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Perhaps if she had not broken so much to get him here, he would stay.
“Ah! Here it is.” Radu lifted a piece of parchment and held it out to her.
Lada’s eyes slitted to knife-thin lines. “This is blank.”
“Exactly! We are building, not burning.”
“I still think it would be easier to start over. Break down everything that existed and led to such weakness and rot.”
Radu’s jaw tightened reflexively. “I have seen what it costs to take something very old and make it new. Streets running with blood to clear out a falling empire and make way for the future. Children—”
Cyprian reached out and placed his hand over Radu’s, which trembled so hard the parchment rustled.
Radu took a deep breath. “You do not want to pay that cost. I promise. Even you built Poenari Fortress on the stones of the past, the strength that was already there. We are doing the same.”
Lada raised an eyebrow. “You knocke
d that fortress down.”
A soft giggle from Fatima drew everyone’s eyes to where she sat, curled up under a thick fur. “Well,” she said, softly, “it was probably not the best example.”
Lada leaned back and let them talk, listened to Cyprian and Radu discuss and strategize and plan. Radu was trying to give her the most stable throne he could manage, and she did not doubt he would do a good job. They had yet to discuss the biggest problem, the one they shared an entire history with. Neither of them had been willing to broach that topic yet. Lada’s hands rested on her stomach.
She moved them away.
Fatima gently rubbed Lada’s forehead and neck, where she had constant tension. Here in the forest, in her trees, in her country, Lada listened to the family her brother had built and desperately missed her own.
* * *
“He wants to meet,” Radu said, staring out from the tower. Lada did not want to be up here. Neither of them liked the castle, but he seemed fond of the tower. It held only ghosts for Lada. Another night, another time, other men she loved. Lada looked down at Tirgoviste, trying to forget. Everything was frozen. Calm. War slept during the winter, curled up like a bear in a cave.
And so Tirgoviste was filling up again. Thanks to Radu’s stores of food and Lada’s presence, the people of Wallachia had slowly returned. And, again thanks to Radu, several of the large manors once again held boyars. Radu visited them daily, making social calls with his charming flower of a wife. But he also met with the people Lada had picked, the ones she had given land to. She could see in his actions that he respected what she had tried to do, what she was still hoping to do. He just wanted to be nicer about the whole thing, which was typical of him.
“We work well together,” he said, as though reading her mind.
“You mean I do all the work and then you come in and smile at people to make them like you?”
Radu laughed. “Yes.” Then he sighed and his face got serious again. “Mehmed wants to meet. He is sending envoys, all of whom will survive and leave healthy and well, and I am working on new terms that I think—I hope—he will accept. He owes me, and I have never asked him for anything. I think he will allow you to remain on the throne. But he wants to meet in secret.”
“The two of you?”
“The three of us.”
The thing inside her jabbed her ribs, which were still sore from her fall those months before. She shoved it with her hand. She had shed her usual chain mail. She wore odd, bulky robes somewhere between a dress and the entari worn in the Ottoman Empire. Her body was naturally thick and had hidden her condition for some time, but these clothes were her only option now. It would not be long.
Lada shook her head. “I have nothing to say to him.”
“Even after everything?”
“Especially after everything. Did I tell you I saw our mother?”
Radu tilted his head, frowning at the subject change. “When?”
“When you were in Constantinople. I was trying to find support. I thought maybe she could connect me with her father.”
Radu’s eyebrows rose, and he looked like the little boy she had saved so many times growing up. But she could not save him from this. “She did not care,” Lada said. “About us. About what had happened to us. She did not even ask about you.”
Radu blinked rapidly, then attempted to lift the corners of his mouth along with his shoulders as he shrugged. “I do not even remember her.”
