Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(50)

Lada searched her brother’s eyes, trying to find the little boy he had always been to her. Even after his refusals to help her, even after all this time, he had not changed in her mind. But reality presented her with the truth. He was not her delicate, weak baby brother anymore.

“You look upset,” he said, his voice soft.

“I have lost something.” Even though Lada should have known it, she had never let herself believe it. But now the truth was undeniable. She had completely lost her brother to the Ottomans. “Where is Mehmed?”

“Why?”

“He has much to answer for.”

“We all do, I suspect.” Radu drew his legs up, wrapping his arms around them and resting his chin atop his knees. There! A fleeting glimpse, but Lada saw her Radu.

“Tell me what has happened to you. And why are you in Mehmed’s tent? Are you—do you stay here now?” Lada kept her voice as even as she could to avoid betraying anything. But Radu was always better at emotion, better at reading people than she could ever be.

He laughed. She stood, bristling. Radu waved one hand, gesturing for her to sit back down. “No, I do not stay here now. I am in Mehmed’s tent because you came here tonight to kill him, did you not?”

“Of course I did,” Lada snapped.

Radu sighed, stretching his legs out again. “He did not believe me.”

“He is a fool. Surely after all these years of studying him you have discovered that.” Lada felt the pressure of time pushing down on her. She had spent too long here already. Her task should have been finished by now.

“Do you think it was him that came between us? Or were we destined to end up on opposite sides?”

Lada felt an unfamiliar heaviness behind her eyes. “We had to survive. We just figured out different ways to do it.” It struck her, then, how they had lived the exact same childhood. How had the same circumstances shaped them in such divergent ways?

“So you do not blame Mehmed?”

“Of course I do! I blame him for a great many things.” She kicked a pillow in exasperation. “Why, tonight of all nights, do I finally find someone who has beaten me at my game of ‘Kill the Sultan’? Tell me where he is and then flee the camp. I will send word that you are not to be killed.”

“I had a chance, once,” Radu said, slowly standing. “In Constantinople. Emperor Constantine trusted me. And I watched as good people on both sides were dying, smashed in blood and bone and terror against each other by immovable forces. Mehmed on one side of the wall, Constantine on the other. And I liked them both.” Radu smiled wryly. “Though of course we both know where my heart was. There was one moment, one perfect chance to end it all. To take a life and spare thousands, tens of thousands, by making that choice.”

Lada did not know what this story had to do with her. “Well?” she prompted, impatient.

“I made no choice. And because of it, Constantine still died, but countless others died alongside him who might have been spared had I made a choice. You would have made the choice.”

Lada would have. It was a simple scenario. But she had a nagging feeling she did not like where this story was leading. “You could have killed Mehmed instead, you know.”

“Do not pretend like that was ever an option.”

But something tired and worn down in Radu’s face suggested otherwise. There was potential there. An opportunity. To get him back—and to end this. Lada crossed the space to him and took his shoulders in her hands. “Tonight. Tonight, it is an option. We can kill him. For Wallachia. We can finally be free of the cage our father crafted for us, once and for all. Make the right choice tonight.”

Radu, so much taller, so much fairer, looked down on her. He stepped forward, folded her into a hug. She stood stiff, unsure how to respond.

“I hope I already have,” he said. Then, raising his voice, “Come in.”

He held Lada tighter, pinning her arms to her sides and smashing her face against his chest so she could not see what was happening. “I do not want to see you ended,” he said. “I could not bear it. I am sorry.”

Lada stomped on his foot and shoved her way free. Ten Janissaries had entered, swords drawn. And from behind a flap where he had heard everything, Mehmed stepped free with cold murder on his face.





26





One Day South of Tirgoviste


“YOU CHOSE HIM again,” Lada said.

Radu expected fury, rage, the Lada who had been the terrifying center of his childhood, ruling everything with her temper and her fists. Instead, his sister looked resigned. Tired, even. She spoke in Wallachian, changing from the Turkish they had been conversing in.

Radu answered back in the tongue of their shared history. “I did not choose him. I chose what I felt would create the best, most fertile ground for lives and faith. Look at your country, Lada. Do you really think you are growing a future here?”

“You know nothing about it! In the time since I have taken the throne, crime has disappeared. My people need not lock their doors, need not sleep beside their livestock for fear they will be gone in the morning. They no longer require an armed guard just to travel from village to village. My country is prospering like never before!”

“You turned an entire plain into marshes. You poisoned wells and burned bridges. You have cut a swath of destruction across the countryside.”