And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1) - Kiersten White Page 0,109
will do whatever I can to see that come to pass.”
Radu walked back to camp alone, wondering if maybe he did understand Skanderberg, after all. Because there was nothing he would not sacrifice for Mehmed.
Including himself.
Lazar stood, alarmed, when Radu entered the tent. Radu had not expected to see him again tonight.
“What happened? You look as though you have seen the devil.”
Radu shook his head as he sat, wishing Lazar were not here so he could think about Mehmed and indulge this exquisite pain in private. “Not the devil. Mehmed.”
Lazar smiled bitterly. “I see little difference. How was he?”
“He looked ill. The siege has not been kind to him.”
“As it should be.”
When Radu curled up and turned away, Lazar put a hand gently on his shoulder. It did not burn as Mehmed’s did, did not sear where it touched. “You still feel the same for him?”
“I always will.”
“And your sister?”
Radu flinched, remembering Mehmed’s careful protection of Lada. And regretting having confessed to Lazar that Mehmed and Lada had something between them that he craved. “Please, Lazar, stop speaking.”
Lazar’s hand moved, and Radu heard him rummaging through items in Radu’s chest nearest his small writing desk. “I am writing up the reports for you. It will be a while. Do you mind?”
Radu grunted and waved. He wanted to be alone, but he did not want to have to write the reports himself. Lazar often did it for him, collecting the information. All he needed was Radu’s signature. After several minutes, Lazar knelt in front of Radu, holding a sheaf of papers so that only the bottom, where Radu needed to sign, showed.
Radu signed them all without hesitation. And then, finally, Lazar left. Radu buried his face in his blanket, heart beating to the sorrow and joy of Mehmed, Mehmed, Mehmed.
“WHAT I WOULD NOT give for a roving band of Huns right now.” Nicolae sighed, lying flat on his back in the middle of the training ring. The dirt beneath him was packed hard by decades of feet. The low wooden walls of the ring were lined with pegs that held the equipment of the men who practiced there.
Like all days the last six months, the pegs were empty.
Tohin had left shortly after they destroyed the canyon. She had other outposts to visit, other soldiers to teach. Lada missed her. And she especially missed creating explosions. They could not even keep training with gunpowder, because there simply was not enough of it.
There was so little to do. Today, Petru and Matei were on patrol with Stefan. Lada did not know where her other troops were and found it nearly impossible to care. They were relegated to minor local duties to compensate for the lack of spahis and vali governors. Last week, they had investigated the theft of several pigs from a local farm. The thief, caught in the act, was a hole in the fence and a patch of truffles in the forest.
Even her hatred of Mehmed for leaving her had lost its spark, its flame dampened by the fear introduced with Tohin’s news of the siege. Increasingly she found herself thinking of him with regret. Fondness, even. Imagining what she would do if he were here. And then she stabbed those thoughts with her sharpest dagger, cut them right out of her mind. He could do without her, she could do as well without him. He would be fine. Without her.
She stood over Nicolae, looking down at him.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.
Nicolae made a strange choking noise. “What?”
“Do you want to kiss me?” She did not feel things when she looked at Nicolae, but then, she had not felt so much for Mehmed before they kissed. Maybe the secret to successfully bleeding him from her veins was replacing him. She generally found Nicolae more than tolerable, and he was good at taking orders.
“Please take this in the kindest way possible,” he said, standing and walking backward to put more space between them, eyeing the knife she was toying with. “But I would sooner try to romance my horse. And I suspect my horse would enjoy it more than you.”
Lada lifted her nose in the air. “Your horse deserves better.”
“We can both agree on that.” Now relatively certain he was not about to be stabbed, Nicolae sat on the wall next to her. The fact that she was not upset over his rejection indicated that kissing him would have done nothing to alleviate her problems.