“And then?” Cyprian asked.
“And then we keep going.”
The bells of the Hagia Sophia, deeper and older than any others in the city, began clanging. Radu bade the church a silent farewell. Valentin slipped his hand into Radu’s.
And Radu remembered two young boys. Still in the church, where he had left them. You will protect us, John had said.
Radu looked at Nazira, and Valentin, and Cyprian, and he knew then that the scales would never be back in his favor. But he could do this one thing. He could die trying to save two boys who meant nothing to him. Who meant everything to him.
“I am staying,” Radu said.
“What? No!” Nazira grabbed his free hand, tugging him toward the water. “We need to leave now.”
“I have to go back.”
Her full lips trembling, Nazira nodded. “Fine. We go back.”
Radu kissed her hand, then held it out to Cyprian. “No woman is safe in the city. Not today, not for the next three days. I cannot let anything happen to you. I promised Fatima. You have to go home.?
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Nazira stamped her foot, tears streaming down her face. “We have to go home together.”
“You cannot go back in.” Cyprian stepped past Nazira. He ignored her hand and grabbed Radu’s, the intensity of his gaze overwhelming. “You will die.”
“I know where John and Manuel are. I can save them.”
Cyprian looked as though he had been struck. He closed his eyes, then stepped even closer, pressing his forehead to Radu’s. “Their fate is in God’s hands now.”
“It was never in God’s hands.”
“No, it was in my uncle’s, damn him and his pride. He has killed them, not you. Not us. If you stay, Mehmed will find you, and he will kill you.”
Radu’s final punishment was announced by a new bell pealing nearby, harsh and unyielding. He would not be allowed any mercy for the things he had done. He could not escape, and he could not keep anything he hoped to. Radu shifted his face, resting his cheek against Cyprian’s for the space of one eternally breaking heartbeat. “He will not kill me,” Radu whispered. Then he pulled back, forcing himself to look Cyprian in the eyes. Those eyes that had caught his attention even when Mehmed was his whole world. Those eyes that had somehow become the foundation of a hope that maybe, someday, Radu could have love.
“He will not kill me,” Radu repeated, waiting for Cyprian to understand. The foundation in Cyprian’s eyes crumbled like the walls around them.
Cyprian stumbled back, shaking his head. “All this time,” he whispered.
“Will you still keep her safe?” Radu asked.
Cyprian stared at the rocks beneath them, as mute and stunned as he had been when lightning nearly killed him. “You could have escaped,” he finally whispered. “You did not have to tell me. I would have— We could have—we could have been happy. We could have?” he asked.
Radu knew what Cyprian was asking, and if he had not already lost all hope it would have ended him. “I do not deserve happiness.” The bells of the Hagia Sophia rang out more insistently. “John and Manuel are running out of time. Will you still keep Nazira safe?”
A single tear ran down Cyprian’s face. He did not look at Radu. But he nodded. “I will,” he said.
This one good thing, then, Radu had managed to do. He had not broken all his promises. Nazira threw herself forward, hugging him fiercely. “You come back to us,” she hissed in his ear.
“Be safe,” he answered. Then, his heart breaking all the more for knowing that he could trust Cyprian even now, Radu fled back into the city.
The street was slick beneath Radu’s boots. He slipped, going down on his hands and knees. When he rose again, his hands were bloody. He had not felt them get cut, had not thought he had fallen hard. Then he realized that the blood was not a result of his fall, but rather the cause of it. The streets ran with it.
And so he, too, ran. He ran past soldiers throwing everything portable out of houses. He ran past women and children being dragged screaming from hiding places. He ran, and he ran, and he ran. He tried his best not to look, but he knew that what he saw that day would be seared in his memory.
Today, he saw the true cost of two men’s immovable wills. He saw what happened when men were forced to fight each other for months on end. It was not merely sickness of the body that plagued sieges, but sickness of the soul that turned men into monsters.
Radu was nearly at the Hagia Sophia when he saw a boy thrown to the ground. A soldier flipped the boy onto his back, reaching down to undo his trousers. Radu slit the soldier’s throat from behind.