placing his hands on various objects. An inkwell. A map of Constantinople with notes scrawled across it in Mehmed’s compact, aggressive script. Several booklets of religious thought that Radu had been hoping to borrow. A heavy, leather-bound tome detailing the life of Alexander the Great.

The whisper of an outer door sent Radu into a panic. He threw himself behind a pillar, just as the door to the study opened.

The intruder’s steps were quiet but assured. Radu heard items being shuffled, then the crackle of a stiff sheet of parchment resisting being rolled. The intruder left as quickly as he had entered. After a few seconds to calm his racing heart, Radu left his hiding place and returned to the desk. Everything was there.

Except the map of Constantinople with Mehmed’s careful notes.

Without giving himself time to think better of it, Radu raced out of the rooms. He saw a hint of movement around a far corner and ran after it. He turned the same corner and saw the figure—a boy, perhaps sixteen, wearing the plain clothes of a servant, walking with submissive but purposeful posture. It was exactly how Radu would move if he needed to get somewhere without being noticed.

And so he copied the boy’s posture, always keeping him in his line of sight, but staying far enough back not to be noticed. He followed the thief out of the palace grounds, to the nearest street, where opulent, majestic homes bullied the cobblestones for space. The thief joined several people filing in and out of the gates of the first estate. Radu grabbed a basket lying on the stones near the entrance and tucked it under his arm, grateful that he was wearing simple clothes today instead of one of the nicer outfits Mehmed had gifted him with.

The thief entered the home through a side door. He knew where he was going. Radu followed, winding his way through a busy kitchen, nearly losing sight of his prey. They went through a back hallway and then up a narrow flight of hidden stairs for the servants’ use. The walls were close, the steps uneven, the air damp with confinement. In the gloom, Radu only just saw a door swing shut, as he was about to climb another flight of stairs. He pushed through the door into another world. Light spilled with reckless abandon through a wide, high-ceilinged hallway. Thick woven rugs lined the floor, with tile gleaming in the gaps. Statuary and pottery kept the turquoise-hued walls company, reassuring each other of their glorious beauty. Highly polished metal mirrors hung at regular intervals, giving the impression of hallways beyond this one.