Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(28)

“You have what you wanted, but you are not happy. You lash out and make others suffer. Those are not the actions of a person at peace with their past and future.”

Lada snarled. “You know nothing about me or my past.”

“I know your brother’s past. And I know that he can still find happiness even in the darkest of circumstances, because his faith sustains him. What sustains you?”

“The blood of my enemies,” she said.





14





Edirne


NAZIRA HAD NOT exaggerated her intentions. She let go of Fatima only when absolutely necessary. Radu leaned back on his cushion, smiling to himself as Nazira tried to navigate eating dinner while keeping hold of Fatima’s hand at all times.

“When will you return to the country home?” Radu asked. He knew that was where the two women were happiest. They had been in Edirne to help him, and since the siege was over and everyone was finally safe, he no longer needed help. But he would miss them. Living without Nazira these past terrifying months had been torture. It would be different, knowing she was content, but he still anticipated her absence with tremendous sadness.

“We are not going back,” Fatima said.

“What?”

Nazira let go of Fatima’s hand, but only to twist a lock of Fatima’s hair around her fingers and stroke it. “We talked about it last night. Fatima and I will stay wherever you are.”

“But Fatima hates to be away from home!”

Fatima’s smile was sweet and shy. “Our family is my home.”

Nazira’s smile was as firm and determined as anything she set her mind to. “We are settled on this. We are never being separated again.”

Radu could not deny the wash of relief he felt. He did not want to ask this of them. But he had not asked—they had offered. And, having lived so long without honesty and without love, he would not reject it.

“Thank you.” He hoped they felt how much those two words conveyed. “I will ask Mehmed to give me a position in the countryside, somewhere with fewer memories.”

“We will make new ones.” Fatima rested her head on Nazira’s shoulder.

“Also,” Nazira said, teasingly popping a grape into her wife’s mouth, “we would like to have a baby.”

Radu choked on his bread.

His choking was interrupted by a firm knock. He stood so fast he tripped over his cushion. “I will see who it is.”

He could hear Nazira laughing as he hurried out of the room and through the hall. At the front door he found a messenger wearing Mehmed’s seal.

“The sultan, his magnificence Mehmed the Second, Caesar of Rome and the Hand of God on Earth, requests your presence immediately in Constantinople.” He gestured to direct Radu’s attention to a team of horses waiting in the street.

Lada, Radu thought. It had worked, then. He wondered what Mehmed thought Radu could accomplish. She would never accept captivity, just as she had not before. And Radu could do nothing to help that. Still, he would go. He would do what Mehmed asked, because he did not know how to do anything else.

The idea of seeing Lada terrified him. He was not the same person she had left behind. He could not imagine her, though, as anyone but who she had always been. And he did not want to see how she would judge him and find him lacking.

But having Nazira and Fatima with him would give him the strength to remember things could—and should—be different. He would ask Mehmed for a new position immediately. These were no longer his problems to handle. It was not a betrayal of his friend or his sister to be honest about that. Lada and Mehmed had chosen power. Neither had chosen him.

Radu could walk away.

The messenger cleared his throat. Radu had been standing there, silent, lost in his own history.

“Give me a few minutes to gather my things.” Radu closed the door gently. He turned to find Nazira and Fatima standing in the hallway. His smile felt like the first layer of ice on a river in winter. Cold and fragile. “I have been summoned to Constantinople. Your resolve is tested sooner than we thought.”

Fatima surprised him by speaking first. “We have already packed for just such a scenario.” She disappeared upstairs.

Nazira fixed a wry smile on Radu. “You cannot get away from this conversation by an urgent summons to the city. And think of all that time on the road we will have to talk about adding to our family!”

It turned out there was, in fact, something even more terrifying than Lada.



Radu had been saved on the long ride to Constantinople by the addition to their party of a minor bey, summoned on a matter of tax revenue. Though Radu had never met him before, he quickly became the man’s best friend by encouraging him to tell them every detail of his entire life.

Nazira watched and waited, an amused twinkle in her eyes. Radu had not gotten out of the conversation about … their family. He was only delaying the inevitable. But he would take every delay he could get.

As they passed through the walls and into Constantinople, Fatima gazed around in wonder. They had traveled all night—an urgency that had been demanded by Mehmed, apparently—and so entered Constantinople as a warm, golden dawn bathed it in softest light. Radu tried to see it as Fatima would: without ghosts, without blood, without the weight of memories heavier than the stones of the walls. Nazira reached across the space between them and squeezed his hand. “He has made it beautiful.”