Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(14)

Radu snorted a laugh. “You do not know her very well, do you?”

Mehmed turned his head, smiling at Radu over his shoulder. “I cannot imagine anyone would ever be unhappy to see you.” His gaze lingered on Radu’s face. It felt almost as though he was watching for Radu’s reaction more than wishing to continue to look at Radu.

Mehmed did that more and more often lately. He would say some little shining thing, or touch Radu on the shoulder or the hand or even the cheek, always watching, studying. Cataloging what actions or words triggered which reactions. Radu did not know what to make of it. He offered Mehmed a smile now, which seemed to satisfy him.

Over their past week together, though, Mehmed had not spoken again of Lada. Whether he had discussed her “message” in private with other advisors, Radu did not know. But it seemed as though, for the time being, Mehmed was content to let the issue be buried alongside the bodies of the men Lada had sent back.

Envoys were often casualties of aggression between countries—Mehmed had killed Emperor Constantine’s envoy a year ago, Cyprian spared only because he had taken Radu and Nazira out of Edirne—but Mehmed had to be bothered by the loss and the intent behind it. Maybe he was planning something and thought Radu would object. Or maybe, with Constantinople so recently settled, Mehmed did not want to antagonize Lada until he absolutely had to.

Either way, the memory of what Radu had seen in the box stayed with him, wriggling beneath the surface of his skin. The spike. The face frozen in agonized death. His sister had done that. And she would have to be answered. When she was, Radu did not know how he would feel, or what he would want to happen.

He had chosen Mehmed’s side the year before when Lada asked for his help. He would, it seemed, have to make that choice over and over again for the rest of their lives. He had changed his faith, his life, even his name, but he could not change or escape his sister.

Radu was still thinking about the problem of Lada when they arrived at their destination. The world swirled around him. Frozen atop his horse, he stared at the foundry where he and Cyprian had spent a long night melting down silver and making coins.

“Radu?”

Startled, Radu blinked rapidly and turned toward Mehmed.

The other man stared expectantly at him. “You look as though you have just woken up.” Mehmed gestured to the foundry. “Do you know this place?”

Radu nodded silently, hoping Mehmed would not inquire further.

“What did you do here?” Mehmed leaned eagerly toward Radu. “You have told me so little of what you did in the city during the siege! You were a stranger to me those months. I want to hear all of it. Did you sabotage their attempts at building an arsenal?”

Radu rubbed his eyes, leaving his fingers covering them for a few seconds too long for the gesture to appear casual. “No. They never had a hope of amassing enough cannons to meet you that way.”

“Then what did you do here?”

Radu straightened his shoulders, staring at the door behind which he had spent a deliriously hot and confusing night with Cyprian. He remembered the shape of the other man’s shoulders, the lines where his torso dipped down to his trousers. The feelings in Radu’s own body that he had hidden behind the table between them. But before that, the laughter, the pure devious fun of it all, sneaking around with his beloved false wife and the friend they were already betraying.

“We stole silver from the churches and melted it down to make coins.”

“You and Nazira?”

“And Cyprian.”

Mehmed abruptly straightened in his saddle, no longer leaning toward Radu. The eagerness in his voice had shifted, just like his posture. “What were you making coins for?”

Radu sighed, letting the memory slip away. “To buy food. People were starving.”

“How did that help our cause?”

Radu dismounted and paused, stroking his horse’s flank. He did not look to see if Mehmed was studying him. “It did not help. Not you, and in the end, not them. But it felt right at the time.” Radu walked inside the foundry, blinking at the sudden dimness. His conflicted past, confusing present, and unknown future were all harsher and more difficult to breathe through than the blistering air inside.

Just like silver melted down, its impurities burned away, Radu felt himself as molten and unformed. He could pour himself into any shape. He could fill a mold as Mehmed’s dearest friend and confidant. He could fill one as Radu Bey, powerful force in the Ottoman Empire. He could probably even return to Lada and fill one as the lesser Dracul once again.

But the mold he found himself longing for, the shape that felt truest, could not be formed. Because the people he wanted to form it around were lost to him. Maybe forever.

Lada had always known exactly what shape she would take. She had never let it be determined by the people around her. But Radu could not escape the need for love, the need for people in his life to help him see what he should—and could—be. Lada shaped herself in spite of her environment. Radu shaped himself because of it.

He would stay in the city because Mehmed still shaped some part of him. But he could not become what Mehmed wanted or even needed him to. And he feared that a refining fire would reveal he had never been silver to begin with; he was simply dirt and impurities, burned away to ash while desperate to become something worth valuing.





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