Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(84)

Radu knelt and reached for a longbow. Nocking an arrow onto the string, he breathed out, looking down the length of the shaft to his sister. He had always been a better shot than she was. It was the only physical thing he could beat her at.

Everything else about her had always been stronger. Including her heart.

Radu would break it. He took a deep breath, and aimed.





45





Poenari Fortress


LADA SLAPPED BOGDAN’S hand away as he once again reached for hers. “We are getting married. You are not a child walking too close to the riverbank. I hardly think you need me to hold your hand.”

Bogdan smiled, joy softening his blocky features and turning him back into the boy she had shared a childhood with. “Do you remember when you told my mother that I was your brother, and Radu a worm? Now I will be your husband. This is where we married the first time, too.”

Lada rolled her eyes, but she remembered. And though she did not feel the joy Bogdan so evidently did, it still felt right. She had always wanted Bogdan at her side. It was a renewing of that bond made in blood during their childhood.

A renewing of her bond both to Bogdan and her country. She had not done enough yet. Had not pushed hard enough or far enough. But she would. And Bogdan would support every step, as he always had.

The crooked, gray priest from the village continued his part as though they were not talking over him. Lada wore chain mail and a tunic embroidered with her crest. She had left the red cloth in her hair. The old woman had worn it at her own wedding. It felt nice to honor her. It also felt disloyal, because the woman Lada should actually honor had been left behind in Hunedoara. Would Oana be happy about this official union? Lada hoped so.

The priest asked Bogdan a question. Lada was not paying much attention. She felt a flutter of nerves in her lower stomach. It made no sense. She was not nervous. She did not care enough about this ceremony to be worried or fearful.

The flutter came again. It was something new. Something foreign.

Lada put her hand on her stomach and looked up at Bogdan in horror. He was staring solemnly at the priest.

“Bogdan,” Lada hissed.

He turned toward her, holding out his hands again. She reached up to take them, needing an anchor, needing something to hold on to against the sick dread that had opened like a pit inside of her. She needed her nurse. She needed Daciana.

But all she had now was Bogdan.

Concern erased his happiness like a cloud passing over the sun. “Oh,” he said, frowning at the arrow that had appeared, embedded deep in his side.

He looked back up at Lada, then lurched heavily toward the wall. Lada reached out for him, but she was too late. His weight and momentum tipped him over the edge.

Lada watched as Bogdan spun through the air before finally hitting stone, bouncing with a thick snap off and down the steep cliff face toward the river far beneath. His limbs moved without resistance, Bogdan already reduced to a mere body.

Bogdan was gone. And this time there would be no miraculous reunion, no finding each other again after years of separation. Bogdan was gone. Bogdan was not allowed to be gone. Bogdan could not be gone. He belonged to her.

Lada stared at where he had fallen. Around her men shouted, and someone tugged on her arm. If an arrow had found Bogdan, an arrow could find her, too. She looked up, searching the mountain opposite them.

There.

A lone figure, standing, a longbow at his side.

Radu lifted a hand and waved. Dazed and in shock, Lada lifted hers and waved back.

The first cannonball struck the fortress. The resounding crack of stone on stone jarred Lada from her dreamlike state. He was not waving. He was signaling his men.

“There!” Lada pointed. “Aim anything we have up there!” She ducked, jumping from the inside of the wall down to the floor. The landing was a shock she felt through her whole body. She needed it. She needed to focus.

Bogdan, spinning away from her forever.

“Cannons! Arrows! Crossbows! And watch the paths to make certain they are not sneaking up from our side, too!” Lada shouted directions at men. Men she did not know, men whose faces she barely recognized. They scurried around her, rushing into action, and she stood.

Alone.

Bogdan, the first man she had chosen. The last one to leave her.

A man screamed as an explosion blew tiny missiles of stones and debris into the air and sent Lada to her knees. She wiped away blood trailing into her eyes to see half the outer wall blown apart—the half that was one side of the room where their cannons and gunpowder were kept.

“God’s wounds.” She had always thought getting married would be the death of her. She had not expected that fear to be realized quite so literally.

One of the towers groaned, rocks raining down. The fortress had gone up fast, speed and secrecy being Lada’s main goals. She had not designed it to withstand artillery, assuming no one would be able to haul massive, heavy cannons up mountains without being noticed. It had been a tremendous failure of imagination on her part.

Radu did not suffer the same lack.

Lada’s men found openings wherever they could, firing off crossbows and arrows. She clutched her locket, a sensation that she was forgetting something, missing something vital plaguing her. But she knew what was missing, and he would never return. Then, another tiny flutter in her stomach. She felt as though she were the one tumbling down the mountain.