Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga 3)

It had been years since Lada had killed a man without weapons. Her head swam from the blows, and she spat. She did not like the taste in her mouth. And she did not like the bodies on the floor. Why had they made her do this? “I have already had your version of help. I do not need any more. But he does. Open the door.”

Matthias turned his head. “Get me more men!” he barked.

“They will not come soon enough.” Lada spat blood again. The man next to the door had begun weeping. Matthias did not follow her order to open the door. She could show no weakness. She went far into herself, past the animal instincts that had propelled her to kill the other men. This one was more of a choice.

But there was no choice. She would do what must be done, as she always had.

Matthias, coward that he was, did not even watch as Lada broke his soldier’s other knee, and then his neck.

* * *

Lada knew what Mara would have advised her. What Radu would have. What Nicolae would have. What even Daciana would have.

Play the part. Do as she was told. Survive.

But she was a prince. She had other methods of survival. She had cut through years and lives to get there. There were those in Europe who still believed in her, and those in Wallachia who would never give up on her.

She was prince. She did not have it in her to be anything else. And she would never give Matthias the satisfaction of thinking he had beaten her.

An hour later, the next attempt to dress her involved ten men. Lada did not stand a chance, and she knew it. But she did as much damage as she could in the meantime. After they had stripped her of her chain mail, leaving only her underclothes on, they kicked her and threw her in the corner. Then they grabbed the three bodies and hurried from her cell. That, at least, was gratifying.

Standing as carefully as she could to avoid showing how much she had been hurt over the course of the two attacks, Lada stalked to the door.

“At least now you look like a woman,” Matthias said.

“And yet you still look nothing like a king.” She smiled, her teeth bloody, her face covered in gore, until he turned with a poorly suppressed shudder and left.

Only when night had fallen and it was dark did she finally collapse onto the cot, curling around herself and feeling everything she had lost.

Tirgoviste

NAZIRA, TRUE TO HER word, had not only set herself and Fatima up in a room but had also secured the one next to it, for Radu. Radu was curled around Cyprian in the dark. He had thought he would never be happy in this castle.

He had been wrong.

He pressed his forehead against Cyprian’s, relishing the tickle of the other man’s breath on his face. It meant this was real. Radu would take all the evidence he could get.

They lay on top of Radu’s bed, limbs tangled. Their discarded boots and turbans lay on the floor. Radu wrapped his fist in Cyprian’s shirt, pulling him closer. “I cannot believe you are actually here.”

Cyprian laughed, the sound as soft and intimate as the darkness around them. “You have no idea how long I have wanted this.”

“You could…tell me?”

Radu felt the laughter in Cyprian’s chest. He put his palm flat against it, relishing the beat of the other man’s heart. His heart now, too.

“You know I wanted to know you from the first moment we met.”

“I remember that, too. You made an impression when I thought I could not see anyone but…” Radu drifted off. There were still so many tender edges of their history that they would have to be careful around. It had been filled with terrible things. Which only made this miracle of connection feel even more precious and sacred.

“It was my smile, right?” Cyprian nuzzled his face against Radu’s cheek, and Radu felt the smile there.

“No, that caught me our second meeting. The first, it was your eyes.”

“Hmm,” Cyprian said. “It was not your eyes that attracted me.”

“What was it?”