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Hope was an arrow that never ceased piercing his heart.
She knew now that nothing she could do would ever be enough.
“Terror spreads faster than any fire. Rumors are everywhere. You have taken Sibiu, you lead ten thousand Ottoman soldiers, you are the chosen servant of the devil.” “Why must I always be a man’s servant?” Lada demanded. “If anything, I should be partners with the devil, not his servant.”
Lada was not happy, but she was busy, and that was almost the same.
“God is not here tonight,” Lada said. “It is only you and me and my knife.
“There you go again, assuming I am worried for myself. You never account for others loving you for you, Radu, rather than what you can do for them.
Radu said, an idea forming that he liked the shape of,
Hunyadi dipped his head in acknowledgement. “What mischief have you been up to tonight?” Lada saw no advantage to lying. “Arson. Threats of death. Gathering information.” Hunyadi sighed. “You have had a very full night. What did you burn?” “The cathedral.” He coughed in surprise. “I paid for the new altar.” “It was a poor investment.”
And whom should she be most angry with—Mehmed, for spying on her, Matei, for betraying her, or herself, for trusting Matei? Or herself, for having so many miserable failures to write of?
Radu paused, shocked. “And then she signs her name.” He did not say how she signed it. Lada, on the ice and in need of your hand this time.
And she did not want to be a wife. Never a wife.
She was left, as always, with her only thread of power: herself.
“I wonder if anyone gets through childhood without being broken. I certainly did not.”
One of these days I will be asked to do another stupid thing, and I will finally hit my limit on idiocy. I have a husband and three sons, so my limit is very high,
“What is she doing there?” “That is anyone’s guess.” “Well, whatever it is, it will not end well for anyone who gets in her way. The world will destroy her in the end. Too much spark leads to explosions.” She patted a barrel of gunpowder that had not yet been unloaded. “But your sister will destroy as much as she can before she goes out.”
“Did you have nothing in common, then?” A strangled laugh escaped the prison of her bodice. “Well, one thing.” Lada wondered, yet again, whether her absence had granted Radu the portion of Mehmed’s attention and love that he so desperately craved.
But she did not have them anymore. Tonight, she felt the full weight of that loss. The loss of a brother who would have stood at her side and fought this battle of manners and politics for her. The loss of a man who would have laughed at her dress and her hair but also been desperate to be alone so he could undo it all for her.
Perhaps she had never stopped being that girl lost in a place where she could never have power.
I do not want to imagine a world in which you are not you.”
For years Lada had nurtured only hatred for her father, to take away the pain that loving him had left her with. But that night in her tent as she drifted to sleep, she let some of it go. Because she, too, was grateful for who she was. She would not wish any part of herself away.
“Bogdan snores. This is my reward for carrying his great weight for nine months and nearly dying bringing him into the world. My beautiful little boy turned into a great hulking man who sounds like a dying pig when he sleeps.”
Still naked, Mehmed stood before her, completely open and vulnerable, with his hands out, palms up. “Take the city with me. Take the crown. Take me, Lada.”
They are everyone’s allies, and thus no one’s.
Perhaps she should not begrudge the small measure of comfort a powerless woman had managed to find in a cruel world.
she would absolutely begrudge her mother the failure to empower herself. Running and abandoning those who needed her was the weakest, lowest thing possible. Lada would not do that. She could not. Whatever else she was, Lada was nothing like the class who could go on living after turning their backs on those who depended upon them.
When you start lower, you have to fight for every scrap of space you occupy in the world.”
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.
I cannot imagine a god who hates anything that is love, any way we find to take tender care of each other. I want you to find that same love, and I never want you to hate yourself for any love that is in you.” She pulled him close and he let her, wondering if it was possible for him to ever have the clarity and purity of love that she had.
“I think that is Constantinople’s problem,” she said. “They look to a painting to save them, instead of to each other. They argue and debate over the state of their souls for the afterlife, while letting the needy in this life go hungry. No wonder this city is dying.”
Hatred makes monsters of us all.”
Radu saw now that she wore her sadness like a cloak. She smiled so brightly, it was too easy to miss the sorrow swirling around her.
after his broken childhood, he devoured praise like a starving man took bread—but
With so many men on both sides sending up so many prayers, how could any god sift through the noise?
“Oh, husband.” Nazira sighed, already in the room, for how long Radu did not know. “You almost make me believe in fate, for how unfortunate yours is.” She set down a bowl of broth and a mug of watered-down wine. Adjusting Cyprian’s blankets, she knelt across the bed from Radu and looked up at him. “First a man with no heart to give you, and now a man who can never know your truths.”
Perhaps all their prayers had canceled each other out. It was only men against men now. God was right to abandon them. If anyone had decided on mercy and reason over stubbornness, all these lives could have been spared. If Mehmed had allowed the city to continue its natural, slow death rather than needing to claim it. If Constantine had bowed to the impossible odds and opted to save his people over his pride.
He would die on the wall tonight, between his brothers and his enemies, because he could no longer distinguish between the two.
She knew he meant it sweetly, but she really would rather not be valued in terms of goats.
Lada knew that was why she kept these men closest. Not because they were better trained, but because they had been hardened in the same fire she had.
he was no longer a lost little boy in a strange new city. Now he was a lost man in a broken old city, and no amount of prayers and kindness could undo what had been done.
Radu had seen what it took to be great, and he never again wanted to be part of something bigger than himself.
She realized with a pang whom it was she missed. She wanted Radu on her right. And she wanted Mehmed on her left. They had made her feel strong, and smart, and seen. They had made her feel like a dragon. Without their belief in her, who was she?
