Nicolae nudged her with his foot, scowling. “This is the most offensive rejection to an offer of romance I have ever received. And that is saying something, as I have had many rejections.”
“You idiot,” she gasped. “You tremendous, arrogant ass. You thought I would be so distraught over you?”
He sat beside her. “Yes, right. While I still have some dignity, can you tell me what is really wrong?”
She sighed, wiping beneath her eyes where tears had leaked from them, and sat up so their shoulders were touching. She knew Nicolae. She could trust him. “I am leaving.” With a grimace, she added, “Running away.”
“Why?”
“Radu wrote from the siege. Mehmed is—was—sick.” She swallowed the pain that built like a cancer in her throat, but it would not move. The letter, folded and tucked into her chemise, sat right beneath the pouch around her neck and poked into the skin above her heart. “Dying. Or already dead. He is the only reason I have any freedom or power. If he is gone, I will lose this.” She gestured at the practice ring, toward the small building she had been allowed to claim as private barracks. “Murad loves Radu but still wants me dead, and no one will stop him. No one will care. So I am leaving.”
“God’s wounds, it is about time.”
Lada turned to him, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I only marvel that it took you this long to decide to run away! I always wondered what was keeping you when clearly you had the intelligence and ability to escape years ago.”
“I—I could not have. If I could have, I would have!”
Nicolae lifted his eyebrows, scar wrinkling across his forehead. “You have had access to money and horses. You can hunt, you can track, you can fight. With a little planning, you could have been across the border and on your way home at any time.”
Lada leaned back against the wall, mind churning. He was right. There was nothing that made now different from any time in the last two or three years. Except…
Mehmed.
She had stayed because he gave her a reason to.
“I have no home to return to,” she said, avoiding Nicolae’s gaze lest she see the truth reflected back at her. “Our father betrayed and abandoned Radu and me, twice. Once when he left us here, and once when he signed our death warrants by breaking his treaty. He was—” She closed her eyes, sick with remembering how she had looked up to him, how she had craved his approval. “He was never a great man, and now I know that. If I return to him, he will find some other way to barter me for scraps of power to be squandered.” It was true. If she went home to Wallachia, she would be married off before she could show her father she had grown into so much more than he could have dreamed.
“Then we go somewhere else.”
Lada opened her eyes, looked at Nicolae. “We?”
“This place was no fun before you got here, and it will be even less so in your absence. I told you I meant it—I will go with you to the ends of the earth. Though I would prefer the ends to be closer rather than farther, as riding makes me quite sore in a very treasured spot.”
“I cannot ask you to come.”
“You cannot ask me to stay.”
“You have a position here. Money. Value.”
“I am a salaried slave. We both know it.”
Lada nodded, relief warming her like a hearth in wintertime. It would be good to have Nicolae with her.
“You should ask the other men,” Nicolae said.
She shook her head. “The more we take, the greater the odds of discovery. I will not risk their lives. And I doubt they will come.”
“I think you would be surprised. You chose well.”
“I will consider it. We have two days. Prepare what you need to.”
He stood, offering a hand to help her up, then kept his hand clasped tightly with hers. “To the ends of the earth,” he said.
“To the ends of the earth.” With a tight smile, she turned to leave.
“And, Lada? I am sorry about Mehmed. I know what he was to you.”
She missed a step, nearly stumbling. “That is strange,” she said, eyes burning. “Because I do not think I know.” All she had was how she felt, and that was such a mixture of anger, bitterness, jealousy, desire, and affection that she knew she would never untangle it to see what was at the center.
She went to her old room in the fortress to see if there was anything worth taking. It was as she had left it, untouched, a layer of dust over everything. Empty. An empty past, an empty future, and no one left to care about her in either.