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Lada bit back a growl of frustration. “With Mircea dead, that leaves only Radu to take the throne.”
“He is not the only Draculesti.” Mehmed’s mouth curled around a smile fighting to break free. “And thrones are not the only way to secure alliances.”
“What—” Understanding slammed into her, stealing her breath. “No.”
Mehmed stood, walking around the table to stand in front of her. He cupped her chin, lifting her face to his. “Marry me, Lada. It is the perfect solution.”
Lada laughed.
Mehmed’s smile grew, until he realized her laugh was not a sweet breeze of delight, but a brutal desert wind carrying stinging sand in its wake.
“I will never marry.”
“Why? Stand at my side! Rule my empire with me!”
“I want no part of the Ottoman Empire.”
Anger flashing in his black eyes, Mehmed let go of her chin. “Why do you hate my country so? Have you not been happy here?”
“Do you know me at all? I have never been happy anywhere except Wallachia.”
His face darkened, and he jabbed a finger at her. “You have been happy with me.”
She realized, finally, that she had been less selfless than she thought when taking the full blame and sparing Radu. On some unconscious level, she had hoped that Mehmed would be unable to forgive her. That she would not have to make the choice to leave him, but that the choice would be made for her.
Love was a weakness, a trap. She had learned that from her father her first day in Edirne, but somehow she had failed to keep herself free. Mehmed and Radu stood before her, snaring her, keeping her here. And even knowing it, she recoiled at the thought of losing them.
Lada made her face stone, her heart a mountain. A mountain that would never be pierced to let cold, clear water flow. “Nothing holds me here.”
Mehmed closed his eyes, rearranging his features from rage and hurt to supplication. He had so much control now, so much skill in using emotion as a tool. How they had all grown. “You have saved my life three times. I would be dead without you. I need you.”
“Give up Constantinople.”
“What?”
Lada lifted her shoulders impassively. “Your mindless determination to take Constantinople is what threatens your life. You have no claim to the city, no right to it, no reason to fixate on it. Give it up, and your enemies will stop trying to kill you.”
“You know I cannot!” He clasped his hands behind his back, pacing the length of the room. “It calls to me, taunts me. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said it would be ours, and I must—I must—be the sultan to see his words fulfilled. As my people were made for greater things than traveling deserts on horses, so am I made for bigger things than maintaining a stagnant, dismissed empire. We will be the jewel of the world, the envy of all Europe, the new Rome. I will be the one to make it that way. I have to show the world what my people are. This is my calling. I cannot turn my back on it.”
Lada nodded, lids half closed, heavy with the weight of the future. “We understand each other completely. I cannot give up Wallachia. I cannot turn my back on my home for what scraps may fall to me from another master’s table. I did not choose to come here, Mehmed. I was held against my will.”
“But now I am asking you! Choose to stay! Choose me.”
“And be left behind when you go crusading? You would not take me to Albania, you will not take me to Constantinople. I will hate you for it, and the poison between us will grow until I turn into one of your invisible wives, as captive as your father ever made me. If you try to keep me, I will hate you, and you will lose me forever. You already know you cannot rule me. I proved that the last time you were on the throne.”
Anguish and anger warred on Mehmed’s face as he stopped in front of Lada and grasped her shoulders. “What would you have me do?”
And, in that moment, Lada saw her future. Her past was filled with snatching what threads she could from the men around her. Her father. Ilyas Bey. Mehmed. But before her was a knife. She would cut them all.
She did not have to accept only what was offered to her.
She would take what should be hers.
What had always been hers lit on her face like the sun on the mountain peak so many summers ago. “I want Wallachia.”
“What?”
“Make me vaivode.”
