Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(67)

“Change your clothes!” he snarled. “I have prepared a house for you, but you will not disrespect my hospitality by looking like an animal.”

Lada finally let a hint of a smile break the flatness of her expression. But still she did not answer.

“Guards!” Matthias yelled. He turned back to her. “If you will not accept my generosity gracefully, we will help you.”

Matthias moved out of her view. A lock clicked, and the bar to the door slid free. The guards were ready when they rushed her.

Lada was readier. She ducked under the arms of the first, kicked the knee of the second so hard that it popped. The third caught her wrist, but she twisted and threw her elbow into his nose. She was almost to the door when it was yanked shut. The lock clicked again.

“Now you cannot get out.” The first guard, the one with the turnip face, held his arms out as though he expected her to run past him, to the other corner of her cell.

Lada bared her teeth at him in a smile. “Neither can you.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed over his face. Then Lada launched herself at him. She knocked him to the stone floor. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down with him as he tried to pin her. Their faces smashed against each other’s. She opened her mouth and bit down, hard, on his throat. He screamed, and her mouth filled with blood.

She was tackled from behind, her forehead bouncing hard off the floor. A knee dug into her back, then she was grabbed by her hair, and her head slammed into the floor twice more for good measure. Lights spun in her vision, and she did not know how much of the blood in her mouth was her own now.

“You stupid little bitch,” the guard on top of her said, out of breath. He shifted to the side to get a grip on her clothes. Lada planted her palms on the floor and pushed with all her strength, knocking him off-balance. He fell to the floor. She stood and stomped with every scrap of strength she had.

His windpipe collapsed beneath her foot. As he grabbed at his throat, desperate for air that would never again fill his lungs, she turned to the remaining men.

Judging by the amount of blood on the floor from the turnip-faced man’s torn throat, only one guard remained. He was pressed against the wall, balanced on one leg because of his damaged knee, banging on the door.

“Please! Please let me out!”

Lada looked past him at the door’s viewing hole. Matthias stared back at her, aghast. “If you would stop behaving like a rabid beast, I could help you,” he said.

It had been years since Lada had killed a man without weapons. Her head swam from the blows, and she spat. She did not like the taste in her mouth. And she did not like the bodies on the floor. Why had they made her do this? “I have already had your version of help. I do not need any more. But he does. Open the door.”

Matthias turned his head. “Get me more men!” he barked.

“They will not come soon enough.” Lada spat blood again. The man next to the door had begun weeping. Matthias did not follow her order to open the door. She could show no weakness. She went far into herself, past the animal instincts that had propelled her to kill the other men. This one was more of a choice.

But there was no choice. She would do what must be done, as she always had.

Matthias, coward that he was, did not even watch as Lada broke his soldier’s other knee, and then his neck.



Lada knew what Mara would have advised her. What Radu would have. What Nicolae would have. What even Daciana would have.

Play the part. Do as she was told. Survive.

But she was a prince. She had other methods of survival. She had cut through years and lives to get there. There were those in Europe who still believed in her, and those in Wallachia who would never give up on her.

She was prince. She did not have it in her to be anything else. And she would never give Matthias the satisfaction of thinking he had beaten her.

An hour later, the next attempt to dress her involved ten men. Lada did not stand a chance, and she knew it. But she did as much damage as she could in the meantime. After they had stripped her of her chain mail, leaving only her underclothes on, they kicked her and threw her in the corner. Then they grabbed the three bodies and hurried from her cell. That, at least, was gratifying.

Standing as carefully as she could to avoid showing how much she had been hurt over the course of the two attacks, Lada stalked to the door.

“At least now you look like a woman,” Matthias said.

“And yet you still look nothing like a king.” She smiled, her teeth bloody, her face covered in gore, until he turned with a poorly suppressed shudder and left.

Only when night had fallen and it was dark did she finally collapse onto the cot, curling around herself and feeling everything she had lost.





36





Tirgoviste


NAZIRA, TRUE TO her word, had not only set herself and Fatima up in a room but had also secured the one next to it, for Radu. Radu was curled around Cyprian in the dark. He had thought he would never be happy in this castle.

He had been wrong.

He pressed his forehead against Cyprian’s, relishing the tickle of the other man’s breath on his face. It meant this was real. Radu would take all the evidence he could get.

They lay on top of Radu’s bed, limbs tangled. Their discarded boots and turbans lay on the floor. Radu wrapped his fist in Cyprian’s shirt, pulling him closer. “I cannot believe you are actually here.”