Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga 3)

Kiril frowned, looking out over the steep ranges surrounding them. “We should find her hidden reserves of men. They are here somewhere.”

They could wander for weeks and never find so much as a soul, much less carefully hidden people who knew this land like it was part of them. Radu shook his head. “We do not need to find them. Not if we find Lada. She has made certain that everything depends on her. Everyone owes their power and their hopes to her. If she falls, her entire system of government and leadership will, too. They will disband and drift back to their old lives.”

Kiril scratched his clean-shaven cheek. Radu would not mind if he wanted to grow facial hair, but the Janissaries did not abandon their discipline for anything. “We still do not know where she is hiding, or if she is in these mountains at all. There are rumors of a hidden fortress, but there is no record of it being built, and no one can tell us where it is.”

“Is it on a peak?” Radu asked, suspecting he knew his sister’s exact location. How could he not have thought of this sooner?

Kiril raised his eyebrows, surprised by the question. “I heard that the mountain was her fortress. That is why it made no sense.”

Radu felt more bleak dread than triumph. Some part of him had hoped they would never find her. That she would simply be gone. Oh, Lada. “Gather our men and the cannons. The lightest ones we have. It will not be an easy trek.”

“You know where she is?”

“We share the same childhood. She forgets that, I think.” Radu remembered the pouch his sister had carried all these years. She had filled it here. Held it like a talisman against the pain and distance they endured. And, when the pouch was ruined by blood, Radu had placed the dusty contents in a silver locket for her. She never took it off.

Lada’s heart had always stayed here.

And it would stop here, too.

* * *

Radu had learned his lessons well. He had left Nazira and Fatima behind in Tirgoviste, in a small home on a side street, with nothing special to mark it as containing something truly precious. Radu did not know if Lada would try to kill his wife, but she had already killed his brother-in-law. He would never leave Nazira’s life to chance.

Whatever happened here, Nazira and Fatima would be safe. And if Radu did not come back, he knew Mehmed would take care of them. Both to honor Radu’s memory, and to honor Kumal’s. All the pieces of his life had been settled. His friendship with Mehmed, finally released of pain and tension. His duty to Nazira and Fatima. With the exception of Cyprian at his side reminding him how desperately he wanted to live, Radu was as ready as he could be to face his sister.

As they rode deeper into the green and gray of the Carpathians, Radu felt the weight of the dead pressing closer than the looming peaks on either side.

Everyone with him thought he was the good Draculesti. The noble one. But did he not have as much to answer for as Lada? All the lives that had come into contact with them had, in one way or another, been forever tainted. Bloodied. Ended. And now they were on opposite sides, with so many more lives in the balance. For the sake of this country and all the countries around it, for stability and safety—not just for Mehmed, but for all the people protected under the empire’s rule who would only prosper if the empire did—Radu needed to win.

He knew that.

But he did not know whether he deserved to win.

“What are you thinking of?” Cyprian asked, nudging his horse closer so the men’s legs brushed.

“All the blood that has led me to this point.”

Cyprian grimaced exaggeratedly. “I was thinking of what we might expect for dinner.”

Radu tried to offer a smile, but with Cyprian he did not have to. He did not have to pretend or force pleasantness. Cyprian never demanded that he perform. Radu looked at him with all the tenderness he felt. And part of him whispered to cling to every glance, every moment, because an end was coming.

Radu swept his hand to encompass the ancient, towering mountains. Their horses clung to the path beside the river. The valley was so narrow that in certain places the sun shone only a few hours every day. One could climb halfway up the northern mountains and hit the southern peaks with an arrow, or perhaps even a well-thrown rock. “These are the paths of my childhood, but the boy I was then does not know the man I am now. And I think—I fear—this is the final step to becoming whatever I

will be. I do not want to find out what that is.”

Cyprian did not force a smile, either. He nodded resolutely. “We will find out together.”

* * *

Radu crept up the side of the mountain across from Lada’s fortress. The Arges was a black line beneath him, separating the two peaks. The two siblings. The night was as dark and thick as oil, heavy clouds cutting them off even from the stars. It felt portentous, as though all of nature knew what the future held.

Radu had spent a summer here. A happy summer, one of the happiest of his childhood. And not long after, his father had sold him and Lada for the throne of Wallachia.

Lada had traded a life with Radu and Mehmed—a safe life, a life Radu still suspected could have been a happy one, somehow, at least for her—for blood and struggle and violence, had once again sold herself for the throne of Wallachia.

Radu, it seemed, was doomed to sacrifice for the same thing. Could no Dracul escape this cursed throne and what it asked of them? At least Lada and their father had been willing victims. Radu did not want to offer up what it would take to keep the throne.

He had no choice.