Nothing. He could say nothing.

She broke the seal, ripping the edge of the paper with her force, and opened it, scanning the contents quickly. It was not from Mehmed.

The hand was unfamiliar, but the signature at the bottom was undeniably Radu’s.

She sat heavily, shock making it difficult to focus on the words. Radu was at the siege? How? Why? Was he with Mehmed?

A strange sensation seeped through her, a writhing jealousy that Radu was there, where she had been forbidden, with Mehmed. Mehmed must have taken him, must have rescued him from Edirne. Gritting her teeth, Lada started at the beginning. The letter was brief, only a few lines long. He greeted her without preamble or explanation, stating merely that the siege was a disaster and would soon end. Then…

Lada stopped, dropping the letter to the floor. Then she picked it up, reading each word with care as though she could change what it said.

“ ‘Sickness is rampant. This is a secret to remain between us, but Mehmed has fallen ill. I do not expect him to recover or survive the journey back. When he dies you will be at the mercy of Murad, who still wishes you dead. Without Mehmed’s protection I fear for you. Whatever else has transpired between us, I could not live with myself without warning you. Gather what you can and flee while no one is there to take note.’ ”

When he dies.

Not if.

When.

Lada looked at the date on the letter—it had been written more than a month before. Which meant that Mehmed might already be dead, might have been dead all this time. All the poison she had nurtured, the bitterness, the anger. Her last words to him. Her thought that if he did not come back he would have deserved to never know how she felt about him. She doubled over, holding her midsection, a wail threatening to tear free from her throat.

She had sent Mehmed to his death with nothing but cruelty, and, worse, it was a death that even she could not have prevented. She could not fight the plague with a sword, could not stop the assassin illness with a dagger, no matter how clever and sharp.

She dropped to her cot and curled into a ball, incapable of imagining a world without Mehmed in it. Radu was right—there would be no place for her in that world. And Radu was not threatened as she was, because he had found his own role to play.

Radu had earned his place. Everything she had now—her home, her men, her very life—was because Mehmed cared for her. All her threads led back to him, and with his death each one would snap.

Rolling off her cot, she picked up the letter and read it again and again, willing it to change. Then she slammed it onto the desk with a scream, burying her dagger in it so deeply that the handle stuck straight up from the wood.

A week later, Lada was nearly ready to leave. She would steal a horse. As a Janissary, she had no horse of her own, but there were a few left in the fortress stables. All she needed was two more days. If only she had accepted or demanded extravagant gifts of Mehmed. She had almost nothing other than her payments as a Janissary. She had visited the bursar to draw her salary early, but the aggravating old fool would not budge the schedule. Stealing more than was strictly necessary would draw attention, so she was forced to wait.

It was agony.

All her men picked up on the change in her demeanor, but none could account for it. Nicolae in particular seemed nervous, and Lada feared he had received word of Mehmed’s demise in his own letter, or that he suspected she would flee.

While she glared at the sun, willing it to set faster so she could escape, Nicolae put a tentative hand on her shoulder. The other Janissaries had left for a meal. She had not noticed him staying. “We can talk,” he said, voice strained. “About what is bothering you.”

She turned to him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why would you think something is bothering me?”

“This last week, you have been…”

“What?” What had he noticed? Had he told the other men? She did not know whom she could trust, and the fewer people who knew of her plans, the better.

He shrugged. “You nearly broke Petru’s arm sparring. And then you missed yesterday’s training entirely. You either fail to respond to what we say, or you snap so sharply it wounds. I am sorry. I thought— I did not realize you were serious.” He shifted on his feet, tugging at his collar. “If you want, I mean, if it is important to you, I— We could try kissing.”

Lada stared at him in disbelief. Then, the strain of the last week being too much, she threw her head back and laughed. It bubbled out of her like a mountain stream from dry rock, cascading from her lips in a cold, unstoppable rush. She laughed so hard she fell to the ground, clutching her stomach, which soon began to ache.