And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga, #1)

by Kiersten White

“These are lives, Lada,” Radu said. “How can you speak of them like they are matters of simple mathematics, a problem to be solved?” Lada stood, a hand to her side against the pain of her wound. “Because thinking like that is the only way to keep from losing our minds.” “What about our souls?” Mehmed whispered. Before Lada walked out, she paused at the door. “Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”

THOUGH LADA DID NOT know what would happen, she was certain of two things: It would hurt, and she would need to be strong. She dressed in chain mail and the Janissary uniform, except for the cap. She left her hair down, a tangled mass of curls in defiance of both Janissary custom and feminine styles. At her hip was her sword, and on her wrists were her knives. Her spine was steel. Her heart was armor. Her eyes were fire.

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.

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 must be sacrificed to secure a future where no one can touch you? Lada knew now exactly how much she had to lose, because she was about to cut out her heart and leave it.

The two men—the only two people—who had been constants in her life would be left behind. Radu and Mehmed had both given her something she could not give herself, had seen her in a way no one else had and no one else ever would. They looked at her, ugly Lada, vicious Lada, and saw something precious. And she looked at them and saw Radu, her brother, her blood, her responsibility, and Mehmed, her equal, the only man great enough to be worthy of her love. One future—bleak and unknowable, filled with violence and pain and struggle—unfurled before her. Another, with her brother and the man who knew her and still loved her, shone like a beacon. And so she cut out her heart and offered it as a sacrifice. She would pay whatever price her mother Wallachia demanded.

Fire burned in her heart, and her wounded soul spread out, casting a shadow like wings across her country. This was hers. Not because of her father. Not because of Mehmed. Because the land itself had claimed her as its own. “Not Dragwlya,” she said. “Lada Dracul. I am no longer the daughter of the dragon.” She lifted her chin, sights set on the horizon. “I am the dragon.”

Any book based in history is a vast and ultimately impossible undertaking. Because history is written by the victors—and those who are quite unhappy with those victors—major figures tend to be canonized or demonized in the records that make it through to our day. Vlad the Impaler was a national hero, a freedom fighter, a brilliant military mind. Or he was a deeply disturbed psychopath, a vicious despot who murdered tens of thousands and literally sustained himself on their flesh. Similarly divided accounts exist of Mehmed the Conqueror. History loves him and hates him. He was an incredibly devout, thoughtful ruler, even bordering on a religious figure, or he was a cruel predator who loved debauchery and destruction. My goal in this book was to carve out a middle ground. In my research I set aside accounts that skewed too far in either direction and tried to focus on the truth: They were men who were born into great power, and they both did what they thought necessary to maintain and expand that power. The central aspect I wanted to explore was the path a person takes to get to the point where they can justify doing terrible things in the name of good. What motivations sway them? What stones laid in childhood become the foundation legacies are built on?