And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1) - Kiersten White Page 0,17

anything without purpose? She had no love whatsoever for him, but she had a healthy portion of fear.

“Come on.” Lada yanked Radu free of the bush, his sleeves catching and tearing on the thorns. Based on his cries, his skin caught and tore as well. She pulled him along after her, out of the garden and through the gate into an abandoned stable, empty save for the overwhelming odor of rotting hay. Any extra horses they once had had been sold to cover their father’s spiraling debts. Most of the main stable was occupied by Janissary horses, boyar horses, horses of their debtors.

“If Mircea finds father, he will know I lied.” Lada sat on the floor, skirts bunching beneath her.

Radu wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Why did you help me?”

“Why do you always need help?” Exasperated, she directed him to sit next to her and examined his face. The cuts were shallow, nothing serious. She pulled a few thorns from his arms, not pausing at his whimpers. She was never kind or tender with Radu, but what she did was for his own good. He was too delicate for this world, and the sooner he changed, the easier life would be for him. “What was Mircea so angry about?”

Radu shifted, angling his face away from her. “Nothing.”

She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. A stray beam of light hit his ears, and she felt Bogdan’s loss and her loneliness like a pain in her stomach. Sighing, she put an arm around Radu and drew him closer. Would their father send Radu away, too? Would he let Mircea, the eldest and most favored, kill him?

The pale spring day was chilly, and her wet hair left her shivering. “You have to stay away from Mircea,” she said. “He is meaner than Father’s falcon, and far dumber.”

Radu sniffled a laugh. “And far uglier.”

“And far more likely to carry fleas.”

They were quiet for a while, breathing together, when Radu spoke again. “I was hiding behind the drapes. I heard him speaking with a Danesti family boyar.”

In the fifteen years before their father took the throne, there had been ten princes, alternating between two families: the Basarab line, now out of contention with no heirs of age, and the Danesti line. The Danesti family was not happy with the Draculesti usurpers, first Lada and Radu’s uncle Alexandru and now their father. And, as history proved, being prince was a very tenuous position in Wallachia.

“Why was he speaking with the Danestis?”

Radu squirmed, and Lada realized she was squeezing his shoulder so tightly she was hurting him. She let go, and he said, “There is talk of a boyar coalition. They mentioned Hunyadi.”

Lada’s skin prickled. Hunyadi was the military leader of Transylvania and Hungary, their constantly shifting border countries to the west. Where her father had sworn to fight the Ottomans, Hunyadi actually did. He had beaten the sultan on numerous occasions.

Lada could never decide what to think of Hunyadi. She sensed that he was a threat to her father’s power, but she could not help seeing that Hunyadi was the man her father was supposed to be. She listened in when she could, stole her father’s letters and annotated maps, and studied Hunyadi’s strategies. He was fascinating. He fought like a rabid dog at unexpected times, and then disappeared to harass the enemy again later. Even with inferior numbers and forces, he usually wore the Ottomans down.

He was the Draculestis’ ally, but he was also dangerous and did not look kindly on her father’s double-dealing. “I thought the boyars supported Ottoman ties. They encouraged Father to seek their help.”

“Most of the boyars are unhappy. They see how successful Hunyadi’s campaigns against the sultan are. They want to ally only with him now. There is talk of a betrothal.”

Lada stiffened. “Who?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“Matthias, Hunyadi’s son.”

A sharp pain beneath her fingernails alerted Lada to the fact that she was scraping them against the rotting wood floor so hard that slivers were stabbing into her palm. She would be married to grant someone else an advantage. And when that alliance fell through, as all alliances did, she would be shuffled to the side. Left in a convent, abandoned and cut off.

An image of their mother, nearly forgotten since she had left them, crawled through Lada’s mind. She recoiled from the memory of that woman. Powerless. Broken. An abandoned alliance had left her a prisoner in someone else’s home, someone