She nodded. “I have. Will you—please, will you help me protect it? Will you let me be your friend, your true friend who knows you and loves you?”
Radu leaned his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. He could not help the welling of jealousy that filled him. Nazira had found her happiness and, miraculously, Fatima felt the same. But his bitterness was brushed away by genuine love for Nazira. If she had what he feared he never could, he would do whatever he could to help her.
“Nazira, it would be my greatest honor to be your husband.”
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sp; She let out a burst of laughter mingled with a sob of relief and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you, thank you, sweetest Radu. Thank you.”
He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.
When they rejoined Kumal, he took in Nazira’s tear-streaked face with alarm before noticing their clasped hands.
“Brother!” He took them both in his arms. Nazira’s frame trembled as she cried and smiled, and Kumal began making wedding plans.
“We can invite the sultan!” he said.
“No,” Radu said, too quickly and with too much force. Nazira’s eyebrows raised knowingly. Radu nodded his head, a tiny movement only she would catch. She squeezed his hand, and he was surprised by how much comfort it was to be understood.
This time when he spoke, Radu was careful to sound calm and unaffected. “He is burdened so heavily right now. He would feel guilty for being unable to attend. It is best not to invite him. I will ask him for an estate nearby, but out of the city. Closer to you. It will be healthier air for Nazira, and I can travel between her and my duties to the sultan with ease. I would like to marry in a simple ceremony, as soon as possible.”
“That is my wish, too.” Nazira glowed, outshining the sun.
Kumal laughed good-naturedly. “It appears you both know exactly what you want.”
“We do,” Radu said. But only one of them was able to truly have it.
EXHAUSTION PLAGUED LADA, dragging her limbs and mind down. Nicolae was occupied with scouring the Edirne Janissaries for Wallachian recruits to fold into their ranks. Stefan was training the few they had found. And so, with Petru and Matei both ill, Lada had taken a double night watch. Now, finally past dawn, all she could think of was bed.
It had been strange, standing inside Mehmed’s room while he slept. He had pleaded for her to join him in his bed, teased and flirted, but she reminded him that she was all that stood between him and a knife in the dark.
And that if he did not shut up and go to sleep, the knife would belong to her.
Still, there was something discomfiting about the whole experience. It was like watching him during the coronation. He was there, he was Mehmed, but he was so separate from her. Unreachable. His face sleeping was the same as it had been during the ceremony: alien.
During the longest, loneliest hours of the night, it had been all Lada could do to keep herself from waking him just to see the way his eyes changed when he saw her, the way his lips formed around words and intentions. She liked who she was when he looked at her, craved it. But she had resisted. And now, with her own sleep so close, she found her door blocked by a woman.
“Lada?” The woman’s round face was sweetly pleasant, like a plum, with equally round lips. Her eyes were weak, too large and watery.
“What?”
“I—it is me. Nazira.”
Lada frowned, her mind sluggish. The woman did look familiar.
“I introduced myself at Mehmed’s wedding? I danced with Radu.”
“Everyone danced with Radu.”
The woman laughed. It came so easily to her, a reflex of a muscle Lada did not have. “Yes, that is true. Radu has not mentioned me?”
Red flashed before Lada’s eyes, all her muscles tensing. Was this some sort of test? A trick? Did someone know Radu’s true heart and feelings for Mehmed? If Halil had discovered it, he would try to use it to his advantage. Lada would not betray her brother so easily. “Radu and I do not speak much. We are both very busy.”
“Oh. I am sorry. You would know my brother, though. Kumal?”
Recognition slammed into place, jarring Lada completely awake. She had never paid much attention to the women who floated around the edges of the court, but she did remember Kumal. Kumal, the stealer of souls. The man who had driven Radu into the heart of the Muslim god.
“I do know him.”