They had not had time alone like this in all the days since they came to Edirne. Her hands and mouth informed her she was ravenous for him. He stepped back to the chair, pulling her with him as he sat down. Sitting on his lap, she wrapped her legs around him. She felt his neck’s racing pulse as he drew her closer and closer. His hands danced along her body, moving to a new place as soon as she registered where they had just touched. They left a trail of fire in their wake, writing him onto her skin.
Lada heard the knock at the door as if through water, and it took several more knocks before she understood what it meant.
She drew back, gasping.
Mehmed smiled wickedly, straightening her tunic for her. “You should go.”
“I should go,” she echoed.
“I will see you tonight.”
She floated on a red haze of lust, pondering what pleasure could be had if one’s partner was willing. It lasted a single corridor before she remembered Bogdan. With a dark suspicion that Mehmed had been trying to make certain she thought of only him, she ran for the wing of the palace that housed her men.
She raced from room to room. Their ranks had swelled thanks to Nicolae’s diligence, and she was greeted with barely familiar faces until finally she found the room she wanted.
Nicolae stood, talking easily as Bogdan put his things into a plain set of drawers.
Lada froze in the doorway. After the first shock of their meeting, she did not know how to greet him. They were no longer children with the ease of a lifetime spent together. What had the last years done to him?
What had they done to her?
She was struck with a sudden horror of what the Lada who had first come here would think of the one who existed now.
Bogdan regarded her without expression. “So, this is the life you have built for yourself.” Though his tone lacked judgment, Lada felt herself bristle. She did not have to apologize. Not to Bogdan, and not to her old self.
“Yes. I lead the finest troops in the whole empire.”
“So I see. And you answer to the sultan.”
She folded her arms. “I answer to myself.”
“Then why are you still here? Why not take what you can and leave?” He searched her face as though looking for something no longer there.
“I— It is not that simple.”
Nicolae’s scar twisted around his wry smile. “We were going to, once. And then she changed her mind.”
“I did not change my mind! There were other considerations. And besides, if we had left, you would be here and I would be gone. How would we have found one another again?”
Bogdan nodded, accepting the truth of that as easily as a dog thrown a bone. “So we go now.”
“Where?”
“To Wallachia.”
“I cannot go back there. My father sold me, Bogdan. He brought me here and he used my life to buy his throne. There is nothing for us there. I will never go back to my father.” No matter how much she learned—how strong she was, how clever or brutal or loved—her father still dictated her life. “Better a sultan than my father,” she whispered.
“Fathers do not live forever,” Bodgan said, shrugging. But he used the Turkish word for father. The word Janissaries used to refer to the sultan.
BACK IN THE CITY after his brief postnuptial leave, Radu passed the dough-faced youngest member of Lada’s band of soldiers. Something about him nagged at Radu. His face was so soft looking, his body so hulking. He did not match.
Radu did not care for most of Lada’s men, but he could not deny they were the best at protecting Mehmed. They each had a portion of that feral, ruthless determination that made up his sister’s core. Sometimes Nicolae or one of the friendlier ones would greet him in Wallachian. He always responded in Turkish.
Mehmed sat listening to Ishak Pasha speak on the status of finances in the Amasya and Anatolia regions, where he would soon be sent as the beylerbey, a local governor. Radu had told Mehmed they needed to separate Ishak Pasha and Halil Pasha, and Mehmed trusted his judgment. Radu wondered what had been decided in the few days he had been gone. He had been so anxious to return that Nazira and Fatima had teased him for constantly looking over his shoulder at the road to Edirne.
Mehmed caught Radu’s eye. Some trouble betrayed itself in the sudden tightening of his eyes. But it was gone as soon as it appeared, and he went back to nodding.
On Mehmed’s right was Halil Pasha. Grand Vizier Halil, Radu reminded himself.
As soon as Ishak Pasha finished speaking, Mehmed stood. “Radu! Back so soon? How could you bear to leave your lovely bride?”