Time had stretched them, built them new forms. Aron was thin and sickly-looking. His mustache and beard were sparse and patchy. Andrei, broad-shouldered and healthy, had fared better, though there was something wary in his expression that had not been there before Radu’s trick. Radu felt a brief pang of guilt that his actions had carved that onto someone else’s face. Aron smiled, and Radu saw something in the man’s eyes he had never seen as a child: kindness.

But apparently time had been more exacting on Radu than it had on his Danesti foes. That, or his turban and Ottoman dress disguised him completely. Their smiles—Andrei’s guarded, Aron’s kind— held no spark of recognition.

Nazira cheerfully introduced herself. Radu resisted the urge to shield her from them. Surely they were not the same bullies they had been in childhood. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Wallachia,” Andrei answered. “We are here with our father, the prince.”

A noise like the roaring of wind filled Radu’s ears.

Nazira lit up. “Oh, what a coincidence! My husband is—”

Radu tugged her arm. “Apologies, we have to leave.” He walked away so quickly Nazira had to run to keep up. As soon as he had rounded a corner, Radu leaned against the wall, overcome. Their father. A Danesti. The Wallachian prince. Which meant that Lada was not on the throne.

And if they were here paying respects, Mehmed knew Lada was not on the throne.

What else did Mehmed know? What other secrets was he keeping from Radu?

For once, though, the biggest question did not revolve around Mehmed. All these months, Radu had never written Lada, because she had never written him. And because he hated her for getting what she wanted and leaving him with nothing, as always.

But apparently he had been wrong about that.

Where was Lada?

2

February 1453

IT TOOK ONLY three fingers smashed beyond recognition before the would-be assassin screamed the name of Lada’s enemy.

“Well.” Nicolae raised his eyebrows, once singular but now bisected by a vicious scar that failed to fade with the passage of time. He turned away as Bogdan slit the young man’s throat. The heat of life leaving body steamed slightly in the frigid winter air. “That is disappointing.”

“That the governor of Brasov betrayed us?” Bogdan asked.

“No, that the quality of assassins has fallen this low.”

Lada knew Nicolae meant to make the situation palatable through humor—he never liked executions—but his words struck deep. It was certainly a blow that the governor of Brasov wanted her dead. He had promised her aid, which had given her the first shred of hope in months.

Now she had none. Brasov was the last of the Transylvanian cities she had tried to find an ally in. None of the noble Wallachian boyar families would so much as respond to her letters. Transylvania, with its fortified mountain cities crushed between Wallachia and Hungary, was heavily Wallachian. But Lada saw now that the ruling class of Saxons and Hungarians treated her people like chaff, and considered her worthless.

But almost worse than losing her last chance at an ally was that this was the most they could be bothered to spare for her: an underfed, poorly trained assassin barely past boyhood.

That was all the fear she instilled, all the respect she merited.

Bogdan kicked the body over the edge of the small ravine bordering their encampment. Just as when they were children, he never had to be asked to clean up her messes. He wiped the blood from his fingers, then tugged his ill-fitting gloves back on. A misshapen hat was worn low, hiding the ears that stuck out like jug handles.

He had grown broad and strong. His fighting was not flashy but was brutally efficient. Lada had seen him in action, and had to bite back the admiring words that sprang to her lips. He was also fastidiously clean—a quality emphasized by the Ottomans that not all her men had retained. Bogdan always smelled fresh, like the pine trees they hid among. Everything about him reminded Lada of home.

Her other men crouched over their fires, scattered in groups among the thick trees. They were as misshapen as Bogdan’s hat, their once pristine Janissary uniformity long since abandoned. They were down to thirty—twelve lost when they had met an unexpected force from the Danesti Wallachian prince as they attempted to cross the Danube River into the country, eight more lost in the months since, spent hiding and running and desperately seeking allies.

“Do you think Brasov is in league with the Danesti prince or with the Hungarians?” Nicolae asked.

“Does it matter?” Lada snapped. All sides were set against her. They smiled to her face and promised aid. Then they sent assassins in the dark.

She had bested vastly superior assassins on Mehmed’s behalf. Meager comfort, though, and worse still that she found it only by remembering her time with Mehmed. It seemed as though anything she might look on with pride had happened when she was with him. Had she been so diminished, then, by leaving the person she was at his side?

Lada lowered her head, rubbing the unceasing tightness at the base of her neck. Since failing to take the throne, she had neither written to nor received word from Mehmed or Radu. It was too humiliating to lay bare her failure before them and anticipate what they might say. Mehmed would invite her to return. Radu would console her—but she questioned whether he would welcome her back.

She wondered, too, how close they had become in her absence. But it did not matter. She had chosen to leave them as an act of strength. She would never return to them in weakness. She had thought—with her men, with her dispensation from Mehmed, with all her years of experience and strength—that the throne was hers for the taking. She had thought that she would be enough.

She knew now that nothing she could do would ever be enough. Unless she could grow a penis, which did not seem likely. Nor particularly desirable.

Though it did make for an easier time relieving oneself when perpetually hiding in the woods. Emptying one’s bladder in the middle of the night was a freezing, uncomfortable endeavor.

What, then, was left to her? She had no allies. She had no throne. She had no Mehmed, no Radu. She had only these sharp men and sharp knives and sharp dreams, and no way to make use of any of them.

Petru leaned against a winter-bare tree nearby. He had grown thicker and quieter in the past year. All traces of the boy he had been when he joined Lada’s company were gone. One of his ears had been mangled, and he wore his hair longer to cover it. He had also stopped shaving. Most of her men had. Their faces were no longer the bare ones that had indicated their station as Janissaries. They were free. But they were also directionless, which increasingly worried Lada. When thirty men trained to fight and kill had nothing to fight and kill for, what was there to keep them bound to her?