LADA PUT ON HER boots with a sigh of relief. Their tenure here had been interminable. After last week’s debacle, she had kept a low profile. Mehmed was constantly surrounded by guards. Perhaps Murad had not entirely forgotten that someone had tried to kill Mehmed.

If that was, in fact, what had happened.

Lada had been certain she had seen the flash of a weapon, but no one could identify the man, and the guest list had been conveniently misplaced. It was part of the reason the matter had been dropped. No one would claim the murdered man, which pointed to the fact that he should not have been there, whatever his purpose.

But it remained that she had killed him before being sure that he was, in fact, after Mehmed.

She frowned, tying a sash around her tunic. If the man was innocent, she was sorry, but she knew she would make the same choice again. What did that say about her?

Leaving the rest of her things for servants to pack, she crossed the hall to Radu’s room. He had kept the opposite of a low profile, suddenly becoming even more a darling of the court. Lada had not been able to so much as speak to him all week. No longer did he keep company with second sons and minor officials. At last night’s feast, he had spent most of the night at Murad’s side, paraded around like a long-lost son. Meanwhile Lada had stood in the corner, and Mehmed had remained banished in his silken prison with wilting Sitti Hatun.

Lada pounded on Radu’s door. He opened it, still in his bedclothes.

“Hurry up! We leave in an hour. Back to Amasya at last.” She pushed past him and sat on his rumpled bed. “I will be so happy to have this nightmare behind us.”

Radu looked at her with an intensity she was unaccustomed to. Usually he smiled or said something funny to deflect her bad moods. But now he stared expectantly and unkindly.

Lada shifted on the bed, scowling. “You are the one who has been avoiding me. I was going to thank you. It was very well handled with Murad. But how dare you say I have converted to Islam! I could have killed you.” It was the most she could bring herself to say, because in truth she knew she would have been dead without Radu’s brilliant intervention. She could muster some gratitude, but more than that she was annoyed, angry, even jealous. Radu was in his element among these people, while Lada could not be further from hers.

Radu’s expression remained the same. Lada stood, throwing her hands in the air. “What do you want?”

“I know,” he said.

“What do you know?”

“About you and Mehmed.” He said Mehmed’s name as he always had, like a prayer. But this time it was laced with despair and longing. Lada turned her head defensively, picking up a candle from its stand and playing with the flame.

“What do you think you know?”

“You do not deserve him.”

Slamming down the candle, Lada spun on Radu. “Perhaps he does not deserve me! I asked for none of this! How can you judge me for finding some measure of happiness in—” She stopped, searching her brother’s face. It was there, as plain as the stars in a cloudless night sky. Perhaps it had always been there. She sat back on the bed, all fight and fire extinguished.

She had heard rumors of this type of thing. Jokes and bawdy stories from Nicolae and the Janissaries about men who loved other men in the manner of a woman. It had never made sense to Lada, but then, she had never loved anyone the way she knew her brother loved Mehmed.

Had always loved him.

With knife-sharp clarity, her own feelings of powerlessness and loneliness since being taken from Wallachia rose within her breast. How, then, must it feel to want a someone as much as she wanted a something, and to know that someone would never want you?

“I am sorry,” she said, unmoving and emotionless because she did not know how to express what she understood.

Radu’s anguish was palpable, choking her from across the room. “You do not love him.”

Lada shook her head. She did not know what she had with Mehmed, only that it buffered her against despair. She would not give that up. “I care about him.”

“You care about how he makes you feel. You cannot love him.”

Radu was quivering, fists clenched, consumed with his feelings. This love would break him. Unless Lada broke him now. It would not be the first time she had allowed him to be beaten down in order to protect him.

She spoke with all the bitterness of the truth, each word a lash against Radu’s heart. “He will never love you. He will never look at you the way he looks at me. You cannot have this, Radu.”

They locked eyes, neither moving. Finally Radu slumped to the floor, long legs folded up to his chest, hands over his face. “You have no love to give him, and I have no love he will accept. What are we supposed to do?”