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Lada struggled for words. “You—you meant to kill Bogdan?”
It had not been an easy decision. Radu had sighted Lada first. But Cyprian’s belief in him made him pause. If he had Cyprian at his side, he knew he could do anything. And if Lada had Bogdan at her side, he knew she would never give up. She would have to be stripped of everything she had claimed over the years. And so Radu had killed Lada’s oldest friend. The son of their beloved nurse. Not an innocent man by any measure, but still, Radu would carry his murder with him until the end of his own days.
He had to break Lada before the end. And so Bogdan died. “I needed you to understand the cost of this. To feel loss.”
“Or you simply hated Bogdan.”
Radu rubbed his ear against his shoulder self-consciously. It was true. He had hated Bogdan. But hate had not motivated his actions. “You have to lose.”
“You took him from me.”
Radu’s own anger flared at her accusations. “You murdered my brother-in-law!”
“He took you from me!” Lada lurched forward, then gasped in pain, collapsing back again. “I am not sorry.”
Radu fought back his anger. She was trying to provoke him. “I know.”
“You can tell Mehmed that. Tell him I was not sorry. Tell him my only regret was that he did not die under my knife.”
Radu held up a hand and mimicked writing a letter. “Dear Mehmed,” he said, his voice singsongy. “My sister sends her regards, and wants you to know how much she admires your blood and wishes she could have seen more of it. All of it, in fact.”
Lada let out a shocked burst of laughter, holding her ribs and doubling over in pain. She panted, easing herself back up. “Finish it. I always said I would kill you. I never imagined you would kill me.”
Radu did not take his eyes off his sister. “So you see, then. The result of your struggle. You are alone, in the dark, with no allies and no friends and no weapons.”
Lada’s face was as fierce and proud as it was drawn and pinched from pain.
“Was it worth it?” Radu whispered.
Lada lifted her chin. “Yes.”
Radu scratched the knife against the damp stone beneath him. “Do you remember the story of Shirin and Ferhat?”
“We are in the center of my mountain, Radu, and I see no heart.”
Radu smiled. “You are wrong. There are two. Yours, and mine.”
Lada let out a deep, shaking breath, and some of her pride fell with her shoulders. On her face was an expression Radu had never seen before.
Sadness.
“I wish it was not you,” she said. “I could take a blade happily from anyone but you.”
“You will never stop, though. Even now. If there was a way to go on, alone, stripped of everything, you would do it.”
Lada nodded, hand drifting up to the locket Radu had given her. “As long as I have breath, I will fight. Even when it feels like my own country does not want me to, I will fight. I cannot stop.”
“That is what I thought.” Radu stood, shaking out his legs, which were sore and numb from sitting so long. “You and Mehmed. I was always trying to protect you two, trying to shift your courses. I wish I had been able to. But if I had, you would not be the people you are, and I cannot begrudge you that.” Radu closed the distance between them. Lada looked up at him with fierce defiance.
He tucked the knife into the waist of his breeches. “You really tried to protect me during our childhood. To make me stronger. Every time you let me be beaten. Every time you were the one beating me. It was because you could see no other way to protect me.”
Lada lifted an eyebrow in confusion. “Yes.”
“Then let me protect you in the way that I know how. I will not stay with you forever—I cannot, and I do not want to. But I can help you for a little while so that you can continue making Wallachia free. I think you deserve each other.”
Lada frowned. “Is that an insult?”
Radu laughed. “I do not know. But you have seen what your methods have produced. Let me help you long enough to get you on stable ground. I can give you a throne without turmoil or threat so you can make your country healthy.”
