Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga #2)(101)

“Are you ill?” Lada asked.

“I think the baby is coming.”

Lada was struck with a terror deeper than any battlefield could have presented. The need to flee was overwhelming. “I will go get the nurse. Oana, I mean.”

Daciana nodded, breathing deeply against some internal pain Lada did not want to imagine.

The nurse was easy to find. After laughing at Lada’s obvious horror, Oana escorted Daciana to another room. Lada waited outside with Stefan, who paced with nerves as though the child were his. Lada wondered idly what they would do with the newborn bastard. That was none of her business, though.

The hope on Stefan’s face grew increasingly pained. It was obvious he loved Daciana. Lada wondered what that must feel like, to know someone loved you enough to take everything you were. To wait. To hope.

She wondered what it would feel like to be the person who loved that much, too.

She found Bogdan and invited him to her bedroom, but it did nothing to take the ache away from the edges of her memory of Mehmed. After, Bogdan wanted to linger. Lada dressed hurriedly and left her rooms. She did not have space in her heart for that. Not after last time. Not after loving Mehmed so much, and being so deeply betrayed by him.

No. Bogdan was safe. Bogdan was steady. And she did not and would never love Bogdan as she had Mehmed, which was both a relief and an agony.

When Oana told her that Daciana had safely delivered a little girl, Lada was unmoved. “They want to see you,” the nurse said.

Lada did not want to see them. But Stefan was one of her oldest and most trusted men. So she entered the room, ready for the scent of blood and sweat and fear. Instead, she found a cozy, warm space. Daciana was curled in a nest of blankets, the babe at her breast. Stefan sat next to them, gazing in wonder at the tiny, mewling creature. Daciana looked up, beaming.

“Thank you,” she said.

Lada frowned. “For what?”

“For giving me a world where I can raise my daughter how I wish. For giving us this Wallachia.”

Lada felt something tender and sweet unfurling in her chest. It was a vulnerable feeling. A dangerous one. She cleared her throat. “Well. I guess I will have to find another maid.”

Daciana laughed. “There is a boyar woman who has already hired me on as a wet nurse. It is amazing what they will pay for. But as soon as I am able, I will be back to fill your room with deadly curtains. You will help me, right, my little Lada?”

The endearment was very confusing. Stefan smiled up at her, nodding toward the baby. “We wanted to give her a name of strength.”

Lada’s face flushed. She had to clear her throat again. She leaned closer, trying to see the little bundle. “Is she pretty?”

Daciana held out the baby. Her face was red, squished and bruised from its violent entrance into the world. Dark hair sprouted from the top of her head, and one tiny fist was balled tightly and raised in the air. She was not pretty. But she screamed, and the sound was piercing and strong. “Do you want to hold her?”

“No!” Lada put her arms behind her back just in case Daciana and Stefan tried to force the baby on her. But Daciana seemed content to hold the baby herself. Lada tentatively smiled. “When she is old enough, I will give her a knife.”

Daciana and Stefan both laughed, and though Lada had been serious, she laughed, too. But watching the tiny life, she promised herself she would do exactly that for this little girl and every other Wallachian under her rule.

She would make them strong.





45





May 28–29




THE LITURGY WAS punctuated by the ceaseless bombardment strikes. Radu wished they could have coordinated with Mehmed somehow, so that the distant sound and vibration of rock meeting stone could have matched up perfectly. As it was, the beats fell too soon or too late, a jarring mess guaranteeing no one could truly lose themselves to the worship service.

But that was never a possibility, anyway. Not tonight.

For the first time since Constantine had attempted to unite the churches, the Hagia Sophia was lit up. All their angry clinging to dogma and notions of religious purity had been abandoned, and they appealed to every icon, every relic, every link to God they had. If the Hagia Sophia could save them, they were finally ready to try it.

Outside the walls, the Ottoman camps were quiet. The bombardment had increased, everything they had left being flung at the city in anticipation of one final burst. Arrows came over the walls with scrawled warnings from sympathetic Christian soldiers:

The end is coming.

But they did not need the information written on arrows. It was already written in the massive stone cannonballs hitting the walls, in the day of rest and prayer Mehmed had given his men. One last assault, one last chance to defend or attack, to stand or fall, to live or die.

And so the people of the city came to church. The Hagia Sophia was packed, claustrophobic; people stood shoulder to shoulder. Radu breathed the same air as everyone around him. They exhaled terror and resignation, and he inhaled it until he could not catch his breath. He much preferred the Hagia Sophia dark, with the sound of birds fluttering near the roof. That had felt closer to worship than this.

Constantine stood at the front, looking upward as though he were already an icon himself. Nearby, Giustiniani stood, pale and sweating. He should have been sitting, but appearances were everything. He had been injured in the bombardment yesterday. The panic that spread through the city at the idea of losing him had been more dangerous than any cannon. And so Giustiniani stood when he should have been resting, prayed when he should have been sleeping, all so the people could see their emperor and their military commander and have some semblance of hope.