He had missed it, actually.
Moving in a circle with other dancers, they passed Nebi Pasha’s wife. Radu levied a significant glance at her, then raised his eyebrows at Lada, who let out a loud bark of laughter, not quite muffled by the music. He barely managed to stifle his own laugh as they finished the dance.
She leaned her head against his shoulder, still laughing. “You were right! She does move like a pregnant sow.”
Radu nodded solemnly. “There is a veritable farm’s worth of dance partners here, and I have spun in circles with all of them.”
“Tell me what kind of animal Huma is.”
“A cat with weak hips, too proud to give up mousing.”
She snickered, keeping her face hidden in his shoulder. “And Halil Pasha’s wife?”
“An ill-tempered goose with flapping flat feet.”
“What of Mehmed’s dear bride? What animal is she?”
“Yes,” a low voice interrupted. “What is my bride?”
Lada jerked, jumping away from Radu. They both stared at the floor rather than meet Mehmed’s eyes. This was the first time Radu had been close to him at any of the celebrations. Mehmed was always separated by a draped cloth or by a ring of dignitaries, always at the side of Sitti Hatun.
“We must offer our congratulations on your wedding,” Radu said.
“Stop.”
Radu looked up, surprised by Mehmed’s sharp tone.
“Please, not you, too. I cannot stand any more of this—” He waved his hand to encompass the room and everyone in it. “Do not tell me this nightmare has stolen my only two friends as well.”
Lada said nothing, looking at Mehmed with eyes that burned darker than the coal braziers.
Radu chanced a small smile. “Perhaps she is a songbird?”
Mehmed snorted in derision. “Clearly you have not heard her voice if you think that. No, my precious bride is like a cornered mouse, trembling and squeaking and utterly worthless.”
Perhaps the meanness in Radu’s chest had not been extinguished, after all, because he swelled with joy hearing this. “She is lovely, though,” he offered, whether to combat his own pettiness or in hopes that Mehmed would contradict him, he did not know.
“She is a waste of air.” Mehmed rolled his head from side to side, stretching, an angry energy to his movements. “I want to dance.”
Radu looked to the raised dais where Mehmed’s bride still sat, forlorn. It looked as though she had been crying. “I do not think Sitti Hatun wants to—”
“Not with her,” Mehmed snapped. He held out his hand to Lada. Radu stared, noticing after a few seconds that Lada was doing the same. Only she did not look at Mehmed’s proffered hand with confusion. She looked at it with rage.
“Now?” Her voice trembled with the force of keeping it quiet. “Now you want to dance? Now you want to speak with me?” The coals in her eyes had burst into flames. Radu took a knowing step back, but rather than striking, Lada turned on her heel and ran from the room.
“What did I do?” Mehmed asked, brows knit together.
Radu rubbed the back of his neck. He was not certain why Lada had reacted so strongly, but he had not had an opportunity to talk with Mehmed, and he would not waste it. “We…saw you. Before we came here. At the harem.”
Mehmed’s expression revealed nothing.
“With…your child.”
Mehmed’s eyes fell shut, and he released a heavy breath. “Ah. Yes. My son.” He put a hand on Radu’s shoulder. All the greetings, all the dancing, all the friendly touches that pass from one person to another in conversation felt like a dream. Mehmed’s touch was like waking up. “It is strange, is it not?”
Radu lit up with relief. Mehmed understood how it felt when they were together! It was normal, it was shared, they could—
“I still forget that I am a father.”
A tiny exhalation escaped Radu’s lips, carrying with it all of his false relief. “Yes. That is strange.”
“I look at the baby and he feels so foreign, like sleeping in a bed not my own.” Mehmed’s hand dropped from Radu’s shoulder, and he lifted both palms up. “Still, as my father would say, it is my duty.”
“Like Sitti Hatun.”
“Yes, like Sitti Hatun. I will be happy when this is finally over, and we can go home and get back to how things were before.”
Radu nodded. That was what he wanted, too. That was the aching, the need, the wanting inside him. How things were before.
With a brief nod, Mehmed strode away, his expression distracted. Radu watched him, always aware of where Mehmed was in the room like he was of the sun in the sky. So when Mehmed slipped out a side door as everyone’s attention was focused on a poet beginning a recitation, only Radu saw.
He knew Mehmed should not be alone. Not ever. By the time Radu got through the door, he caught only a flash of Mehmed’s purple cloak as his friend turned a corner. Radu had not been invited, and Mehmed probably needed a moment alone if he was sneaking off. So he followed, quiet and at a distance. He was so intent on not losing sight of Mehmed and remaining invisible that he did not realize where Mehmed was going until he peered around a corner and saw him pounding on Lada’s door.
“Open it!”
“Take yourself to the devil!”
“We need to talk!”
“I need nothing from you!”
Mehmed put his head against the door and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. Radu had to strain to hear it, as Lada no doubt had to do on the other side of the heavy wood door. “I did not know about the baby until I returned, after I met you at the pool. And then I did not know how to tell you. I still do not, I have no idea how to feel about it. It is…a duty. It is the same as sitting through endless councils, hearing the complaints of pashas and the petty disputes of Janissaries and spahis.”
Mehmed paused, as though listening to something, then shook his head. “She is detestable. And the harem, I— It is not real, Lada. I visit, and they flit about like phantoms, like paintings. None of them are real to me.” He paused again, placing a hand flat against the door. “You are the only real thing in my life.”
Radu gasped with the sheer physical pain the words sent through him. But the sound of his agony was covered by that of the door opening. Mehmed reached in and pulled Lada out to him, and then his mouth was on hers and his hands were in her hair and he was holding her so tightly, so tightly, and they stumbled back into Lada’s room and closed the door.
Radu tripped forward, feet dragging, until he stood outside the room. He wanted to be inside it. He wanted to be the only real thing to Mehmed, just as Mehmed was the only real thing to him.
He wanted—
No, please, no.
Yes.
He wanted Mehmed to look at him the way he had looked at Lada.
He wanted Mehmed to kiss him the way he had kissed Lada.
He wanted to be Lada.
No, he did not. He wanted to be himself, and he wanted Mehmed to love him for being himself. His question, the question of Mehmed, was finally answered, piercing him and leaving him shaking, silent, on the floor.
He did not want this answer.
THOUGH MEHMED HAD TO leave far too soon lest his absence be discovered, Lada could still feel the memory of his hands and lips.
She did not know what it meant or what they had set in motion. But Huma had been right, after all. Because the way Mehmed looked at Lada as he left made her feel as powerful as she ever had.
They would see each other again at a late-evening party. Until then, the men were attending a bathhouse, and the women were meeting for a more intimate meal.
Lada had not planned on going, but her room was too tight, just as her skin was too tight. She had to do something lest she burst. The last place she wanted to be was around Nicolae and the Janissaries, and Radu was not in his chambers. So she found the gathering, slipping in with her secret wrapped around her as securely as armor.
When
she saw Sitti Hatun at the head of the table—tiny and perfect, and perfectly miserable—Lada nearly laughed. Her rival was diminished, unworthy of even scorn.
Lada saw a familiar face and took a cushion beside Mara. Mara frowned thoughtfully, and then she smiled.
“Ladislav. You have grown.”
This afternoon alone, Lada felt she had grown by leagues. She carefully tucked the corners of her mouth back down around her memories. “Yes. You look well. Where is Halima?” Looking around, Lada did not find her. The room’s doors were attended by eunuchs, with most of Murad’s wives and concubines present.
A twist in her stomach demanded Lada remember that it was very likely at least a few of the women here were Mehmed’s.
No. She refused to think about it. If they were here, they were like Sitti Hatun: duties, forced upon him. Not a choice, not a desire. Not like her.
Mara smiled, though it was mirthless. “Did you not hear? Halima had a child not two months ago. She is still in confinement.”
Lada could not help the gasp that escaped her. “Murad’s new son is Halima’s?”
“Oh yes. She was violently ill all nine months of carrying him, and then nearly died giving birth. He is the ugliest infant I have ever laid eyes on. He never stops crying. Halima has never been happier.”
Lada snorted a brief laugh. “Poor happy Halima. And you? Are you happy?”
Mara took a sip of wine. Most of the women around them had none, but she made no secret of drinking it. “Serbia is peaceful. My husband neither requests nor demands my presence. I am quite well. You are, too.”
Lada blushed, looking down and toying with her plate. Did she wear Mehmed’s touch on her skin so obviously that others could see it? “What do you mean?”
“You are not the same miserable, terrified creature you were when last we met. You have stopped fighting.”
Mara’s words struck deep, and Lada struggled to disagree. But it was true. Lada let her eyes rest on the empty space around Sitti Hatun, the way all the women around them talked to her without saying anything. Even surrounded, Sitti Hatun was alone. She had been bartered by her father. Lada quickly tamped down a brief swell of pity. That was what fathers did. It was up to daughters to figure out survival by any means possible.
She turned back to Mara and spoke the truth. “I stopped knowing what to fight against.”
Mara lifted her glass. “May you find some measure of happiness in your surrender.” She drank deeply. “May we all.”
Tortoises with large candles melting onto their backs made a circuit through the garden. Pools of light crept slowly along to illuminate different groups of people, like snatches of conversations overheard in passing. The flowers surrounding them, black in the night, would suddenly bloom into brilliant color before slipping back into silhouette.
As one of the tortoises labored past her, Lada felt as though she were rising from the darkness, a burning brand. She burned far more brightly inside, though, knowing Mehmed was nearby. She had partaken of too much wine at dinner, troubled by Mara’s questioning. She did not want questions tonight. She wanted something simple. Something physical. Something real.
A song began, the singer telling the tale of Ferhat and Shirin.
Standing alone, motionless as a mountain, Lada let the candle tease her location. She kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she could feel Mehmed watching her, even if she could no longer see him. Then, a smile pulling her lips at the memory of feeling his, she stepped into the shadows, backing deeper into the garden’s secret corners where the tortoises had not yet made their leisurely trek.
Even the music was muted by the dark, drifting in snatches, twisted and distorted by the wind into mere rumors of a tune. She felt alone. It was no longer a feeling of desperation, but rather one of anticipation. Mehmed would leave the pavilion he shared with Sitti Hatun and find her. She knew it down to her toes. It was foolish and reckless, and that made it better. Lada wanted no careful thoughts of the future. Tonight, the future was only as long as it took him to follow her.
She found a sheltered spot under a tree with branches arching overhead to create a roof, and tucked herself against its trunk, relishing the feel of the bark against her skin. As much as she used her body as a tool, she had never truly appreciated skin before.
“Lada,” Mehmed called, his voice a rough whisper carried on the heavy night air and trailed by the scent of broken flowers.
She could see him, backlit by the distant garden party. He turned one way, then the other, searching. A giddy thrill went through her, seeing him desperate to find her.
The memory of the last few weeks was as sharp on her tongue as the taste of him, and so she said nothing. Let him wait, let him search, let him be alone. She would go to him when she chose to, just as earlier in her bedroom she had let him touch her only where she allowed.
But his head turned in her direction, and he walked forward, steps tentative, posture searching. He reached out and found her face without fail.
“How did you know where I was?” she asked, disappointed and thrilled in equal measure.
Mehmed’s laugh was a silent exhalation. “This is the best area of the garden tactically. Your back is protected, but you have an open view of everything going on, while remaining hidden. Of course you are here.”
Lada’s scowl at being predictable was erased as Mehmed’s mouth met hers with greedy intensity. He pushed his body against hers, pressing her back into the tree. She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, pinning him there. He smiled against her mouth, and she bit his bottom lip, hard enough that he startled. He twisted his fingers in her hair, pulling her in tighter, his mouth leaving hers and finding her neck. Everywhere he touched burned with feverish heat, aching and tender. He put his hands around her wrists, then paused. “What are these?” he murmured against her neck, feeling at the leather braces beneath her sleeves.
Her heartbeat was almost as loud as her breathing, and she closed her eyes to hold her breath and focus on—
There was a noise behind her. She smashed a hand over Mehmed’s mouth, muffling his own heavy breathing. Turning so her back was pressed against him, she squinted out into the night.
A shadowy figure crept toward them. He wore no Janissary cap. A predatory angle to his body eliminated his being a servant. Servants walked with submissive, downturned lines. This man prowled with hands held at the ready. An errant ray of light flashed like a beacon off something metal in one of those hands.
Lada slipped both daggers free of their sheaths. The hunter was directly in front of them, leaning forward in an attempt to see into the deeper darkness beneath the tree.
Lada leaped out, one arm blocking the hand that held a weapon, her other dagger finding its goal with a wet whisper of success. The hunter was still for one eternal moment, then, with an agonized scream escaping his lips into the night, he crumpled to the ground. Lada stood over him as his life pulsed frantically from his neck. Two twitches, and then nothing, where once a man had been.
It was only when Lada realized she could see well enough to notice the deep red of her target’s blood that she looked up. An enterprising tortoise had finally made its way to the depths of the garden. She was illuminated—dagger winking playfully, hand covered in blood, Mehmed standing behind her.
“Lada?” he asked. His eyes were fixed on the body.
But the rest of the garden party, including Murad himself, stared in horror right at her.
“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU feel well?” Salih leaned forward intently. His eyes, which turned down at either corner and made him appear perpetually mournful, wrinkled in concern. He was eighteen, only a couple of years older than Radu, kind and anxious and always eager to be in Radu’s company.
Radu nodded, unable to shake off his daze.
Mehmed’s lips.
Mehmed’s hands.
Mehmed’s heart.
Tangled up in Lada, not in him. Lada, who could not love someone else if her life depended on it
. Lada, who had taken all their father’s attention, who had preferred Bogdan over her own brother. Lada, who had abandoned Radu to beatings and lonesomeness his whole life. Lada, who was cold and vicious and loyal only to herself.
Lada, who was not even beautiful.
“Am I not handsome?” Radu blurted out, the words spilling like tears from his mouth.
Salih’s eyebrows raised, making his expression almost comical with its mix of sorrow and surprise. “You—you are.”
“Am I not deserving of love?”
The surprise in Salih’s face shifted to something raw and terrified. “You are.”
Radu dropped his head. What did he know of love? This was not a love that he had heard of, this was not a love sung about by poets, celebrated in stories. This was something…else, something he had no words for. And who could he speak to? Who could tell him how to love another man?
Or how to stop?
Trembling, Salih’s stubby fingers alighted on his shoulder. “Radu, I—”
A servant knocked on the doorframe, interrupting them. Radu looked up, wearily, to see the thin, greasy boy he had paid yesterday. Yesterday, when he still cared about intrigue. When he still viewed himself as Mehmed’s protector.
Yesterday, before the world ended.
“Salih, there is someone to see you.” The servant bowed, waiting.
Salih’s face creased in consternation. “I am sorry, I—”
“Go,” Radu said, eyes on the floor. Their plates of food, his barely touched, sat cold and abandoned. “I will wait for you in your father’s study. He has a book on the Prophet, peace be upon him, that I wanted to look at.”
“I will hurry.”
As soon as Salih had left the room, Radu dragged himself down the hall, steps as heavy and leaden as the beating of his heart. He did not feel daring or clever. His efforts here would be for naught, just as his love for Mehmed. Just as his life.
He did not bother closing the door behind him. He slowly pulled out the chair at the elaborate wood desk, the top of which was inlaid with patterns of lighter wood and whorls of pearl. What did he think he would find, anyhow? None of it mattered. He really should look for a book on the Prophet, peace be upon him. God was the only thing left to Radu. The only thing he could not lose.