Now I Rise (And I Darken Series, #2)(64)

Lada hated this talk. She wanted more time with Hunyadi. She wanted back the time she had squandered that had cost them both so dearly. She could still learn so much from him. She helped him sip some water, then adjusted his pillow. “How did you manage it? How did you come so far from such a humble start?”

“I always chose the path of most resistance. Did things no one else was willing to. Took risks no one else dared take. I was smarter. More determined. Stronger.” He lifted one shaking hand in the air and wheezed a laugh. “Well, some things change. But I was always brutal. I was the most brutal. When you start lower, you have to fight for every scrap of space you occupy in the world.” He patted Lada’s cheek, his palm too warm, and thin like parchment. “Even starting from nothing, I had more luck than you. If you had been born a boy, the whole world would tremble before you.”

Lada scowled. “I have no wish to be a man.” Then she cringed, the memory of Mehmed’s hands and tongue and lips on her body. She had never been happier to be a woman than she had been in that falsely precious space. Her body had not felt like a stranger to her then. She wanted to reclaim that feeling.

Hunyadi’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “No. You are right. I think if you had been born a boy, perhaps you would have been satisfied with what the world offered you. That is how we are alike. We saw everything that was not ours, and we hungered. Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.”

Hunyadi knew what he spoke of. Her merits, her accomplishments, her strength would never speak for themselves. She would have to cut her way through the world, uphill, for the rest of her life. She showed all her small teeth in a vicious smile. “I will make you proud. No one will be more brutal than me. No one will be more ruthless. And I will never stop fighting.”

Hunyadi laughed, wheezing and gasping until he was so pale he looked dead already. Lada helped him drink. He choked, spitting most of the water out, but managed to swallow some. Finally, he closed his eyes. “No rest for the wicked. But this wicked soul will have some now, I think.”

“Sleep.” She wanted to give him assurances that he would get better, but she could not bring herself to lie to him. Not again.

“Promise me,” he whispered. “Promise me you will watch out for my Matthias. Be his ally.”

“I swear it.” She did not mention that she already intended to be just that.



“Your father is dying,” Lada said as she sat in a private room with Matthias. It came out as an accusation, though she knew Matthias was not to blame. She was, at least in part.

“I never understood him,” Matthias said, toying with a goblet of wine. “I never even really knew him. He sent me away as soon as I could talk. When he visited, he watched me with this look—this look like he could not believe I was his. All I heard of him was stories of his conquests, his bravery, his triumphs. And when he visited, I recited poetry for him. I asked him, once, to teach me to fight. He had never lost his temper with me, never been around long enough to, but that day I feared he would strike me. He told me he had not fought his whole life so his son could learn to swing a sword.” Matthias touched a worn hilt at his side. “Now I have his sword and no idea how to use it. That is his legacy to me.”

“You do not need a sword. All you need is to work with people who know what to do with them.” Lada leaned forward, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You want to be king.”

Matthias smiled slyly. “I am loyal to our blessed king, long may he rule.”

Lada brushed his false sentiment from the air with a wave of her hand. “If I wanted shit, I would have visited the privy, not asked for an audience with you.”

Matthias laughed. “I think you have been living with soldiers for too long.”

“And I think you and I have something to offer each other. You want Hungary. I want Wallachia. I will do whatever you need to secure your throne. And, once you have it, you will help me to mine.”

Matthias raised his eyebrows. “Will I? Tell me, why would I want that?”

“A strong Wallachia means a more secure Hungary. We both know the current prince has given the sultan rights to move through the country. They walk straight to your borders without so much as a blade to bar their way. If you help me gain Wallachia, I promise no Ottoman army will make it through alive.”

Matthias’s hand traced the air above his head, lingering on something Lada could not see. “Do you know, Poland has the crown? They took it for ‘safekeeping.’ No one can be a legitimate king of Hungary without that crown.”

“What does that matter? It is an object.”

“It is a symbol.”

“Dependence on symbols breeds weakness. If you are king, you do not need a crown.”

“Hmm.” Matthias dropped his hand and looked Lada up and down in a way that made her feel more like livestock than a person. “My father has left you in charge while he is on the mend.”

How little did Matthias know of his father’s condition? Lada was not equipped to break the news gently to him. He should have already been told. “Your father will never mend.”