And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga 1)

Her father regularly donated to churches, trying to buy favor with God the same way he bought favor with boyars and sultans. As a result, they had been invited to spend a week at an island monastery located in the middle of Lake Snagov. When the boat pulled away from the mainland shore, Lada had felt a strange sense of release. Of peace. On the island there were only silent monks, far less intimidating than the patriarch and priests, who were elaborately robed in pomp and tradition. She had wandered alone, walking the entire coast of the island, feeling the water as a barrier between herself and the pressure of Tirgoviste. Her tiny room in the belly of the monastery was decorated with images of saints and Christ, watching impassively from gilt frames. She did not care about them, and they did not care about her, and she slept as deeply as she ever had.

Here, there was no peace, no separation from the world. Lada longed for it. Instead, she was forced to learn a religion as though it were equal to languages or history. It was agonizingly irritating. At least with Christianity they had been actively discouraged from reading the Bible on their own, study being the realm of the clergy. Her only responsibility had been to appear to be listening.

She refused to even give that impression here. The tutor nodded wearily at Radu’s response before sitting up straight. A spark had returned to his eyes.

Lada pretended not to notice, but every nerve was on alert for whatever solution to her insolence he had stumbled upon.

“Ladislav gave the wrong answer.” The tutor lifted his arm, fingers heavy with thick rings, and backhanded Radu sharply across his face. Radu’s head snapped to the side and he fell out of his chair with a cry of shock and pain.

Lada would kill him. She would cut this man’s hand from his body for striking her brother; she would—

She composed herself before the tutor looked at her, his chest heaving and his eyes bright. Waiting for her reaction. If she killed him, they would kill her, and no one would be here to protect stupid, fragile Radu. Her stupid, fragile Radu. And if she got angry, the tutor would know—they would all know—how to control her. The same way they had known to control her father. The same way the Janissaries had known to hurt her by taking Bogdan away.

She raised her eyebrows impassively.

“What are the five pillars of Islam?” he asked as Radu got back into his chair, tears in his eyes and a shocked expression on his face.

Lada smiled and shook her head.

The tutor hit Radu again.

Radu stayed on the ground, gasping out the answer, his words garbled by a split and swiftly swelling lip, but Lada did not look away from the tutor’s face. She kept a pleasant smile on her own, kept her hands loosely folded in her lap, kept control. Control was power. No one would make her lose it. And eventually the tutor would realize that she would let him hit Radu over, and over, and over.

And only then would Radu be safe.

RADU CURLED IN ON himself as he leaned against Lada’s door. He cradled his hand, welts swelling along his palm. His lip was starting to heal, but only because the tutor had been focusing on his hands lately.

How could she do this?

How could she let him be beaten on her behalf?

She had always been his protector. Even when she was cruel, she never let anyone else hurt him. In spite of everything they had seen since coming to Edirne, Radu had never been truly scared or desolate because he knew—he knew—that Lada would keep him from any real harm.

He cried, because no one was here to see. The salt in his tears stung his split lip.

Did she know? Could she tell that he was interested in Islam, had become fascinated with it, had even started praying in secret? That had to be why. She did not let him be beaten for any other reason, but when the tutor asked about Islam she refused to answer, even though she knew it meant Radu would get hurt.

He wanted to tell her, needed to tell her, that he was sorry. That he would stop studying Islam. But…maybe he could explain how it made him feel, how the basics of the religion made so much more sense to him than the endless array of saints and icons they had in Tirgoviste. He had never really understood what he heard in church, the Latin so formal it created a barrier between himself and God. Everywhere in religion there had been barriers between Radu and God—Christ stood between them, the fall of man stood between them, his very soul stood between them.

God had always seemed like his own father—distant, unknowable, disapproving. Radu feared that, as always, nothing he did would ever be good enough to earn the love of an omnipotent and unknowable God.

Islam made sense to him, appealed to him with its generous simplicity. But if Lada wanted him to hate Islam, he would. If it meant getting his protector back, he would do anything.

He wiped away the remains of his tears, hiding his weakness. Then he pushed open her door.

Wearing only a long shirt, Lada was crouched by the hearth. Instead of stone, like the hearths in Tirgoviste, this one was framed by white tile with a repeating pattern of an eight-sided star. Although it was warm, Lada had stoked a bright fire. She was shoving her nightclothes into it. Next to her on the floor were blankets torn from her bed. They were stained red.

“Lada?” Radu stepped into the room, looking for her assailant, looking for her wound. “What happened?”

She turned to him, eyes wild and filled with tears. “Get out!” she screamed.

“But—”

“Get out!”

Reeling as though struck, Radu ran from the room, then out of their joint chamber. He did not stop running until he was free of the palace’s sprawling labyrinth and weaving through the crowds of people on the streets.

He was lost.